'He that loves a rosy cheek;' to the latter, Ah, Chloris, could I now but sit, As unconcern'd.

119-138. If I but ask, etc. Pope's Edition of Shakespeare (1731) had been severely criticised by Theobald. Betterton (d. 1710)

- and

was for many years the leading actor of the English stage, this in spite of his clumsy figure. Booth; see line 334. A muster roll of names. 'An absurd custom of several actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere proper names of Greeks and Romans, which (as they call it) fill the mouth of the player.' — Pope. Merlin;

139-154.

Him the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens ;
The people called him Wizard.

Tennyson. Merlin and Vivian, 22-26.

These lines sketch the growth of taste in England from the time of Charles restored (1660). Even in Horace's Epistle the connection between the different parts of the argument (if so it may be called) is extremely loose; in Pope this connection is often conspicuous only by absence. All, by the King's example, etc. verse of the Lord Lansdowne.' — Pope. Newmarket (near Cambridge); famous for its horse-races. It was a favorite place of resort for Charles the Second.

6

A

Lely; Sir Peter Lely (d. 1680) they taught the note to

painted many of the Court beauties. pant. The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Davenant, the first opera sung in England [1656].' - Pope.

155-160. These lines have no logical connection either with what precedes or with what follows.

161-180. The good old times, when nobody wrote, contrasted with these degenerate days, when everybody writes.

realizes that

Ward.

'A

181-188. Everybody — except the would-be author he must learn his trade before he can practise it. famous empiric, whose pill and drops had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at that time.'- Pope. Radcliff's Doctors. The Radcliff (Medical) Scholarship at Oxford permits the holders to spend half their time in study in parts beyond sea.' Ripley. See note on Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, line 18.

189-200. In spite of his mania for writing, the author is a harmless creature. the Folly; that is the folly of writing.

Peter;

Peter Walter (according to Bowles) who cheated Mr. George Pitt when collecting his rents.

201-240. A commendation of poets as useful members of society. Roscommon. The Earl of Roscommon (d. 1684) was a friend of Dryden's. He translated the Ars Poetica of Horace and wrote an Essay on Translated Verse. Pope speaks of him in the Essay on Criticism (725-728) as

not more learned than good,

With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;

To him the Art of Greece and Rome was known,
And every author's merit but his own.

Swift. See Brewer, articles Drapier's Letters,' 'Wood's Halfpence.' Swift's life in Dublin was worthy the splendid eulogium his friend here bestows upon it. Hopkins and Sternhold. The Hopkins and Sternhold version of the Psalms was published with the Book of Common Prayer in 1562. The mention of them as poets is a joke that can be appreciated only by him whose youthful spirit has been tried by the attempts of these worthy creatures to improve upon the Hebrew bards. Campbell admirably says of them that, 'with the best intentions and worse taste [they] degraded the spirit of Hebrew psalmody by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime.'

241-262. This account of the origin and growth of satiric verse is historically true of Rome, but not of England. English satire is not, like Latin satire, indigenous, but is formed upon foreign models. The literary ancestor of Dryden is Juvenal.

263-266. England conquered and made France captive but once - under Henry V. in 1420 (Treaty of Troyes). This conquest had no such effect on English literature as is here described. If Pope refers to the victories of Marlborough (1702−9), he places too late the date at which French influences began to affect English literature; such influences are easily visible during the first decade after the Restoration (1660).

Waller (d. 1687)

267-281. The Progress of English Poetry. enjoyed a reputation among his contemporaries that posterity has failed to endorse. He was the first 17th Century poet to employ the heroic couplet as his ordinary means of expression; Dryden acknowledges that he learned much of the art of versification from him. correctness. De Quincey's elaborate examination into Pope's 'correctness,' seems to follow a false scent and to lead to no satisfactory results. A modern scholar who studies Pope carefully and sympathetically, can hardly fail to agree with Mr. Courthope that the 'correctness' at which Pope aimed was ' accuracy of expression, propriety of design and justice of

thought and taste.' Racine (d. 1699), the greatest of French tragic writers. Pope's exact is not an exact characterization. Realistic' is probably what he means. Of this Realism we have good examples in Racine's Iphigénie and in his Phèdre.

Corneille (d. 1684), the father of French tragedy; his noble fire burns brightest in his Cinna and in his Horace. Otway (d. 1685), the only great tragic writer of the Restoration period. His Venice Preserved is hardly inferior in pathos to Othello. fluent Shakespear. I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespear, that, in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted out a thousand!”'. - Ben Jonson. Copious Dryden. Of Dryden's twenty-seven plays, twenty could easily be spared. 282-303. Judgments on the Comedy-Writers of Pope's day. Congreve; see notes on Dryden's Epistle to Congreve. If you compare Witwoud in Congreve's Way of the World with Touchstone in As You Like It, or with the Clown in Twelfth Night, you will see the difference between a Fool who merely displays the author's wit and one who is as thoroughly human as any other character in the play. pert, low dialogue. This criticism does injustice to the sprightly and often not unrefined dialogue of Farquhar's later and better work — The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux' Stratagem (1707). Pope's only play, Three Hours After Marriage, failed dismally; from that fatal hour he seldom missed a chance to sneer at the dramatists of his own day. Van Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim, and author of ten comedies. The phrase wants grace' seems to condemn, not unjustly, his lack of moral fibre. Some of Vanbrugh's plays are admirably constructed, so far as plot and situation go. His best work (The Confederacy), adapted from the French, has a double motif quite as diverting as that in the Comedy of Errors, and possesses much more verisimilitude. Astræa; Mrs. Aphra Behn, author of seventeen indifferent plays; the first English woman who made a living by her pen. Cibber; see note on The Careless Husband, line 92. the laws = the laws of comedy. poor Pinkey; William Penkethman, a comic actor. In the Tatler, No. 188, we read, ' . . Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug; Penkethman devours a cold chick with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus.' See also The Spectator, No. 370, for a description of Penkethman in the character of Don Choleric Snap Shorto de Testy.

