a heavy fine. This is partly because of its usefulness as a scavenger, and partly because of the reputation which the bird has long enjoyed for its affection for its young. The stork is mentioned, Psalm, civ. 16-17, and Jeremiah, viii. 7. The stork resorts year after year to the same place, and when it has once fixed on a locality for its nest, that place will be assuredly occupied when the breeding season comes round. Thus, says the Rev. J. G. Wood (Bible Animals, p. 481), "The same home is kept up by successive generations of storks, much as among men one ancestral mansion is inhabited by members of the same family." bid. Here preterite, more commonly "bade." 108. phalanx. A body of men drawn up for battle in the deep and compact manner of the Macedonians under Philip and his successors. 112. mutual, reciprocal. What A feels or does for B, and B for A. The common expression, "Our mutual friend," though sanctioned by Dickens, who wrote a book with that title, is incorrect. It should be our common friend. 125. attend. Here a transitive verb. It is more commonly followed by preposition "to." 127. wander earth, wander over earth. The whole line is in the absolute construction. 148. state of nature. The eighteenth century was fond of talking about the 'state of nature.' J. J. Rousseau won great applause by the doctrine that the passage from barbarism to civilization was not a gain to the world. "God made the country, and man made the town. Yet if God put into man instincts that lead him to gregariousness and to civilization, then civilization and town-life may be in accordance with nature, as much as being without clothes. 149. Self-love and social at her birth began. Self-love and social love began at the birth of nature. 154. murder. Thomson, Spring, 358 : "But you, ye flocks, What have ye done? ye peaceful people, what, Shelley, in his Revolt of Islam, makes his people feed on fruits, not on slain animals: "Gore nor poison none This festal kind pollute." Thomson and Pope, for the purpose of poetical ornament, not from real conviction, maintain the vegetarian theory, supported in ancient times by the honoured name of Pythagoras, that man ought not to eat the flesh of animals. Thomson, curiously enough, drew the line at fish. In Gay's fable, Pythagoras and the Clown, the argument is set out. "The Clown, with surly voice replies, But if these tyrants of the air When thou, perhaps, carnivorous sinner, 'Hold,' cried the clown, with passion heated, When Heaven the world with creatures stored, Thy greater luxury to sustain.' 160. prerogatives, peculiar or exclusive rights. The word prerogative, which is the Latin, prærogativa (asked first), was applied as a title to the tribe which had the right of giving its vote before the others-an important privilege, considering how often human actions resemble sheep going through a gap, or the schoolboy game of "Follow my leader." 174. physic. Here in our modern sense, medicine. Greek, púris, nature. Physics, the study of nature. Physic, medicine, is that which puts nature right. 177. Learn of the little nautilus to sail. The Rev. J. G. Wood states (Nature Teachings, chap. 1.) that "there is just as much likelihood of seeing a mermaid curl her hair as of witnessing a nautilus under sail. He goes on to tell us that the creature which does sail is the velella, a kind of jelly-fish, which is fur nished with a sort of skeleton consisting of two thin horny plates, arranged so as to suggest the idea of a raft propelled by a sail. 183. policies. A modern would say polities, which form is nearer the Greek πολιτεια. 186. anarchy. Here used in its literal sense of absence of government, without the connotation of lawlessness now generally conveyed by that word. 193. There is an old proverb, "Summum jus, summa injuria.” There are cases in which the insisting upon strictly legal rights is a positive moral wrong. Cicero quotes it, De Officiis, 1. x. 197. instinct. See Darwin, Descent of Man, Part I., chaps. ii. and iii. 231. steady. The allusion is to the rays of light broken by a prisin. Mr. Ward quotes from Bacon's Instauratio Magna : "For however men may amuse themselves, and admire, or almost adore the mind, it is certain that, like an irregular glass, it alters the rays of things by its figure and different intersections.' 236. right divine. Allusion to the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the favourite doctrine of the extreme royalists of the seventeenth century. So Dunciad, iv. 188: “The right divine of kings to govern wrong." 242. enormous. The two next lines explain the word. Out of all rule. Latin e and norma, rule. In this sense we generally now use 'abnormal.’ many made for one. So Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, I. x. 5: “At the first, it may be, that all was permitted unto their discretion which were to rule, till they saw that to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to come unto laws.” 256. her. Refers to 'superstition' (246). 