B. Notes and Illustrations

‘Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem

Stella micat.’

Ovid, Metam. xv. 849, 850. (Pope.)

Line 37. Partridge. John Partridge was a ridiculous star-gazer, who in his almanacks every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope and the King of France, then at war with the English. (Pope.) Partridge was the butt of Swift’s famous hoax in 1707.

MACER.

Line 8. Crowne, John, a dramatist and adapter of plays, died 1698.

A FAREWELL TO LONDON.

Stanza ii. C—s is evidently Craggs; and H—k, as Carruthers interprets the hiatus, Lord Hinchinbrook, a young nobleman of spirit and fashion. (Ward.)

Stanza viii., lines 3 and 4. Most likely Miss Younger and Mrs. Bicknell, sisters, both actresses. (Carruthers.)

THE BASSET-TABLE.

Line 99. The Groom-Porter was an office in the King’s household, who, under a provision exempting royalty from the laws against gambling, was enabled to provide a resort for London gamesters.

Line 100. Some dukes at Mary-bone. The reference is supposed to have been to the Duke of Buckinghamshire, who frequented a bowling-alley in Marylebone parish.

EPIGRAM ON THE TOASTS OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB.

The Kit-cat Club, named for Christopher Katt, a pastry-cook, numbered among its members most of the town wits, including Steele and Addison.

ELOISA TO ABELARD.

Line 24. Forgot myself to stone. ‘Forget thyself to marble.’ Milton, Il Penseroso. The expression ‘caverns shagg’d with horrid thorn,’ and the epithets ‘pale-eyed,’ ‘twilight,’ ‘low-thoughted care,’ and others, are first used in the smaller poems of Milton, which Pope seems to have been just reading. (Warton.)

Line 74. Curse on all laws, etc.

Line 212. Obedient slumbers, etc. This line Pope confesses to having borrowed from Crashaw.

Line 342. May one kind grave, etc. Abelard and Eloisa were interred in the same grave, or in monuments adjoining, in the Monastery of the Paraclete; he died in the year 1142, she in 1163. (Pope.)

SANDYS’ GHOST.

Stanza x. Carey. Probably John Carey.

Stanza xi. Jacob. Jacob Tonson. Pembroke. The Earl of Pembroke.

Stanza xii. Tom Burnet. Son of Bishop Burnet.

Stanza xiii. Justice Philips. Ambrose Philips.

1740: A POEM.

These verses are supposed to be a fragment found by Lord Bolingbroke among Pope’s papers. There is much doubt about many of the persons referred to; the readings here suggested being merely a choice among many suggested by Bowles and Carruthers.

AN ESSAY ON MAN. Epistle I.

Line 1. St. John. Henry St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, was the most intimate friend of Pope’s later years. The themes treated in the Essay on Man had been much discussed between them; it is, indeed, the shallow philosophy of Bolingbroke which supplies the substance of Pope’s argument.

Line 6. A mighty maze, etc. The last verse, as it stood in the original editions, was—

and perhaps this came nearer Pope’s real opinion than the verse he substituted for it. (Lowell.)

Line 102. The solar walk. The sun’s orbit. Pope cites in this connection ‘the ancient opinion that the souls of the just went thither.’

Line 160. Young Ammon. Alexander the Great, who was saluted by the priests of the Libyan Jupiter Ammon as the son of their god.

Line 170. And passions are the elements of life. See this subject extended in Epistle II. from verse 100 to 122. (Pope.)

Line 213. The headlong lioness. ‘The manner of the lion’s hunting,’ reads Pope’s note, ‘is this: at their first going out in the night-time, they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the nostril.’

Line 278. The rapt Seraph. Alluding to the name seraphim, signifying burners. (Warburton.)

Epistle II. Line 22. Correct old Time, etc. This alludes to Sir Isaac Newton’s Grecian Chronology. (Warburton.)

Lines 71–74. Self-love still stronger, etc. Bowles quotes the following passage from Bacon: ‘The affections carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth. The difference is, that the affection holdeth merely the present; reason beholdeth the future and sum of time.’

Epistle III. Line 68. Favour’d man. Several of the ancients, and many of the orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by lightning as favoured persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. (Pope.)

Line 104. Demoivre. A noted French mathematician, and a friend of Sir Isaac Newton’s.

Epistle IV. Line 74. Mountains piled on mountains. Alluding to the Titans’ attempt to scale Olympus. (Ward.)

Line 99. Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland (1610–1643), a brilliant young statesman and versifier, was killed in the battle of Newburg, at the age of thirty-three.

Lines 100–101. Henry, Vicomte de Turenne, and Sir Philip Sidney both fell in battle before their extraordinary powers had reached full maturity.

Line 104. The Hon. Robert Digby, third son of Lord Digby, was a personal friend and correspondent of Pope’s. He died in 1726.

Line 107. M. de Belsance was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate of his flock whilst that horrid calamity prevailed. (Warburton.)

Line 110. Pope’s mother died in 1733, shortly before this epistle was written, at the age of ninety-one.

Line 123. Shall burning Ætna, etc. Alluding to the fate of those two great naturalists, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an approach to Ætna and Vesuvius, while they were exploring the cause of their eruptions. (Warburton.)

Line 126. Blameless Bethel. Hugh Bethel, to whom the Imitations of Horace are addressed.

Line 220. Macedonia’s madman, etc. An epigrammatic expression will also tempt him into saying something without basis in truth; as where he ranks together ‘Macedonia’s madman and the Swede,’ and says that neither of them ‘looked forward farther than his nose,’ a slang phrase which may apply well enough to Charles XII., but certainly not to the pupil of Aristotle, who showed himself capable of a large political forethought. So, too [line 236], the rhyme, if correct, is sufficient apology for want of propriety in phrase, as where he makes Socrates ‘bleed.’ (Lowell.)

Line 278. Lord Umbra. Bubb Dodington, called Bubo in the Epistle to Arbuthnot (line 280), where Sir William Yonge’s name is again coupled with his.

Lines 298–308. This passage evidently refers to the Duke of Marlborough.

MORAL ESSAYS. Epistle I.

Line 57. Manly. The hero of Wycherley’s Plain-Dealer. The name was commonly applied to Wycherley.

Line 58. Umbra. Bubb Dodington. See note on Essay on Man, IV. 278.

Line 61. A Queen. Queen Caroline, whom Swift, alluded to in the succeeding line, had satirized.

Line 77. Catius. Charles Dartineuf, according to Carruthers. See Imitations of Horace, Bk. II. Ep. ii. 87, note.

Line 81. Patricio. Conjectured by Warburton to be Lord Godolphin. See Glossary.

Line 89. A perjur’d prince. Louis XI. of France wore in his hat a leaden image of the Virgin Mary, which when he swore by he feared to break his oath. (Pope.)

Line 90. A godless Regent tremble at a star. Philip, Duke of Orleans, Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV., superstitious in judicial astrology, though an unbeliever in all religion. (Warburton.)

Line 91. The throne, etc. Philip V. of Spain, who, after renouncing the throne for religion, resumed it to gratify his queen; and Victor Amadeus II., king of Sardinia, who resigned the crown, and trying to resume it, was imprisoned till his death. (Pope.)

Line 136. A saint in crape. That is, in the garb of the clergy.

Line 179. Wharton. Philip, Duke of Wharton. See Glossary.

Line 187. Wilmot. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, famous for his wit and extravagances in the time of Charles the Second. (Pope.)

Line 231. Lanesb’row. An ancient nobleman, who continued this practice long after his legs were disabled by the gout. (Pope.)

Line 247. Were the last words, etc. This story, like the others, is founded on fact, though the author had the goodness not to mention the names. Several attribute this in particular to a very celebrated actress who, in detestation of the thought of being buried in woollen, gave these her last orders with her dying breath. (Pope.) Warton says that the actress was Mrs. Oldfield.

Epistle II. Of this Epistle, which was published in 1735, parts had been long before written and even printed. As originally published, it wanted the portraits. of Philomede, Chloë, and Atossa. According to Warburton’s statement, Pope communicated the character of Atossa to the Duchess of Marlborough as intended for the Duchess of Buckingham; according to Walpole he repeated the experiment vice versa. Immediately on the death of Pope, the Duchess of Marlborough applied to one of his executors, Lord Marchmont, with the view of ascertaining whether the poet had left behind him any satire on the Duke or herself. Marchmont consulted Bolingbroke; and it was found that in the edition of the Moral Essays prepared for the press by Pope just before his death, and printed off ready for publication, the character of Atossa was inserted. If Lord Marchmont made the statement attributed to him by the editor of his papers (Rose), Pope had received from the Duchess £1000, the acceptance of which implied forbearance towards the house of Marlborough. If this be so, it is probable that the motive which prompted Pope to the acceptance of this ‘favor’ was the desire to settle Martha Blount in independent circumstances for life. (Ward.)

Lines 7–14. Arcadia’s Countess—Pastora by a fountain—Leda with a swan—Magdalen—Cecilia. Attitudes in which several ladies affected to be drawn, and sometimes one lady in them all. The poet’s politeness and complaisance to the sex is observable in this instance, amongst others, that whereas in the Characters of Men, he has sometimes made use of real names, in the Characters of Women always fictitious. (Pope.)