=

304-307. Condemnation of the public rage for farces and spectacular plays. With this passage compare Spectator, No. 31.

pit. The pit was originally an inclosed space where dog-fights and bear-fights took place. As the bear-garden was metamorphosed into the theatre, the name 'pit' was retained for the floor of the house; admission to this was cheap, and this made it the favorite resort of the rabble. As late as twenty years ago the 'pit' was common in London theatres; now it has almost disappeared, the space formerly reserved for it being occupied by what we call the parquet. the Black-joke; a popular tune of the day. From heads to ears and now from ears to eyes; From plays to operas and from operas to pantomimes.' - Warburton. Old Edward's Armour. 'The coronation of Henry VIII. and Queen Ann Boleyn, in which the play-houses vied with each other to represent all the pomp of a coronation. In this noble contention the armour of one

Pope.

of the kings of England was borrowed from the Tower to dress the champion.' Democritus, according to the legend, never went abroad without laughing at the follies of mankind; Heraclitus, without weeping at the same follies. Orcas. The farthest northern promontory of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades.' Pope. Quin. After the death of Betterton, in 1710, Quin and Booth became the leading actors of the day. Booth retained his popularity until his death in 1733; Quin lived many years after he was superseded by Garrick, whose first appearance in London, in 1742, stamped him as the greatest actor England has ever seen. Oldfield; Mrs. Oldfield, the comic actress, d. 1730. suit; suit worn at a Court-ball in honor of the King's birthday. 333-347. This fine passage excels the original, thus rendered by Conington:

348-355. write?

22.

But lest you think this niggard praise I fling

To bards who soar where I n'er stretched a wing,
That man I hold true master of his art

Who with fictitious woes can wring my heart;

a birthday

Can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill

Of vain alarm, and, as by magic skill

Bear me to Thebes, to Athens, where he will.

the Muses Merlin's Cave.

...

Or who, etc., i.e., If you do not patronize us, how can we
mountain. See note on Lycidas, 15-
See note on Clark' in the Epistle to
Pope is fond of making fun of the
In his Imitations of Horace's Epistles,

Lord Burlington, line 78.
Queen's choice of books.

ii. 2, he writes.

Lord! how we strut through Merlin's Cave, to see
No poets there but Stephen, you and me!

356-375. if we will recite. Poets used to recite before Augustus, never before George II. Through following his original too closely, Pope misses his point. The indifference of George II. to literature was founded upon sheer stupidity, that stupidity against which the gods themselves, as Schiller says, fight in vain. dubb'd Historians. The office of Historiographer Royal was sometimes combined with that of Poet Laureate. Dryden's Epistle to Congreve, 41-48. Boileau (d. 1711), the French critic whose Art of Poetry strongly influenced Pope's Essay on Criticism. Racine; see note on

line 274.

See note on

Louis Louis XIV.

376-379. Some minister of grace; a hit at Walpole, who made Cibber laureate in 1730. The phrase is from Hamlet i. 4, 39:

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

380-389. Charles Charles I. Bernini (d. 1680); an Italian architect and sculptor; his best known work is the colonnade in front of St. Peter's at Rome. Nassau William III.

Kneller

was court-painter to all the English sovereigns from Charles II. to George I. See first note on Pope's Epistle to Jervas. Blackmore; Sir Richard Blackmore, physician to William III., was knighted in 1697. He seems to have been a very good physician, but was certainly a very poor poet. Quarles. The enormous popularity of Francis Quarles' Emblems and Enchiridion, a popularity which has not entirely ceased up to the present day, accounts to some extent for the very unjust ridicule which has been lavished on him by men of letters of his own and later times. the silly antithesis of

Pope, a writer who, great as he was, was almost as ignorant of literary history as his model Boileau, ought to prejudice no one, and it is strictly true that Quarles' enormous volume hides, to some extent, his merits.' — Saintsbury; History of Elizabethan Literature, 377No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear. There is no evidence other than Pope's to show that Jonson and Dennis ever made use of such an expression. Perhaps it is merely intended as a paraphrase of Horace's 'Bootum in crasso ('. . . born and nurtured in Boeotian air'). Dennis the critic had many a literary encounter with Pope, in which the poet not seldom came out second best.

aëre natum' Dennis; John

390-403. The corresponding lines in Horace recount with loyal pride the great deeds of Augustus; notice with what admirable irony Pope adapts them to the ignoble reign of George II. Maeonian = Homeric. Maeonia was the ancient name for Lydia, and according to one legend was the birth-place of Homer.