DEDICATION

ΤΟ

MRS.1 ARABELLA FERMOR.

MADAM: It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to you. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who have good sense and good humor enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had the good nature, for my sake, to consent to the publication of one more correct. This I was forced to before I had executed half my design, for the machinery was entirely wanting to complete it.

The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics to signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons are made to act in a poem. For the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These

1 In Pope's time the title "Mrs." was prefixed to the names of married as well as unmarried ladies. Arabella Fermor married Mr. Perkins in 1714, that is, two years after the first appearance of this poem.

machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits.

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady; but 'tis so much the concern of a poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms.

The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book called "Le Comte de Gabalis," which, both in its title and size, is so like a novel that many of the fair sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these gentlemen, the four elements are inhabited by spirits which they call sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the bestconditioned creatures imaginable. For they say any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle spirits, upon a condition very easy to all true adepts, an inviolate preservation of chastity.

As to the following Cantos, all the passages of them are as fabulous as the vision at the beginning, or the transformation at the end, except the loss of your hair, which I always mention with reverence. The human persons are as fictitious as the airy ones; and the character of Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but in beauty.

If this poem had as many graces as there are in your person, or in your mind, yet I could never hope it should pass through the world half so uncensured as you have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem,

Madam,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

A. POPE.

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

CANTO I.

WHAT dire offense from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

I sing this verse to Caryll, Muse! is due:

This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view;
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he2 approve my lays.

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel
A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold, can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage? 3

4

Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray,

And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day:

5

ΙΟ

1 Cf. Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, I. line 1: "O goddess! sing the wrath of Peleus' son." Also the opening lines of Pope's translation. Also

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Vergil's Æneid, I. line 1: Arma, virumque cano."

2 John Caryll, an intimate friend of Pope's, who called the latter's attention to the quarrel between Miss Fermor and Lord Petre, and asked him to smooth it away by his humor.

3 Cf. Vergil's Æneid, Connington's translation, I. lines 18, 19:

"Can heavenly natures nourish hate

So fierce, so blindly passionate?"

4 The tendency of the age was to employ classical names and titles for the sun, as Sol, Phoebus, Titan, etc.

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Now lapdogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless 1 lovers, just at twelve, awake:1
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground,
And the pressed watch 2 returned a silver sound.
Belinda still her downy pillow pressed,

Her guardian sylph 3. prolonged the balmy rest:
'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed
The morning dream that hovered o'er her head;
A youth more glittering than a birthnight beau
(That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow)
Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay,
And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say:
"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care
Of thousand bright inhabitants of air!

If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought,
Of all the nurse 5 and all the priest 5 have taught;
Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen,

The silver token, and the circled green,7

Or virgins visited by angel powers,

With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers;
Hear and believe! thy own importance know,

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.

1 Note "sleepless " and "awake."

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2" Pressed watch," i. e., a repeater. By pushing the stem, a bell sounded the quarters and half-hours.

3 See p. 22.

4 " 'Birthnight beau," i.e., a young society man present at the celebration in honor of a royal birthday anniversary. Exceptionally fine clothes were worn on such occasions.

5 Cf. Dryden's The Hind and the Panther: "The priest continues what the nurse began."

6 The silver penny which the tidy housemaid in fairy mythology found in her shoe. Cf. Bishop Corbet's The Fairies' Farewell.

7 The fairy ring on the grass, supposed to mark the spot where fairies have danced.

8 "Narrow" belongs to things as well as to "views." What is the

effect?

Some secret truths, from learnèd pride concealed,
To maids alone and children are revealed:1
What though no credit doubting wits may give?
The fair and innocent shall still believe.
Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,
The light militia 2 of the lower sky:

These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box,3 and hover round the ring.4
Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
And view with scorn two pages and a chair.5
As now your own,6 our beings were of old,

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And once inclosed in woman's beauteous mold;
Thence, by a soft transition, we repair

From earthly vehicles to these of air.

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Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled,

That all her vanities at once are dead;

Succeeding vanities she still regards,

And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.

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Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,

And love of omber, after death survive.

For when the fair in all their pride expire,

To their first elements their souls retire :

1 Lines 37, 38. From what is this parodied?

- 2 "There was scarcely yet that sharp antithesis between 'the militia' and 'the army' which prevailed afterwards" (HALES).

3" Box," i.e., at the opera.

4" Ring," i.e., the " Row" in Hyde Park. This park embraces four hundred acres in the west of London. It became the property of the crown when Henry VIII. dissolved the monasteries, it being part of the holdings of Westminster Abbey. The Crystal Palace is in this park.

5 A sedan chair.

6 "As now your own," etc. "He here forsakes the Rosicrucian system, which in this part is too extravagant even for poetry, and gives a beautiful fiction of his own on the Platonic theology of the continuance of the passions in another state, when the mind, before its leaving this, has not been purged and purified by philosophy; which furnishes an occasion for much useful satire" (WARBurton).