Line 24. Sappho. A name for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, first used by Pope in compliment, but later retained for purposes of abuse.

Line 53. Narcissa. Warton says that Narcissa stands for the Duchess of Hamilton. The lines were adopted from the earlier verses, which Pope had called Sylvia, a Fragment.

Line 83. Philomede. Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough in her own right (daughter of Sarah), an admirer of Congreve. She married the second Earl of Godolphin.

Line 107. Her Grace. This refers, according to Warton, to the Duchess of Montagu, with whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was intimate.

Line 115. Atossa. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. In 1678 she was married to Colonel Churchill, and it was largely by her influence that he was made Duke of Marlborough.

Lines 139, 140. The bust and temple rise. This alludes to a temple she erected with a bust of Queen Anne in it, which mouldered away in a few years. (Wilkes.)

Line 157. Chloë. Lady Suffolk, mistress of George II., and friend of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot. See On a Certain Lady, etc., page 118.

Line 198. Mah’met. Servant to the late king (George I.), said to be the son of a Turkish Bassa, whom he took at the siege of Buda, and constantly kept about his person. (Pope.)

Hale. Dr. Stephen Hale, not more estimable for his useful discoveries as a natural philosopher than for his exemplary life and pastoral charity as a parish priest. (Pope.)

Line 251. The Ring. See note on The Rape of the Lock, Canto I. line 44.

Lines 253–256. Originally the last four lines of the short poem called Erinna.

Epistle III. This Epistle was written after a violent outcry against our author, on a supposition that he had ridiculed a worthy nobleman merely for his wrong taste. He justified himself upon that article in a letter to the Earl of Burlington; at the end of which are these words: ‘I have learnt that there are some who would rather be wicked than ridiculous: and therefore it may be safer to attack vices than follies. I will therefore leave my betters in the quiet possession of their idols, their groves, and their high places; and change my subject from their pride to their meanness, from their vanities to their miseries; and as the only certain way to avoid misconstructions, to lessen offence, and not to multiply ill-natured applications, I may probably, in my next, make use of real names instead of fictitious ones.’ (Pope.)

Line 20. John Ward, of Hackney, Esq.; Member of Parliament, being prosecuted by the Duchess of Buckingham, and convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House, and then stood in the pillory on the 17th of March, 1727. He was suspected of joining in a conveyance with Sir John Blunt, to secrete fifty thousand pounds of that Director’s estate, forfeited to the South-Sea Company by Act of Parliament. The company recovered the fifty thousand pounds against Ward; but he set up prior conveyances of his real estate to his brother and son, and conceal’d all his personal, which was computed to be one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. These conveyances being also set aside by a bill in Chancery, Ward was imprisoned, and hazarded the forfeiture of his life, by not giving in his effects till the last day, which was that of his examination. During his confinement, his amusement was to give poison to dogs and cats, and to see them expire by slower or quicker torments. To sum up the worth of this gentleman, at the several æras of his life, At his standing in the Pillory he was worth above two hundred thousand pounds; at his commitment to Prison, he was worth one hundred and fifty thousand; but has been since so far diminished in his reputation, as to be thought a worse man by fifty or sixty thousand. (Pope.) From Pope’s intimate acquaintance with Mr. Ward’s career, it might almost be suspected that he is the same who is enumerated among Pope’s friends in Gay’s poem (Ward.)

Mr. Waters, the third of these worthies, was a man no way resembling the former in his military, but extremely so in his civil capacity; his great fortune having been rais’d by the like diligent attendance on the necessities of others. But this gentleman’s history must be deferred till his death, when his worth may be known more certainly. (Pope.)

Fr. Chartres, a man infamous for all manner of vices. When he was an ensign in the army, he was drumm’d out of the regiment for a cheat; he was next banish’d Brussels, and drumm’d out of Ghent on the same account. After a hundred tricks at the gaming tables, he took to lending of money at exorbitant interest and on great penalties, accumulating premium, interest, and capital into a new capital, and seizing to a minute when the payments became due; in a word, by a constant attention to the vices, wants, and follies of mankind, he acquired an immense fortune. His house was a perpetual bawdy-house. He was twice condemn’d for rapes, and pardoned: but the last time not without imprisonment in Newgate, and large confiscations. He died in Scotland in 1731, aged 62. The populace at his funeral rais’d a great riot, almost tore the body out of the coffin, and cast dead dogs, &c., into the grave along with it. The following Epitaph contains his character very justly drawn by Dr. Arbuthnot:

This Gentleman was worth seven thousand pounds a year estate in Land, and about one hundred thousand in Money. (Pope.)

And the Devil. Alluding to the vulgar opinion, that all mines of metal and subterraneous treasures are in the guard of the Devil: which seems to have taken its rise from the pagan fable of Plutus the God of Riches. (Warburton.)

Line 35. Beneath the patriot’s cloak. This is a true story, which happened in the reign of William III., to an unsuspected old patriot, who coming out at the back-door from having been closeted by the King, where he had received a large bag of guineas, the bursting of the bag discovered his business there. (Pope.)

Line 42. Fetch or carry kings. In our author’s time, many Princes had been sent about the world, and great changes of kings projected in Europe. The partition-treaty had disposed of Spain; France had set up a king for England, who was sent to Scotland and back again; the Duke of Anjou was sent to Spain and Don Carlos to Italy. (Pope.)

Line 44. Or ship off senates. Alluding to several ministers, counsellors, and patriots banished in our times to Siberia, and to that more glorious fate of the Parliament of Paris, banished to Pontoise in the year 1720. (Pope.)

Line 62. Worldly crying coals. Some misers of great wealth, proprietors of the coal-mines, had entered at this time into an association to keep up coals to an extravagant price, whereby the poor were reduced almost to starve, till one of them, taking the advantage of underselling the rest, defeated the design. One of these misers was worth ten thousand, another seven thousand a year. (Pope.)

Line 65. Colepepper. Sir William Colepepper, Bart., a person of an ancient family and ample fortune, without one other quality of a gentleman, who, after ruining himself at the gaming-table, past the rest of his days in sitting there to see the ruin of others; preferring to subsist upon borrowing and begging, rather than to enter into any reputable method of life, and refusing a post in the army which was offered him. (Pope.)

Line 67. White’s. The most fashionable of London gambling resorts.

Line 82. Turner. A very wealthy miser.

Line 84. Wharton. Philip, Duke of Wharton.

Line 85. Hopkins. A citizen whose rapacity obtained him the name of Vulture Hopkins. He lived worthless, but died worth three hundred thousand pounds, which he would give to no person living, but left it so as not to be inherited till after the second generation. His counsel representing to him how many years it must be, before this could take effect, and that his money could only lie at interest all that time, he expressed great joy thereat, and said, ‘They would then be as long in spending, as he had been in getting it.’ But the Chancery afterwards set aside the will, and give it to the heir at law. (Pope.)

Line 86. Japhet, nose and ears? Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, was punished with the loss of those parts, for having forged a conveyance of an Estate to himself, upon which he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a Will, by which he possessed another considerable Estate, in wrong of the brother of the deceased. By these means he was worth a great sum, which (in reward for the small loss of his ears) he enjoyed in prison till his death, and quietly left to his executor. (Pope.)

Line 96. Die, and endow a College, or a Cat. A famous Duchess of Richmond in her last will left considerable legacies and annuities to her Cats. (Pope.) [Warton more than vindicates the memory of this famous beauty of Charles II.’s court from Pope’s taunt by stating that she left annuities to certain poor ladies of her acquaintance, with the burden of maintaining some of her cats; this proviso being intended to disguise the charitable character of the bequests. (Ward.)

Line 99. Bond damns the poor, &c. This epistle was written in the year 1730, when a corporation was established to lend money to the poor upon pledges, by the name of the Charitable Corporation; but the whole was turned only to an iniquitous method of enriching particular people, to the ruin of such numbers, that it became a parliamentary concern to endeavour the relief of those unhappy sufferers, and three of the managers, who were members of the house, were expell’d. By the report of the committee, appointed to enquire into that iniquitous affair, it appears, that when it was objected to the intended removal of the office, that the Poor, for whose use it was erected, would be hurt by it, Bond, one of the Directors, replied, Damn the poor. That ‘God hates the poor,’ and, ‘That every man in want is knave or fool,” &c. were the genuine apothegms of some of the persons here mentioned. (Pope.) Dennis Bond, a member of Parliament, died in 1747. (Carruthers.)

Line 100. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, director of the Bank of England, and one of the richest men of his day. (Ward.)

Line 117. South-Sea Year. 1720. Pope was involved in the speculation, but is supposed to have escaped without loss.

Line 118. To live on venison. In the extravagance and luxury of the South-Sea year, the price of a haunch of venison was from three to five pounds.

Line 121. Sappho. This is a particularly gratuitous insult, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu invested in South-Sea stock by Pope’s advice and lost her money.

Line 123. Wise Peter. Peter Walter, a person not only eminent in the wisdom of his profession, as a dextrous attorney, but allowed to be a good, if not a safe conveyancer; extremely respected by the Nobility of this land, tho’ free from all manner of luxury and ostentation: his Wealth was never seen, and his bounty never heard of, except to his own son, for whom he procured an employment of considerable profit, of which he gave him as much as was necessary. Therefore the taxing this gentleman with any Ambition, is certainly a great wrong to him. (Pope.)

