4. trim.

EPISTLE III.

Here a noun. So in Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 5:

"Nature in awe to him

Had doffed her gaudy trim.”

'Trim' is also used as an adjective and as a verb. It is connected with an A.S. root meaning steady, in order. Hence the verb to trim meaning to 'balance a boat.' Spectator, No. 383: "My old friend after having seated himself and trimmed the boat with his coachman who... always serves for ballast on these occasions. From this, also, is derived the sense of changing from side to side as when we say that a person trims, or that a politician is a trimmer. Trim, preserving the same idea, also means to cut smooth, to remove ragged edges. 2 Samuel, xix. 24: Mephi bosheth had neither dressed his feet nor trimmed his beard." From this meaning the sense of decoration in dress naturally follows. Shakspere, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Iv. iv. 164:

"Our youth got me to play the woman's part, And I was trimmed in Madame Julia's gown." 9. plastic, forming, moulding; Greek, TλaσTIKós. Dunciad, wλaoriкós. i. 101:

"So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear.” The modern passive use of the word plastic, yielding to the mould, is not a correct use.

10. The single atoms each to other tend. Pope refers here to the doctrines held by ancient writers, as Democritus (born 460 B.C.), and Lucretius. Of these doctrines Professor Tyndall spoke as follows in the address which he delivered as President of the British Association for the advancement of Science at the Belfast Meeting in 1874: "It was felt that to construct the universe in idea, it was necessary to have some notion of its constituent parts... Thought, no doubt, had long hovered about this doctrine before it attained the precision and completeness which it assumed in the mind of Democritus. ... The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his uncompromising antagonism to those who deduced the phenomena of nature from the caprices of the gods. They are briefly these: (1) From nothing comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be destroyed. All changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules. (2) Nothing happens by chance. Every occurrence has its cause from which it follows by necessity. (3) The only existing things are the atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion. (4) The atoms are infinite in number, and infinitely various in form; they strike

together, and the lateral motions and whirlings which then arise are the beginnings of worlds. (5) The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their atoms in number, size, and aggregation. (6) The soul consists of fine smooth round atoms like those of fire. These are the most mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena of life arise. The first five propositions are a fair general statement of the atomic philosophy as now held. As regards the sixth, Democritus made his fine smooth atoms do duty for the nervous system, whose functions were then unknown. The atoms of Democritus are individually without sensation; they combine in obedience to mechanical laws; and not only organic forms, but the phenomena of sense and thought, are the result of their combination.

"That great enigma, 'the exquisite adaptation of one part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions of life,' more especially the construction of the human body, Democritus made no attempt to solve. Empedocles, a man of more fiery and poetic nature, introduced the notion of love and hate among the atoms to account for their combination and separation. Noticing this gap in the doctrine of Democritus, he struck in with the penetrating thought, linked, however, with some wild speculation, that it lay in the very nature of these combinations which were suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony with their environment), to maintain themselves, while unfit combinations, having no proper habitat, must rapidly disappear. Thus more than 2000 years ago the doctrine of the 'survival of the fittest,' which, in our day, not on the basis of vague conjecture, but of positive knowledge, has been raised to such extraordinary significance, had received at all events partial enunciation.” 23. Compare Virgil's Æneid, vi. 726 :

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet."

30. lawn, from Celtic root, and connected with French lande, an open space, used with spelling launde by Chaucer in same sense, Knightes Tale, 833.

33. the linnet pours his throat. The female bird does not sing. Hence both Gray, Ode to Spring:

"The attic warbler pours her throat";

and Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 603:

'All but the wakeful nightingale

She all night long her amorous descant sung,

are incorrect. "Note the exquisite refinement by which to pour his note' is raised into 'pour his throat'; any harshness of the metaphor being subdued by the repetition of the idea in the next line, 'swell the note ""

(Pattison).

46. Compare Gay's Fables, "The Man and the Flea ":

"The snail looks round on flower and tree,
And cries, 'All these were made for me!'
'What dignity's in human nature?'
Says man, the most conceited creature,
As from a cliff he casts his eye,
And view'd the sea and arched sky.

The sun was sunk beneath the main ;
The moon and all the starry train

Hung the vast vault of Heaven: the man
His contemplation thus began

'When I beheld this glorious show,

And the wide watery world below,

The scaly people of the main,

The beasts that range the wood or plain,
The wing'd inhabitants of air,

The day, the night, the various year,
And know all these by Heaven design'd
As gifts to pleasure human kind,
I cannot raise my worth too high;
Of what vast consequence am I?'
Not of the importance you suppose,'
(Replies a flea upon his nose);
Be humble, learn thyself to scan;
Know, pride was never made for man.
'Tis vanity that swells thy mind.

What Heaven and earth for thee design'd !