260. And such as tyrants would believe in, because they are formed like tyrants. If English had case endings, 'formed' would be accusative. 265. flamen, a Latin word for a priest attached to the worship of a particular deity; probably, however, Pope used the word generally. The duty of the flamen was to keep the sacrifice alight. The word is connected with Latin flare, to blow. living means 'animal food.' Here, as in 157 ("The shrine with gore unstained"), Pope seems to hold the theory that the first sacrifices were bloodless, i.e. the fruits of the earth were offered. 266. Compare Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 392 : "First, Moloch, horrid king, besmear'd with blood Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children's cries unheard, that past through fire To his grim idol.” 268. The image is derived from the old engines of war, such as the catapult, which threw stones. The Flamen made an engine of his god, and assailed his foes by threatening them with chastisement from heaven (Elwin). 286. moral. Here a noun meaning morals or morality. Cp. the French morale. 306. Guizot says: "I prefer a bad action to a bad principle,' says Rousseau, somewhere; and Rousseau was right. A bad action may remain isolated; a bad principle is always prolific, because, after all, it is the mind which governs, and man acts according to his thoughts much oftener than he himself imagines.' EPISTLE IV. 3. still, in the old sense, 'ever, always.' That something which is always prompting us to sigh. Notice Pope changes from a person to a thing. 4. dare to die, martyrdom in the hope of eternal happiness. 6. O'erlook'd, something overlooked and sometimes magnified in imagination both by the fool and by the wise. 7. Plant. Pope "begins his address to Happiness after the manner of the ancient hymns by enumerating the titles and various places of abode of this goddess. He has undoubtedly personified her at the beginning, but seems to have dropped that idea in the seventh line, where the deity is suddenly transformed into a plant; from thence this metaphor of a vegetable is carried on distinctly through the eleven succeeding lines, till he suddenly returns to consider Happiness again as a person, in the eighteenth line" (Warton). 8. mortal soil. The epithet is important. Where amongst human beings? 9. Are courtiers happy? or are the wealthy? shine. This noun is used by Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton. Johnson in his Dictionary: "It is a word, though not unanalogical, yet ungraceful, and little used." Nobody, however, quarrels with it in composition-sunshine, moonshine. 10. faming. Fault has been found with this epithet. Elwin says: "The line calls up a false idea of splendour, and not a vision of subterranean gloom and desolation." The epithet is characteristic of the classical school of poetry. No effort is made to be true to nature, but as the cut diamond flames in a lady's head-dress, so the mine that is full of diamonds must also flame. 11. Is happiness due to literary or to military glory? 12. iron. This is an essential epithet. Omit it and the harvests are ordinary harvests, and no longer battles. It is hypercritical to say that sickles as well as swords are made of iron. 13. where grows! Answering his own question of five lines before. 15. sincere. The origin of the word is doubtful, the usual explanation being from Latin sine cera, without wax. It is more likely that the first syllable is the same as that of 'single' (singuli), 'simple' (simplex), and the second may be cernere, to separate; or serere, to join. Pope does not here use the word in our modern sense of 'honest,' 'candid,' but in the older sense of 'pure,' 'unmingled,' without any moral meaning attached to it. Johnson quotes : 'In English, I would have all Gallicisms avoided, that our tongue may be sincere, and that we may keep to our own language. 18. Happy as a king' is a proverbial saying, the truth of which Pope disputes. Bolingbroke was not a happy man, being "notoriously a prey to factious rancour and the pangs of disappointed ambition " (Elwin). 19. blind; or rather they differ in their views of happiness and of the way to attain it. 20. As philanthropists or as hermits. It would 21. in action, Epicureans. in ease, Stoics (Pope). have been better if the poet had not added these brief notes, for they are misleading. See note on these schools of philosophers at ii. 6. The Epicureans did not place happiness in action,' but rather the opposite; nor did the Stoics place it 'in ease,' but in ascetic virtue. 23. in pain. Epicureans (Pope). 24. virtue vain. Stoics (Pope). 26. doubt of all. Sceptics (Pope); that is, the philosophical set so called, also known as Pyrrhonists, after their founder Pyrrho. 28. happiness is happiness. Pope has sacrificed truth to epigram. "The Stoics and Sceptics placed the supreme good in unconditional virtue, and the Epicureans taught the precise doctrine of Pope himself, that pleasure is the goal, and virtue the road" (Elwin). |