Line 126. Rome’s great Didius. A Roman Lawyer, so rich as to purchase the Empire when it was set to sale upon the death of Pertinax. (Pope.) Didius Julianus A.D. 193. The vendors were the Prætorian Guards. (Ward.)

Line 127. The Crown of Poland, &c. The two persons here mentioned were of Quality, each of whom in the Mississippi despis’d to realize above three hundred thousand pounds; the Gentleman with a view to the purchase of the Crown of Poland, the Lady on a vision of the like royal nature. They since retired into Spain, where they are still in search of gold in the mines of the Asturies. (Pope.)

Line 128. A Mr. Gage, of the ancient Suffolk Catholic family of that name; and Lady Mary Herbert, daughter of the Marquess of Powis and of a natural daughter of James II.: whence the phrase ‘hereditary realm.’ (Bowles.)

Line 133. Much injur’d Blunt. Sir John Blunt, originally a scrivener, was one of the first projectors of the South-Sea Company, and afterwards one of the directors and chief managers of the famous scheme in 1720. He was also one of those who suffer’d most severely by the bill of pains and penalties on the said directors. (Pope.)

Line 177. Old Cotta. Supposed to be the Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1711; and his son, the well-known peer of that name, who afterwards became prime minister. (Carruthers.)

Line 243. Oxford’s better part. Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford. The son of Robert, created Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer by Queen Anne. This Nobleman died regretted by all men of letters, great numbers of whom had experienced his benefits. He left behind him one of the most noble Libraries in Europe. (Pope.)

Line 250. The Man of Ross. The person here celebrated, who with a small Estate actually performed all these good works, and whose true name was almost lost (partly by the title of the Man of Ross given him by way of eminence, and partly by being buried without so much as an inscription) was called Mr. John Kyrle. He died in the year 1724, aged 90, and lies interred in the chancel of the church of Ross in Herefordshire. (Pope.)

We must understand what is here said, of actually performing, to mean by the contributions which the Man of Ross, by his assiduity and interest, collected in his neighbourhood. (Warburton.)

Line 296. Eternal buckle, etc. The poet ridicules the wretched taste of carving large periwigs on bustos, of which there are several vile examples at Westminster and elsewhere. (Pope.)

Line 305. Great Villiers lies. This Lord, yet more famous for his vices than his misfortunes, after having been possess’d of about £50,000 a year, and passed thro’ many of the highest posts in the kingdom, died in the Year 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the utmost misery. (Pope.)

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the son of the first Duke (the favourite and minister of James I. and Charles I.), was born in 1637. He lost his estates as a royalist, but recovered them by his marriage with the daughter of Lord Fairfax. He is the Zimri of the Absalom and Achitophel of Dryden, whom he had ridiculed as Bayes in the burlesque play of The Rehearsal. Thus we have portraits of this typical hero of the Restoration period by Dryden and Pope, as well as by Burnet and Butler, Count Grammont and Horace Walpole. The tenant’s house at which he died (in 1687) was at Kirby Moor Side, near Helmsly in Yorkshire. (Ward.)

Line 307. Cliveden. A delightful palace, on the banks of the Thames, built by the D. of Buckingham.(Pope.)

Line 308. Shrewsbury. The Countess of Shrewsbury, a woman abandoned to gallantries. The Earl her husband was kill’d by the Duke of Buckingham in a duel; and it has been said, that during the combat she held the Duke’s horses in the habit of a page. (Pope.)

Line 315. Sir John Cutler, a wealthy citizen of the Restoration period, accused of rapacity on account of a large claim made by his executors against the College of Physicians, which he had aided by a loan. (Carruthers.)

Line 339. Where London’s column, etc. The monument on Fish Street Hill, built in memory of the fire of London of 1666, with an inscription importing that city to have been burnt by the Papists. (Pope.)

Epistle IV. Line 7. Topham. A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings. (Pope.)

Line 8. Pembroke. Henry, Earl of Pembroke, a patron of the arts, and owner of many valuable paintings.

Line 10. Mead—Sloane. Two eminent physicians; the one had an excellent library, the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity. (Pope.) Dr. Mead was physician to George II. ‘He was, however,’ says Ward, ‘the reverse of a bookworm; for Johnson says of him that “he lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man.”’ Sir John or Hans Sloane was a skilled botanist and physician. His natural history collection is now preserved in the British Museum.

Line 18. Ripley. This man was a carpenter, employed by a first Minister, who raised him to an Architect, without any genius in the art; and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him Comptroller of the Board of Works. (Pope.)

Line 20. Bubo. Bubb Dodington. See Epistle to Arbuthnot, line 280.

Line 23. You show us Rome, etc. The Earl of Burlington was then publishing the designs of Inigo Jones, and the Antiquities of Rome by Palladio. (Pope.)

Line 46. Le Nôtre. Andrè Le Nôtre (1613–1700), landscape-gardener of Louis XIV.

Line 70. Stowe. The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham in Buckinghamshire. (Pope.)

Line 78. In a hermitage set Dr. Clarke. Dr. L. Clarke’s busto placed by the Queen in the Hermitage, while the doctor duly frequented the court. (Pope.) Dr. Clarke was one of Queen Caroline’s chaplains.

Line 150. Never mentions Hell, etc. This is a fact; a reverend Dean preaching at court threatened the sinner with punishment in ‘a place which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly.’ (Pope.)

Line 169. Yet hence the poor, etc. The Moral of the whole, where Providence is justified in giving wealth to those who squander it in this manner. A bad taste employs more hands, and diffuses expense more than a good one. (Pope.)

Line 173. Another age, etc. Had the poet lived but three years longer, he had seen this prophecy fulfilled. (Warburton.)

Lines 195–202. Till Kings … Bid Harbours open, etc. The poet after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expense, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and public works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built Churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is satirically alluded to in our author’s imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. 2:—

Others were vilely executed, thro’ fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham-breach had done very great mischiefs; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrances of London itself: The proposal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petition’d against and rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a Bridge pass’d thro’ both houses. After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above-mentioned, who would have made it a wooden one: to which our author alludes in these lines,

See the notes on that place. (Pope.)

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT. For John Arbuthnot see Glossary.

Advertisement. Lines 6, 7. Of these papers the former was said to be a joint production of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey; the latter was written by Hervey alone. See Carruthers’ Life of Pope, ch. viii.

Line 1. John Searl, Pope’s body-servant for many years.

Line 8. An artificial grotto, constructed under a road, was one of Pope’s fanciful improvements of his little estate at Twickenham. Twitenham or Twit’nam (line 21) are forms of the name affected by Pope.

Line 13. The Mint, a place to which insolvent debtors retired, to enjoy an illegal protection, which they were there suffered to afford one another, from the persecution of their creditors. (Warburton.)

Line 23. Arthur. Arthur Moore, a prominent politician, father of the James Moore-Smythe whom Pope so often ridiculed.

Line 40. ‘Keep your piece nine years.’

Line 43. Term. The London ‘season.’

Line 51. Pitholeon, the name taken from a foolish poet of Rhodes, who pretended much to Greek. (Pope.)

Line 53. Edmund Curll was a piratical book-seller who did Pope several ill turns, as in publishing some of his private letters (see 113 below), and printing in his name various sorts of rubbish (see 351 below, and Pope’s note).

Line 54. The London Journal favored the Whigs. Pope was very little of a politician, but his leaning was toward the Tories.

Line 60. In the early editions the line read—

Pope’s one attempt at dramatic writing, Three Hours after Marriage, written in connection with Gay and Arbuthnot, was a flat failure. The legitimate fun made of it by Colley Cibber was the source of a feud between them, which ended only in Cibber’s being made the main figure in The Dunciad.

Line 62. Bernard Lintot, after 1712, published much of Pope’s work.

Line 72. Some say his Queen. The story is told by some of his Barber, but by Chaucer of his Queen. See Wife of Bath’s Tale. (Pope.)

Line 88. Alluding to Horace, Ode iii. 3:—

In translating this ode Addison had used the phrase ‘the mighty crack’ (86 above), and Pope had ridiculed him for it.

Line 100. Philips. Ambrose Philips, of whom Bishop Bolter became patron.

Line 101. Sappho. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Line 118. You have an eye. It is remarkable that, amongst these complaints on his infirmities and deformities, he mentions his eye, which was fine and piercing. (Warburton.)

Line 128. I lisped in numbers.

Line 135. Granville. George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdown, known for his poems, most of which he composed very young. (Pope.)

Granville, Mr. Walsh, and Dr. Garth are mentioned in Pope’s first note to the Pastorals as among those who encouraged him in his earliest efforts.

Line 139. Talbot, Somers, Sheffield. These are the persons to whose account the author charges the publication of his first pieces, persons with whom he was conversant (and he adds beloved) at sixteen or seventeen years of age, an early period for such acquaintance. The catalogue might have been made yet more illustrious had he not confined it to that time when he writ the Pastorals and Windsor Forest, on which he passes a sort of censure in the lines following [147–150]. (Pope.)

Line 146. Burnets, etc. Authors of secret and scandalous history. (Pope.)

Line 149. Fanny. Lord Hervey, the Sporus of lines 305–333 below.