For thee, made only for our need,

That more important Fleas might feed.'”

50. Let it be granted that man is the intellectual lord.

56. Philomela, classical name for nightingale. The story was that Philomela, daughter of Pandion, King of Attica, was turned into a nightingale.

The

68. favour'd man. Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by lightning as sacred persons, and the particular favourites of heaven (Pope). This is wrong as regards the opinion of the ancients. Greeks at any rate regarded lightning as the instrument of the wrath of Jove. Without the note one might have fancied that Pope meant favoured as not seeing the stroke or feeling the pain. Thomson, Summer, 1169, speaking of a thunderstorm:

"Guilt hears appall'd, with deeply troubled thought;
And yet, not always on the guilty head

Descends the fated flash.”

Pope wrote two epitaphs on a pair of lovers struck dead by

lightning at Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire. In each there is the same idea:

(1)

"When Eastern lovers feed the fun'ral fire,
On the same pile the faithful pair expire:
Here pitying Heav'n that virtue mutual found,
And blasted both that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere th' Almighty saw well pleas'd,
Sent His own lightning and the victims seiz'd.”

(2)

"Think not by rig'rous judgment seiz'd,
A pair so faithful could expire ;

Victims so pure Heav'n saw well pleas'd,
And snatch'd them in celestial fire."

touch ethereal. So Milton, Sams. Ag., 549 : With touch ethereal of Heav'n's fiery rod." 72. knowledge of its end. Compare i. 77.

84. Hardly the writing of a very orthodox Catholic.

86. prest. On first reading of this and following lines it looks as if this word were the participle of verb 'press.' There is a proverb, one volunteer is worth three pressed men. In the great war between England and France at the end of the last and beginning of this century, when there was a scarcity of sailors on board the ships of war, press-gangs were sent out in the seaports to seize the sailors of merchant vessels and fishermen and compel them to serve. Pope however wrote at a time long before these terrible press-gangs: and it is more likely that the word is derived from prest money, earnest-money, like the shilling which the sergeant gives to the recruit. tributum is good Latin for "

pay toll."

97. raise, count superior, extôl. praise." Epistle to Arbuthnot, 211:

Præstare

Pope even uses it as

"While wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,

And wonder with a foolish face of praise.'

98. Reason is God's gift as well as instinct.

99. nations. Thomson, in the Seasons, is very fond of speaking of birds, beasts, fishes, flowers, or insects as nations, people, race, or tribe. So Prov. xxx. 25-6, "The ants are a people, not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks."

104. De Moivre. Abraham De Moivre, an eminent French mathematician, born in the province of Champagne, in 1667. He was a French Protestant, and when the Revocation of the

Edict of Nantes (1685) made it no longer possible for Protestants to enjoy liberty of worship, or even personal safety, in their native land, De Moivre took shelter in London, where he obtained his living by teaching mathematics, and by answers to questions relating to chances and annuities. His chief book is a treatise on the Doctrine of Chances. A well-known modern writer on mathematics, Mr. Todhunter, says of him: "De Moivre was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697. His portrait, strikingly conspicuous among those of the great chiefs of science, may be seen in the collection which adorns the walls of the apartments used for the meetings of the society. It is recorded that Newton himself, in the later years of his life, used to reply to inquirers respecting mathematics in these words: 'Go to Mr. De Moivre, he knows these things better than I do.' In the long list of men ennobled by genius, virtue, and misfortune, who have found an asylum in England, it would be difficult to name one who has conferred more honour on his adopted country than De Moivre."-Todhunter, Theory of Probabilities, chapter ix.

Mr. Todhunter also quotes the following interesting passage from a contemporary letter to Leibnitz, written in 1710: "Dominus Moyvræus, insignis certe Geometra, qui haud dubie adhuc haeret Londini, luctans, ut audio, cum fame et miseria quas ut depellat, victum quotidianum ex informationibus adolescentum petere cogitur. O duram sortem hominis! et parum aptam ad excitanda ingenia nobilia; quis non tandem succumberet sub tam iniquæ fortunæ vexationibus? Vel quodnam ingenium etiam fervidissimum non algeat tandem? Miror certe Moyvræum tantis angustiis pressum ea tamen adhuc præstare quæ præstat.

"

105. Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore? Paradise Lost, vii. 423-430:

"There the eagle and the stork

On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build :
Part loosely wing the region, part more wise,
In common, rang'd in figure wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth

Their airy caravan, high over seas

Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight."

Milton,

Only about twelve species are known of the family ciconidae. Most of these are migratory, and one of them, at least, the common stork of Europe, periodically performs very extensive journeys. Storks frequent marshy places, and feed on eels, reptiles, young birds, and other mammals. Throughout the East, and also in several parts of Europe, the stork is protected by law, and the destruction even of its eggs is punished by