Arabella Fermor had a lock of hair cut off by Lord Petre, and Pope transformed the incident into a mock-epic that is also, somehow, a genuine epic of the trivial. The toilet table becomes an altar; the card game becomes a battle; the sylphs and gnomes of Rosicrucian lore protect or betray their mortal charge. The couplets are perfect, witty, and almost unbearably beautiful. Pope was twenty-three when he wrote it. It is the greatest comic poem in English, and possibly the most perfectly crafted poem in the language.