Line 151. Gildon. Charles Gildon, a critic who had abused Pope.

Line 153. Dennis. John Dennis, a free-lance in letters, and one of the favorite butts of Pope’s satire. It was he who indirectly caused the difference between Pope and Addison. See Glossary.

Line 164. Slashing Bentleys, etc. Bentley’s edition of Paradise Lost, which appeared in 1732, was at once the last and the least worthy effort of his critical prowess; as to Theobald’s Shakspere, it was an honest and not wholly unsuccessful piece of work, and a better edition than Pope’s own. Bentley’s Milton is better characterized in Imitations of Horace, i. Ep. of ii. Bk. vv. 103–4. (Ward.)

Line 179. The bard whom pilfer’d pastorals renown. Ambrose Philips. Charles Gildon ranked him with Theocritus and Virgil.

Line 190. Tate. Nahum Tate was then poet laureate, ‘the author of the worst alterations of Shakespeare,’ says Professor Craik, ‘the worst version of the Psalms of David, and the worst continuation of a great poem [Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel] extant.’

Lines 193–214. The famous passage on Addison had been published twelve years before the Epistle to Arbuthnot was written. Addison’s name appeared in the earlier version.

Line 218. On wings of winds, etc. Pope credits this line to Hopkins’s paraphrase of Psalm civ.

Line 232. Bufo probably stands for Lord Halifax.

Line 236. And a true Pindar stood without a head. Ridicules the affectation of Antiquaries, who frequently exhibit the headless trunks and terms of statues, for Plato, Homer, Pindar, etc. (Pope.)

Line 248. He help’d to bury, etc. Mr. Dryden, after having lived in exigencies, had a magnificent funeral bestowed upon him by the contribution of several persons of quality. (Pope.)

Line 256. Gay. John Gay (1688–1732), author of the famous Beggar’s Opera, and one of Pope’s best friends. In his last years he was taken excellent care of by the Duke of Queensbury (260, below), and died by no means a pauper.

Line 280. Sir Will or Bubo. See Essay on Man, IV. 278 and note.

Line 299. The Dean and Silver Bell. Pope had been accused of ridiculing, in the Essay on Taste, the furniture and appointments of Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos, where Pope had been received. Pope’s denial of the charge was accepted by the Duke.

Line 305. Sporus is John Lord Hervey, a well-known court favorite. He seems to have been at least harmless. Pope, for some unknown reason, conceived one of his violent antipathies for him; and the following lines, hardly less celebrated than those on Addison, are the result.

Line 350. The tale revived, etc. As that he received subscriptions to Shakespear, that he set his name to Mr. Broome’s verses, etc., which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless repeated in the libels. (Pope.)

Line 351. Th’ imputed trash. This imputed trash, such as profane psalms, court poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his name by Curll and others. (Pope.)

Line 365. Knight of the post corrupt. The so-called Knights of the Post stood about the sheriff’s pillars near the courts, in readiness to swear anything for pay. (Ward.)

Line 371. Friend to his distress. In 1733 Pope wrote a prologue to a play given for the benefit of Dennis, who was then old, blind, and not far from death.

Line 374. Ten years. It was so long after many libels before the author of the Dunciad published that poem, till when he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him. (Pope.)

Line 375. Welsted’s lie. This man had the impudence to tell in print that Mr. P. had occasioned a lady’s death, and to name a person he never heard of. (Pope.)

Line 379. Budgell was charged with forging a will, with profit to himself.

Lines 382–387. Pope has a long note on this passage, in which he goes much into detail to prove the respectability of his parents.

Line 391. Bestia. L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha into a dishonorable peace. (Ward.)

Line 393. Discord in a noble wife. Dryden had married Lady Howard, and Addison the Countess of Warwick.

Line 397. He was a non-juror, and would not take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, or the oath against the Pope. (Bowles.)

Line 417. Dr. Arbuthnot had been the favorite physician of Queen Anne.

SATIRES, EPISTLES AND ODES OF HORACE IMITATED. First Satire, Second Book.

Line 6. Lord Fanny. Lord Hervey.

Line 23. Sir Richard. Sir Richard Blackmore.

Lines 30, 31. Carolina. Queen Caroline. Amelia. Princess Amelia, second daughter of George II.

Line 34. Their Laureate. Colley Cibber.

Line 40. Peter. Peter Walter.

Line 46. Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his hampie. Lord Scarsdale and Charles Dartineuf, famous epicures.

Line 49. Fox. Probably Henry Fox, First Lord Holland. Hockley-hole. There was a noted bear-garden at Hockley-in-Hole. See the Spectator, No 436.

Line 52. Shippen. William Shippen, an outspoken politician and a Jacobite, who was sent to the Tower in 1718. According to Coxe, he used to say of himself and Sir Robert Walpole, ‘Robin and I are two honest men; though he is for King George and I for King James.’ (Ward.)

Line 81. Slander or poison dread. Alluding to a notorious rumor that a Miss Mackenzie had been poisoned by the Countess of Deloraine.

Line 82. Page. Judge Page. See Epilogue to Satires, II. 56.

Line 100. Lee. Nathaniel Lee (1657–1692), a tragic poet, author of The Rival Queens.

Line 129. He whose lightning, etc. Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, who in the year 1705 took Barcelona, and in the winter following, with only 280 horse and 900 foot, enterprised and accomplished the conquest of Valencia. (Pope.)

Line 153. Sir Robert. Walpole.

Second Satire, Second Book.

Mr. Bethel. Hugh Bethel.

Line 25. Oldfield. This eminent glutton ran through a fortune of fifteen hundred pounds a year in the simple luxury of good eating. (Warburton.)

Line 42. Bedford-head. A famous eating-house in Covent Garden.

Line 49. Avidien. Edward Wortley Montagu, the husband of Lady Mary. (Carruthers.)

Line 175. Shades that to Bacon, etc. Gorhambury, near St. Albans, the seat of Lord Bacon, was at the time of his disgrace conveyed by him to his quondam secretary, Sir J. Meantys, whose heir sold it to Sir Harbottle Grimston, whose grandson left it to his nephew (Wm. Lucklyn, who took the name of Grimston), whose second son was in 1719 created Viscount Grimston. This is the ‘booby lord’ to whom Pope refers. (Ward.)

Line 177. Proud Buckingham’s, etc. Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. (Pope.) The estate of Helmsley was purchased by Sir Charles Duncombe, Lord Mayor in 1709, who changed its name to Duncombe Park. (Carruthers.)

First Epistle, First Book.

Line 6. Modest Cibber, etc. Colley Cibber retired from the stage after a histrionic career of more than forty years in 1733; but returned in 1734 and did not make his ‘positively last appearance’ till 1745. (Ward.)

Line 16. You limp, like Blackmore on a Lord Mayor’s horse. The fame of his heavy Poet, however problematical elsewhere, was universally received in the City of London. His versification is here exactly described: stiff and not strong; stately and yet dull, like the sober and slow-paced Animal generally employed to mount the Lord Mayor: and therefore here humorously opposed to Pegasus. (Pope.)

Line 51. Cheselden. In answer to Swift’s inquiry who ‘this Cheselden’ was, Pope informed him that C. was ‘the most noted and most deserving man in the whole profession of chirurgery, and had saved the lives of thousands’ by his skill. There is an amusing letter from Pope to Cheselden in Roscoe’s Life ad ann. 1737; speaking of the cataract to which v. 52 appears to allude. (Ward.)

Line 85. Sir John Barnard.

Line 89. Bug and D—l, etc. The meaning of this line has not been determined.

Line 112. Augustus Schutz. See Glossary.

Line 173. Hale. Dr. Hale of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a physician employed in cases of insanity. (Carruthers.)

Line 177. Guide, Philosopher, and Friend. Lord Bolingbroke. See Essay on Man, IV. 390.

Sixth Epistle, First Book.

The poem is dedicated to William Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. See Glossary.

Line 1. Not to admire, etc.

The translation is, as Pope admits, that of Richard Creech, translator of Homer and Lucretius.

Line 45. Craggs’s. James Craggs’s father had been in a low situation; but by industry and ability, got to be Postmaster-General and agent to the Duke of Marlborough. For James Craggs’s own career, see Glossary.

Line 53. Hyde. Lord Clarendon, great-grandfather of the Lord Cornbury mentioned in line 61 below.

Line 64. Tindal. See Pope’s note on The Dunciad, II. 399.

Line 82. Anstis, whom Pope often mentions, was Garter King of Arms. (Bowles.)

Line 87. Or if three ladies like a luckless play. The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the names of these three Ladies, the unlucky Play, and every other trifling circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our Author’s sense, or the illustration of his poetry; even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been in Mr. Pope’s purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings. (Warburton.) Notwithstanding this remark of Dr. Warburton, I have taken some pains, though indeed in vain, to ascertain who these ladies were, and what the play they patronized. It was once said to be Young’s Busiris. (Warton.)

Line 121. Kinnoul’s lewd cargo, etc. Lords Kinnoul and Tyrawley, two ambassadors noted for wild immorality. (Carruthers.)

Line 126. Wilmot. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. See Glossary.

First Epistle, Second Book.

Line 38. Beastly Skelton. Skelton, Poet Laureate to Henry VIII., a volume of whose verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of ribaldry, obscenity, and scurrilous language. (Pope.) This judgment of Skelton is of course unfair.

