Pope and other writers of the pseudo-classic school, paid more heed to their poetic diction than any other poet in the language. The most important elements in Pope’s poetic diction are periphrasis or circumlocution, personification of inanimate abstractions, and frequent Latinisms.
Another device used by Pope to achieve his ends is antithesis, i.e., the opposition or bringing together in the same line of the great and the small, of the insignificant and the significant. This device has been used throughout The Rape of the Lock and is the poet’s chief means of creating the mock-heroic effect.