Line 40. Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green. A ballad by James I. of Scotland.

Line 42. The Devil. The Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his Poetical Club. (Pope.)

Line 66. Look in Stowe. Stowe’s Annals of England appear to have been first published in 1580. (Ward.)

Line 91. Gammer Gurton. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, according to Pope ‘a piece of very low humour, one of the first printed plays in English, and therefore much valued by some antiquaries.’ The earliest extant edition bears the date 1575, but it was probably first printed at least thirteen years before this.

Line 92. The Careless Husband. By Colley Cibber.

Line 109. Sprat, Carew, Sedley. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, Thomas Carew, and Sir Charles Sedley; all poets of the Restoration.

Line 142. A verse of the Lord Lansdown. (Pope.)

Lines 143–146. In horsemanship—writ romance. The Duke of Newcastle’s book of Horsemanship; the romance of Parthenissa, by the Earl of Orrery; and most of the French romances translated by persons of quality. (Pope.)

Line 153. On each enervate string, etc. The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Davenant, the first opera in England. (Pope.)

Line 182. Ward. A famous Empiric, whose Pill and Drop had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at this time. (Pope.)

Line 197. Peter. Peter Walter.

Line 224. The rights a Court attacked, a poet saved. A reference to Swift’s services as a pamphleteer, particularly as author of the Drapier’s Letters.

Line 289. Van. John Vanbrugh. See Glossary.

Line 290. Astræa. Mrs. Aphra Behn.

Line 293. Poor Pinky. William Pinkethman, a low comedian.

Line 313. From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes. From plays to operas, and from operas to pantomimes. (Warburton.)

Line 319. Old Edward’s armour, etc. A spectacle presenting the Coronation of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn was produced in 1727 to celebrated the coronation of George II. and had a run of forty nights. ‘The playhouses,’ says Pope, ‘vied with each other to represent all the pomp of a coronation. In this noble contention, the armour of one of the Kings of England was borrowed from the Tower, to dress the Champion.’

Line 331. Quin—Oldfield. James Quin and Mrs. Oldfield, the most popular comedians of their age.

Line 355. Merlin’s Cave. A building in the Royal Gardens of Richmond, where is a small but choice collection of books. (Pope.)

Line 372. Dubb’d historians. ‘The office of Historiographer Royal,’ says Ward, ‘was frequently united to that of Poet Laureate.’

Line 382. Great Nassau. William II.

Line 387. Quarles. Francis Quarles, author of the Emblems.

Line 413. This line, according to Carruthers, is quoted from an anonymous poem printed in Tonson’s Miscellany in 1709.

Line 417. Eusden, Philips, Settle. Laurence Eusden, Ambrose Philips, and Elkanah Settle.

Second Epistle, Second Book.

Line 1. Colonel. Colonel Cotterell of Rousham, near Oxford. (Warton.)

Line 4. This lad, sir, is of Blois. A town in Beauce, where the French tongue is spoken in great purity. (Warburton.) It will be recalled that it was to Blois that Addison went to learn French.

Line 24. Sir Godfrey. Sir Godfrey Kneller. (Warburton.)

Line 57. Maudlin’s learned grove. Magdalen College, Oxford University.

Line 70. Ten Monroes. Dr. Monroe, physician to Bedlam Hospital. (Pope.)

Line 87. Oldfield—Dartineuf. Two noted gluttons. See Book II. Satire i. 46.

Line 113. Tooting—Earl’s-court. Two villages within a few miles of London. (Pope.)

Lines 132–135. Murray—Cowper—Talbot. William Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield; William, first Earl Cowper; Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury.

Line 139. Merlin’s Cave. See note on Book II. Epistle 1, 355.

Line 140. Stephen. Stephen Duck.

Line 218. Golden angels. A golden coin given as a fee by those who came to be touched by the royal hand for the Evil. (Warton.)

Line 220. When servile Chaplains cry, etc. The whole of this passage alludes to a dedication of Mr., afterwards Bishop, Kennet to the Duke of Devonshire, to whom he was chaplain. (Burnet.)

Line 240. Heathcote. Sir Gilbert Heathcote.

Line 273. Townshend—Grosvenor. Lord Townshend, Sir Thomas Grosvenor. Lord Townshend is said to have introduced the turnip into England from Germany.

Line 274. Bubb. Bubb Dodington.

Line 277. Oglethorpe. James Edward Oglethorpe.

SATIRES OF DONNE VERSIFIED. Satire II. Line 6. Sappho. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Line 36. Sutton. Sir Robert Sutton, expelled from the House of Commons on account of his share in the frauds of the company called the Charitable Corporation. (Carruthers.)

Line 80. Paul Benfield, a parliamentary financier, is suggested by Carruthers as the person here meant.

Satire IV.

Line 30. Sloane—Woodward. Sir Hans Sloane, a natural historian; and John Woodward, founder of a chair of Geology in Cambridge University.

Line 73. Hoadley. Bishop Hoadley, here sarcastically referred to on account of his loyalty to the House of Hanover. (Ward.)

Line 95. Aretine. The Florentine poet who composed certain ill-favored sonnets to illustrate some designs of Giulio Romano.

Line 135. Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowes. Tudor chroniclers.

Line 177. Umbra. Bubb Dodington.

Line 178. Fannius. Lord Hervey, whom Pope elsewhere calls ‘Lord Fanny.’

Line 206. Court in Wax. A famous show of the Court of France, in wax-work. (Pope.)

Line 213. At Fig’s, at White’s. White’s was a noted gaming-house; Fig’s, a prize-fighter’s Academy, where the young nobility received instruction in those days. It was also customary for the nobility and gentry to visit the condemned criminals in Newgate. (Pope).

Line 274. Hung with deadly sins. The room hung with old tapestry, representing the seven deadly sins. (Pope.)

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES. Dialogue I.

Lines 1–2. These two lines are from Horace; and the only two lines that are so in the whole poem; being meant to be a handle to that which follows in the character of an impertinent Censurer, ’T is all from Horace, etc. (Pope.)

Line 13. Sir Billy. Sir William Yonge.

Line 14. Huggins. Formerly jailer of the Fleet prison; enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled. (Pope.)

Line 24. Patriots. This appellation was generally given to those in opposition to the court. Though some of them (which our author hints at) had views too mean and interested to deserve that name. (Pope.)

Line 26. The great man. A phrase by common use appropriated to the First Minister. (Pope.)

Line 39. A Joke on Jekyl. Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity. He sometimes voted against the Court, which drew upon him the laugh here described of ONE who bestowed it equally upon Religion and Honesty. He died a few months after the publication of this poem. (Pope.)

Line 51. Sejanus, Wolsey. The one the wicked minister of Tiberius; the other, of Henry VIII. The writers against the Court usually bestowed these and other odious names on the Minister, without distinction, and in the most injurious manner. See Dial. II. v. 137. (Pope.)

Fleury. Cardinal: and Minister to Louis XV. It was a Patriot-fashion, at that time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty. (Pope.)

Line 66. Henley—Osborne. See them in their places in The Dunciad. (Pope.)

Line 68. Sir William Yonge, not, as Bowles conjectures to be possible, Dr. Edward Young, author of The Night Thoughts, although to the latter Dodington (Bubo) was a constant friend. (Ward.)

Line 69. The gracious Dew. Alludes to some court sermons, and florid panegyrical speeches; particularly one very full of puerilities and flatteries; which afterwards got into an address in the same pretty style; and was lastly served up in an Epitaph, between Latin and English, published by its author. (Pope.) An ‘Epitaph’ on Queen Caroline was written by Lord Hervey, and an address moved in the House of Commons (the Senate) on the occasion by H. Fox. (Carruthers.)

Line 75. Middleton and Bland. Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of a Life of Cicero. Dr. Bland, of Eton, according to Burnet a very bad writer.

Line 78. The ‘Nation’s Sense.’ Warburton says this was a cant phrase of the time.

Line 80. Carolina. Queen Caroline, died in 1737.

Line 92. Selkirk—Delaware. Pope’s note would seem to apply to the names here suggested: ‘A title [was] given that lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber to King William; he was so to George I.; he was so to George II. This lord was very skilful in all the forms of the House, in which he discharged himself with great gravity.’

Line 120. Japhet. Japhet Crook.

Line 121. Peter. Peter Walter.

Line 123. If Blount. Author of an impious and foolish book called The Oracles of Reason, who being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died. (Pope.)

Line 124. Passeran! Author of another book of the same stamp, called A Philosophical Discourse on Death, being a defence of suicide. He was a nobleman of Piedmont, banished from his country for his impieties, and lived in the utmost misery, yet feared to practise his own precepts; and at last died a penitent. (Warburton.)

Line 125. But shall a Printer, etc. A fact that happened in London a few years past. The unhappy man left behind him a paper justifying his action by the reasonings of some of these authors. (Pope.)

Line 129. This calls the Church to deprecate our Sin. Alluding to the forms of prayer, composed in the times of public calamity; where the fault is generally laid upon the People. (Warburton.)

Dialogue II.

Line 11. Ev’n Guthry. The Ordinary of Newgate, who publishes the memoirs of the Malefactors, and is often prevailed upon to be so tender of their reputation, as to set down no more than the initials of their name. (Pope.)

Line 39. Wretched Wild. Jonathan Wild, a famous thief, and thief-impeacher, who was at last caught in his own train, and hanged. (Pope.)

Line 57. Ev’n Peter trembles only for his ears. Peter [Walter] had, the year before this, narrowly escaped the Pillory for forgery: and got off with a severe rebuke only from the bench. (Pope.)

Line 66. Scarb’row. Earl of, and Knight of the Garter, whose personal attachment to the king appeared from his steady adherence to the royal interest, after his resignation of his great employment of Master of the Horse; and whose known honour and virtue made him esteemed by all parties. (Pope.) He committed suicide in a fit of melancholy in 1740; and was mourned by Lord Chesterfield as ‘the best man he ever knew, and the dearest friend he ever had.’ (Ward.)

Line 67. Esher’s peaceful Grove. The house and gardens of Esher in Surrey, belonging to the Honourable Mr. Pelham, Brother of the Duke of Newcastle. The author could not have given a more amiable idea of his Character than in comparing him to Mr. Craggs. (Pope.)

Line 88. Wyndham. Sir William Wyndham.

Line 99. The Man of Ross. See Moral Essays, Epistle III. lines 240–290. My Lord Mayor. Sir John Barnard.

Line 132. St. John. Lord Bolingbroke.

Line 133. Sir Roberts. Sir Robert Walpole.

Line 158. Sherlock, Dr. William, Dean of St. Paul’s, and the bête noire of the non-jurors in the reign of William III. (Ward.)

Line 160. The bard. Bubb Dodington, who wrote a poem to Sir Robert Walpole from which the following line is quoted.

Line 164. The Priest, etc. Pope disclaims any allusion to a particular priest, but the passage is understood to refer to Dr. Alured Clarke, who wrote a fulsome panegyric to Queen Caroline.

Line 166. The florid youth. Lord Hervey. Alluding to his painting himself. (Bowles.)

Lines 185–186. Japhet—Chartres. See the epistle to Lord Bathurst. (Pope.)

Line 222. Cobwebs. Weak and light sophistry against virtue and honour. Thin colours over vice, as unable to hide the light of truth, as cobwebs to shade the sun. (Pope.)

Line 228. When black Ambition, etc. The course of Cromwell in the civil war of England; (line 229), of Louis XIV. in his conquest of the Low Countries. (Pope.)

Line 231. Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star. See his Ode on Namur; where (to use his own words) ‘il a fait un Astre de la Plume blanche que le Roy porte ordinairement à son chapeau, et qui est en effet une espèce de Comète, fatale à nos ennemis.’ (Pope.)

Line 236. Anstis. The chief Herald at Arms. It is the custom, at the funeral of great peers, to cast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour. (Pope.)

Line 238. Stair. John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, Knight of the Thistle; served in all the wars under the Duke of Marlborough; and afterwards as Ambassador in France. (Pope.) Bennet, who supplies the blanks in v. 239 by the names of Kent and Grafton, has ‘some notion that Lord Mordington kept a gaming-house.’ (Ward.)

Lines 240, 241. Hough—Digby. Dr. John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby. The one an assertor of the Church of England in opposition to the false measures of King James II. The other as firmly attached to the cause of that King. Both acting out of principle, and equally men of honour and virtue. (Pope.)

Line 255. Ver. 255 in the MS.

This was the last poem of the kind printed by our author, with a resolution to publish no more; but to enter thus, in the most plain and solemn manner he could, a sort of PROTEST against that insuperable corruption and depravity of manners, which he had been so unhappy as to live to see. Could he have hoped to have amended any, he had continued those attacks; but bad men were grown so shameless and so powerful, that Ridicule was become as unsafe as it was ineffectual. The Poem raised him, as he knew it would, some enemies; but he had reason to be satisfied with the approbation of good men, and the testimony of his own conscience. (Pope.)

BOOK SECOND, SIXTH SATIRE. IMITATED AFTER SWIFT.

Line 84. October next it will be four. Swift is recalling the length of his service of the Tory Party.

Line 85. Harley. Earl of Oxford.

Line 125. At this point Pope’s part in the imitation begins.

THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

Line 67. Child. Sir Francis Child, the banker. (Bowles.)

THE FIRST ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK OF HORACE.

Line 8. Number five. The number of Murray’s lodgings in King’s Bench Walk.

THE DUNCIAD. Book I.

Line 1. The Mighty Mother, etc., in the first Edd. it was thus:—

Line 2. The Smithfield Muses. Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agreeable only to the taste of the Rabble, were, by the Hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the Theatres of Covent-garden, Lincolns-inn-fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the Court and Town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II. See Book III. (Pope.)

Line 30. Monroe. Physician to Bedlam Hospital.

Line 31. His famed father. Caius Cassius Cibber, father of Colley Cibber; a sculptor in a small way. ‘The two statues of the lunatics over the gate of Bedlam Hospital were done by him,’ says Pope, ‘and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.’

Line 40. Lintot’s rubric post. Lintot, according to Pope, ‘usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.’

Line 41. Hence hymning Tyburn’s elegiac lines. It is an ancient English custom for the Malefactors to sing a Psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print Elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before. (Pope.)

Line 42. Magazines. The common name of those upstart collections in prose and verse, in which, at some times,—

at others, dead-born Scandal has its monthly funeral, where Dulness assumes all the various shapes of Folly to draw in and cajole the Rabble. The eruption of every miserable Scribbler; the scum of every dirty News-paper; or Fragments of Fragments, picked up from every Dunghill, under the title of Papers, Essays, Reflections, Confutations, Queries, Verses, Songs, Epigrams, Riddles, etc., equally the disgrace of human Wit, Morality, Decency, and Common Sense. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 44. New-year Odes. Made by the Poet Laureate for the time being, to be sung at Court on every New-year’s day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments. (Pope.)

Line 57. Jacob. Jacob Tonson.

Line 63. Clenches. Puns. Pope has a long note citing a punning passage from Dennis aimed at himself.

Line 86. In the former Editions,—

Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720. The Procession of a Lord Mayor is made partly by land, and partly by water.—Cimon, the famous Athenian General, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and Barbarians. (Pope.)

Line 98. Heywood. John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII. (Pope.)

Line 103. Prynne, William, sentenced in 1633 to a fine, the pillory, and imprisonment for his Histriomastix. Defoe was similarly punished for his Shortest Way with the Dissenters.

Line 103. Daniel. Daniel Defoe.

Line 104. Eusden. Laurence Eusden, Poet Laureate before Cibber.

Line 108. Bayes’s. The name of Theobald (Tibbald) stood here originally. This of course stands for Cibber.

Line 126. Sooterkins. False births. (Ward.)

Line 134. Hapless Shakespear, etc. It is not to be doubted but Bays was a subscriber to Tibbald’s Shakespear. He was frequently liberal this way; and, as he tells us, ‘subscribed to Mr. Pope’s Homer, out of pure Generosity and Civility; but when Mr. Pope did so to his Nonjuror, he concluded it could be nothing but a joke.’ Letter to Mr. P., p. 24.

This Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakespear, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist’s Journals, June 8, ‘That to expose any Errors in it was impracticable.’ And in another, April 27, ‘That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other Editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all.’ (Pope.)

Line 141. Ogilby. Originally dancing master, then poet and printer. Author of a great many books which Pope ridicules in a note.

Line 142. Newcastle. The Duchess of Newcastle, one of the most copious of seventeenth-century writers.

Line 146. Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome. The Poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our Hero in three capacities: 1. Settle was his brother Laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for the City instead of the Court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as Shows, Birth-days, etc. 2. Banks was his Rival in Tragedy (tho’ more successful) in one of his Tragedies,.the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great are dead and gone. These he drest in a sort of Beggar’s Velvet, or a happy Mixture of the thick Fustian and thin Prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter. 3. Broome was a serving-man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a Comedy from his Betters, or from some cast scenes of his Master, not entirely contemptible. (Pope.)

Line 153. De Lyra. Or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472. (Pope.)

Line 154. Philemon. Philemon Holland, Doctor in Physic. ‘He translated so many books that a man would think he had done nothing else.’ Winstanley. (Pope.)

Lines 180, 181. As, forced from wind-guns, etc. Adapted from lines 17, 18 of the early verses, To the Author of Successio.

Line 207. Ridpath—Mist. George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying-post; Nathaniel Mist, of a famous Tory Journal. (Pope.)

Line 214. Gazetteers. A band of ministerial writers, hired at the price mentioned in the note on Book II. ver. 316, who, on the very day their patron quitted his post, laid down their paper, and declared they would never more meddle in Politics. (Pope.)

Line 215. Ralph. James Ralph. See III. 163 below.

Line 221. Hockley-hole. See Imitations of Horace, Book III. Sat. i. 49, and note.

Line 232. Ward. Edward Ward.

Lines 249–255. The works referred to here are Colley Cibber’s.

Line 257. Thulé. A fragmentary poem by Ambrose Philips,

Line 289. A heideggre. A strange bird from Switzerland, and not (as some have supposed) the name of an eminent person. (Pope.) The allusion is of course to the ‘eminent person,’ the German Heidegger, who managed English opera.

Line 296. Withers. ‘George Withers was a great pretender to poetical zeal against the vices of the times, and abused the greatest personages in power, which brought upon him frequent correction. The Marshalsea and Newgate were no strangers to him.’ Winstanley. (Pope.)

Gildon. Charles Gildon, a writer of criticisms and libels of the last age, bred at St. Omer’s with the Jesuits; but renouncing popery, he published Blount’s books against the divinity of Christ, the Oracles of Reason, etc. He signalized himself as a critic, having written some very bad Plays; abused Mr. P. very scandalously in an anonymous pamphlet of the Life of Mr. Wycherley, printed by Curll; in another called the New Rehearsal, printed in 1714; in a third, entitled the Complete Art of English Poetry, in two volumes; and others. (Pope.) See note to Epistle to Arbuthnot, line 151.

Line 297. Howard. Hon. Edward Howard, author of the British Princes, and a great number of wonderful pieces, celebrated by the late Earls of Dorset and Rochester, Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Waller, etc. (Pope.)

Line 300. Under Archer’s Wing. Under cover of a special license given to a member of the king’s household, a gambling establishment was conducted in the royal palace.

Line 323. Needham. Mother Needham, a notorious procuress.

Line 325. The Devil. The Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, where these Odes are usually rehearsed before they are performed at court.

Book II.

Line 2. Henley’s gilt tub. The pulpit of a Dissenter is usually called a Tub; but that of Mr. Orator Henley was covered with velvet, and adorned with gold. He had also a fair altar, and over it this extraordinary inscription, The Primitive Eucharist. See the history of this person, Book III. ver. 199. (Pope.)

Or Fleckno’s Irish throne. Richard Fleckno was an Irish priest, but had laid aside (as himself expressed it) the mechanic part of priesthood. He printed some plays, poems, letters, and travels. I doubt not our Author took occasion to mention him in respect to the poem of Mr. Dryden, to which this bears some resemblance, though of a character more different from it than that of the Æneid from the Iliad, or the Lutrin of Boileau from the Défait de Bouts Rimées of Sarazin. (Pope.)

Line 3. Or that whereon her Curlls, etc. An allusion to an experience of Edmund Curll’s in the pillory.

Line 15. Querno. Camillo Querno, a would-be poet of Apulia, introduced as a buffoon to Leo X. and given in return for his verses a mock coronation.

Line 68. Jacob. Jacob Lintot.

Line 70. Corinna. Supposed to refer to Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, whom Pope accuses of having sold some private correspondence of his to Curll.

Line 82. The Bible, Curll’s sign; the cross-keys, Lintot’s. (Pope.)

Line 93. Cloacina. The Roman Goddess of the sewers. (Pope.)

Line 125. Mears, Warner, Wilkins. Book-sellers, and printers of much anonymous stuff. (Pope.)

Line 126. Breval, Bond, Bezaleel [Bezaleel Morris]. Three small authors of the day.

Line 138. Cook shall be Prior. The man here specified writ a thing called The Battle of Poets, in which Philips and Welsted were the Heroes, and Swift and Pope utterly routed. He also published some malevolent things in the British, London, and Daily Journals: and at the same time wrote letters to Mr. Pope, protesting his innocence. His chief work was a translation of Hesiod, to which Theobald writ notes and half notes, which he carefully owned. (Pope.)

Concanen. See note to line 299 below.

Lines 149, 150. Tutchin—Ridpath, Roper. London editors of The Observator, The Flying Post, and The Post-boy, whom Pope, in long notes, accuses of scandalous practices.

Line 157. Eliza. Eliza Hagwood, authoress of those most scandalous books called The Court of Carimania, and The New Utopia. (Pope.)

Line 160. Kirkall. The name of an Engraver. Some of this lady’s works were printed … with her picture thus dressed up before them. (Pope.)

Line 205. Bentley his mouth, etc. Not spoken of the famous Dr. Richard Bentley, but of one Tho. Bentley, a small critic, who aped his uncle in a little Horace. (Pope.)

Line 226. Thunder rumbling from the mustard bowl. The old way of making Thunder and Mustard were the same; but since, it is more advantageously performed by troughs of wood with stops in them. (Pope.)

Line 270. (As morning prayer and flagellation end.) It is between eleven and twelve in the morning, after church service, that the criminals are whipt in Bridewell.—This is to mark punctually the time of the day: Homer does it by the circumstance of the Judges rising from court, or of the Labourer’s dinner; our author by one very proper both to the Persons and the Scene of his poem, which we may remember commenced in the evening of the Lord-mayor’s day: The first book passed in that night; the next morning the games begin in the Strand, thence along Fleet-street (places inhabited by Booksellers); then they proceed by Bridewell toward Fleet-ditch, and lastly thro’ Ludgate to the City and the Temple of the Goddess. (Pope.)

Line 291. Smedley. Jonathan, editor of the Whitehall Journal, and author of an attack on Pope and Swift called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana.

Line 299. Concanen. Matthew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatist. In a pamphlet, called a Supplement to the Profund, he dealt very unfairly with our Poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome’s verses (for which he might indeed seem in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did) but those of the duke of Buckingham and others. To this rare piece somebody humorously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. He was since a hired scribbler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billings-gate against the lord Bolingbroke, and others; after which this man was surprisingly promoted to administer Justice and Law in Jamaica. (Pope.)

Line 400. ‘Christ’s no kingdom here.’ This alludes to a series of sermons preached by Bishop Hoadley before George I.

Line 411. Centlivre. Mrs. Susanna Centlivre, wife to Mr. Centlivre, Yeoman of the Mouth to his Majesty. She writ many Plays, and a Song (says Mr. Jacob) before she was seven years old. She also writ a Ballad against Mr. Pope’s Homer before he began it. (Pope.)

Line 412. Motteux. Peter Anthony Motteux, the excellent translator of Don Quixote, and author of a number of forgotten dramatic pieces. Dryden addressed a complimentary Epistle to him. He died in 1718. (Carruthers.)

Line 413. Boyer the State, and Law the Stage gave o’er. A. Boyer, a voluminous compiler of Annals, Political Collections, &c.—William Law, A. M. wrote with great zeal against the Stage; Mr. Dennis answered with as great. Their books were printed in 1726. (Pope.)

Line 414. Morgan. A man of some learning, and uncommon acuteness, with a strong disposition to Satire, which very often degenerated into scurrility. His most celebrated work is the Moral Philosopher, first published in the year 1737. (Bowles.)

Mandeville. Bernard de Mandeville was born in Holland, in 1670, and after residing in England during the latter half of his life, died in 1733. (Ward.)

Line 415. Norton, from Daniel, etc. Norton De Foe.

Book III.

Line 19. Taylor. John Taylor, a Thames waterman and poet under Charles I. and James I.

Line 21. Benlowes. A country gentleman, famous for his own bad poetry, and for patronizing bad poets, as may be seen from many Dedications of Quarles and others to him. Some of these anagram’d his name, Benlowes into Benevolus: to verify which he spent his whole estate upon them. (Pope.)

Line 22. Shadwell nods, the poppy, etc. Shadwell [hero of MacFlecknoe] took opium for many years, and died of too large a dose, in the year 1692. (Pope.)

Line 24. Mr. Dennis warmly contends, that Bavius was no inconsiderable author; nay, that ‘He and Mævius had (even in Augustus’s days) a very formidable party at Rome, who thought them much superior to Virgil and Horace: for (saith he) I cannot believe they would have fixed that eternal brand upon they would have fixed that eternal brand upon them, if they had not been coxcombs in more than ordinary credit.’ Rem. on Pr.Arthur, part II. c. 1. An argument which, if this poem should last, will conduce to the honour of the gentlemen of The Dunciad. (Pope.)

Line 28. Browne and Mears. Booksellers, and printers for anybody. (Pope.)

Line 34. Ward in pillory. John Ward of Hackney, Esq., member of Parliament, being convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House, and then sentenced to the pillory on the 17th of February, 1727. (Pope.)

Line 96. The soil that arts and infant letters bore. Phœnicia, Syria, etc., where letters are said to have been invented. In these countries Mahomet began his conquests. (Pope.)

Line 104. Bacon. Roger Bacon.

Line 150. Jacob, the scourge of grammar. Giles Jacob, author of a Lives of the Poets, in which sufficiently obscure book he had abused Gay.

Lines 154. Goode. An ill-natured critic, who writ a satire on our author, called The Mock Æsop, and many anonymous libels in newspapers for hire. (Pope.)

Line 165. Ralph. James Ralph.

Line 168. Morris. Bezaleel Morris. See Book II. 126.

Line 199. Henley stands, etc. J. Henley the Orator; he preached on the Sundays upon Theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all other sciences. Each auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years against the greatest persons, and occasionally did our Author that honour. After having stood some Prosecutions, he turned his rhetoric to buffoonery upon all publick and private occurrences. This man had an hundred pounds a year given him for the secret service of a weekly paper of unintelligible nonsense, called the Hyp-Doctor. (Pope.)

Line 204. Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson. Bishops of Salisbury, Chichester, and London; whose sermons and pastoral letters did honour to their country as well as stations. (Pope.)

Line 212. Woolston. Thomas. An impious madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the miracles of the Gospel. (Pope.)

Line 232. When Goodman prophesied. One Goodman had prophesied that Cibber would be a good actor, and Cibber had boasted of it.

Line 233. A sable sorcerer. Dr. Faustus.

Line 248. One vast egg. Pope says that in one of the absurd farces of the period, Harlequin is hatched upon the stage out of a large egg.

Line 282. Annual trophies, on the Lord Mayor’s day; monthly wars, in the artillery ground. (Pope.)

Line 305. Polypheme. A translation of the Italian opera Polifemo.

Lines 308, 309. Faustus—Pluto. Names of miserable farces which it was the custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion of the audience. (Pope.)

Line 310. The Mourning Bride. By Congreve.

Line 312. Insure it but from fire. In Tibbald’s farce of Proserpine, a corn-field was set on fire: whereupon the other play-house had a barn burnt down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled each other in sharing the burnings of hell-fire, in Dr. Faustus. (Pope.)

Line 313. Another Æschylus appears. It is reported of Æschylus that when his Tragedy of the Furies was acted, the audience were so terrified that the children fell into fits. (Pope.)

Line 315. Like Semele’s. See Ovid, Met. iii. (Pope.)

Line 325. On poets’ tombs see Benson’s titles writ! W—m Benson (Surveyor of the Buildings to his Majesty King George I.) gave in a report to the Lords, that their House and the Painted-chamber adjoining were in immediate danger of falling. Whereupon the Lords met in a committee to appoint some other place to sit in, while the House should be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who had been Architect to the Crown for above fifty years, who built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St. Paul’s, and lived to finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of near ninety years. (Pope.)

Line 328. While Jones’ and Boyle’s united labours fall. At the time when this poem was written, the banqueting-house at Whitehall, the church and piazza of Covent-garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerest-house, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected, as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Covent-garden church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the earl of Burlington and [Richard Boyle]; who, at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great Master and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of Architecture in this kingdom. (Pope.)

Book IV. This Book may properly be distinguished from the former, by the name of the GREATER DUNCIAD, not so indeed in size, but in subject; and so far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this work in any wise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our Poet; of which I am much more certain than that the Iliad itself was the work of Solomon, or the Batrachomuomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed. ‘BENTLEY.’ (Pope.)

Line 15. A new world. In allusion to the Epicurean opinion, that from the Dissolution of the natural World into Night and Chaos a new one should arise; this the Poet alluding to, in the Production of a new moral World, makes it partake of its original Principles. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 21. Beneath her footstool, etc. We are next presented with the pictures of those whom the Goddess leads in captivity. Science is only depressed and confined so as to be rendered useless; but Wit or Genius, as a more dangerous and active enemy, punished, or driven away: Dulness being often reconciled in some degree with learning, but never upon any terms with wit. And accordingly it will be seen that she admits something like each Science, as Casuistry, Sophistry, etc., but nothing like Wit, Opera alone supplying its place. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 30. Gives her Page the word. There was a Judge of this name, always ready to hang any Man that came before him, of which he was suffered to give a hundred miserable examples during a long life, even to his dotage. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 31. Mad Mathesis. Alluding to the strange Conclusions some Mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real Quantity of Matter, the Reality of Space, etc. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 36. Watch’d both by envy’s and by flatr’ry’s eye. One of the misfortunes falling on Authors from the act for subjecting plays to the power of a Licenser, being the false representations to which they were exposed, from such as either gratify’d their envy to merit, or made their court to greatness, by perverting general reflections against Vice into libels on particular Persons. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 45. A harlot form. Italian Opera.

Line 110. Benson. See Book III. 325 ante, and note. Benson published several editions of Arthur Johnston’s version of the Psalms.

Line 113. The decent knight. Sir Thomas Hanmer, who in 1744 published an edition of Shakespeare.

Line 131. An alderman shall sit. Alluding to the monument erected for Butler by Alderman Barber.

Line 144. Winton. Winchester.

Line 151. The Samian letter. The letter Y, used by Pythagoras as an emblem of the different words of Virtue and Vice: ‘Et tibi quae Samios diduxit litera ramos.’ Persius. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 166. Yonder house or hall. Westminster Hall and the House of Commons. (Pope.)

Line 174. That masterpiece of man. Viz., an epigram. The famous Dr. South declared a perfect epigram to be as difficult a performance as an Epic poem. And the critics say, ‘An Epic poem is the greatest work human nature is capable of.’ (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 194. Tho’ Christ Church, etc. Warburton gives a note for which Pope is doubtless responsible, accounting for the bracketing of this line on the score of its probable spuriousness, and signing the name ‘Bentley.’

Line 196. Still expelling Locke. In the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the University of Oxford to censure Mr. Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding, and to forbid the reading it. See his Letters in the last Edit. (Pope.) But he was never expelled, only deprived of his studentship at Christ-Church; and this on the ground of political suspicions, before he had written his great Essay. (Ward.)

Line 198. Crousaz—Burgersdyck. According to Dugald Stewart, Pope was in error in placing Crousaz, whose philosophy was founded upon the method of Locke, with Burgersdyck, an Aristotelian.

Line 199. The streams. The river Cam, running by the walls of these Colleges, which are particularly famous for their skill in Disputation. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 202. Sleeps in port. Viz. ‘now retired into harbour, after the tempests that had long agitated his society.’ SO SCRIBLERUS. But the learned Scipio Maffei understands it of a certain wine called Port, from Oporto, a city of Portugal, of which this Professor invited him to drink abundantly. SCIP. MAFF. De Compotationibus Academicis. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 206. Walker. John Walker, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, while Bentley was Master. (Carruthers.)

Line 212. This refers to Bentley’s editions of Horace and Paradise Lost.

Line 218. Stands our Digamma. Alludes to the boasted restoration of the Æolic Digamma, in his [Bentley’s] long projected edition of Homer.

Line 220. Me or te. Whether at the end of the first Ode of Horace, the reading would be, Me doctarum hederae, or Te doctarum hederae.

Line 223. Friend—Alsop. Dr. Robert Friend, master of Westminster School; Dr. Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the Horatian style. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 237. Kuster, Burman, Wasse. Three contemporary German scholars and editors of merit.

Lines 245–246. Barrow—Atterbury. Isaac Barrow, Master of Trinity; Francis Atterbury, Dean of Christ Church, both great geniuses and eloquent preachers. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 326. Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber. Three very eminent persons, all Managers of Plays; who, tho’ not Governors by profession, had, each in his way, concerned themselves in the education of youth: and regulated their wits, their morals, or their finances, at that period of their age which is the most important, their entrance into the polite world. Of the last of these, and his Talents for this end, see Book I. ver. 199, &c. (Pope and Warburton.) Fleetwood was patentee of Drury-Lane Theatre from 1734 to 1745; it was the attempted secession of his actors in 1743 which gave rise to the famous quarrel of Macklin with Garrick. (Ward.)

Line 371. Mummius. This name is not merely an allusion to the Mummies he was so fond of, but probably referred to the Roman General of that name, who burned Corinth, and committed the curious Statues to the captain of a ship, assuring him, ‘that if any were lost or broken, he should procure others to be made in their stead:’ by which it should seem (whatever may be pretended) that Mummius was no Virtuoso. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 394. Douglas. A Physician of great Learning and no less Taste; above all curious in what related to Horace, of whom he collected every edition, translation, and comment, to the number of several hundred volumes. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 492. Silenus. By Silenus, says Warton, Pope means ‘Thomas Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, who published the Independent Whig, and obtained a place under government.’

Line 511. K[ent] and B—. K— probably stands for the Duke of Kent; but the next name is doubtful from the wide choice possible.

Line 512. Wharton. Philip, Duke of Wharton.

Line 545. Considerable doubt attaches to the names here hinted at; though four of them may be Carteret, Hervey, Pulteney, and King.

Line 556. Seve and verdeur. French terms relating to wines, which signify their flavour and poignancy. (Pope.)

Line 560. Bladen—Hays. Names of Gamesters. Bladen is a black man. Robert Knight, Cashier of the South-Sea Company, who fled from England in 1720 (afterwards pardoned in 1742). These lived with the utmost magnificence at Paris, and kept open Tables frequented by persons of the first Quality of England, and even by Princes of the Blood of France. (Pope and Warburton.)

Line 576. A Gregorian, one a Gormogon. A sort of Lay-brothers, Slips from the Root of the Free-Masons. (Pope and Warburton.) ‘Gregorians’ are mentioned as ‘a convivial sect,’ and ‘a kind of Masons, but without their sign,’ in Crabbe’s Borough, Letter x. (Ward.)

Line 578. Pope refused this degree when offered to him on a visit undertaken to Oxford with Warburton, because the University would not confer the degree of D. D. upon Warburton, to whom some of its members had proposed it. (Roscoe.)

Line 608. Gilbert. Archbishop of York.

Line 629. She comes! she comes! etc. Here the Muse, like Jove’s Eagle, after a sudden stoop at ignoble game, soareth again to the skies. As Prophecy hath ever been one of the chief provinces of Poesy, our Poet here foretells from what we feel, what we are to fear; and, in the style of other prophets, hath used the future tense for the preterite: since what he says shall be, is already to be seen, in the writings of some even of our most adored authors, in Divinity, Philosophy, Physics, Metaphysics, &c. who are too good indeed to be named in such company. (Pope.)