The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Alexander Pope

58. scores: Debts.

  59. Make Scots speak treason: Scots, even if disaffected from the Hanover monarchy, were proverbially cautious about exposing themselves to risk. cozen: ‘to cheat; to trick; to defraud’ (Dictionary).

  61. Oldmixon: John Oldmixon, hack writer for the Whigs and a frequent opponent of Pope; see also ‘Arbuthnot’, 146n. and ‘Dunciad’, II, 283n. Burnet: Either the hack writer Thomas Burnet (see ‘Arbuthnot’, 146n.) or Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, whose History of My Own Times (1723) Pope regarded as meretricious.

  63. rod: See ‘IV Burlington’, 18n.

  65. blunderbuss: ‘a gun that is charged with many bullets, so that, without any exact aim, there is a chance of hitting the mark’ (Dictionary).

  67. —— ’s your name: ‘Pope’ would fit the metre.

  68. The King’s: The King’s English, but also, a sly dig at George II’s German accent.

  71. Onslow: Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons.

  72. closer style: i.e. tighter and more condensed, as in Swift’s prose.

  73. Hoadley: Benjamin Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor and a prolix writer. period: ‘a complete sentence from one full stop to another’ (Dictionary).

  75. Panurge: Character in Rabelais’ Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, who speaks thirteen languages, several of them fictitious.

  77. gift of tongues: On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire appeared above the heads of the Apostles ‘and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance’ (Acts 2:4).

  83. druggerman: Properly ‘dragoman’, an interpreter. Babel: The tower at Babylon whose builders impiously sought to reach heaven, for which they were punished with a confusion of languages (Genesis 11); according to tradition the tower then collapsed.

  91. Numquam minus solus: ‘Never less alone (than when one is alone)’, from De Officiis, III, i, by Marcus Tullius Cicero.

  93. Spartan way: Drunkards were shown to Spartan youths as a warning against intemperance.

  95. Aretine: Pietro Aretino, Renaissance Italian poet notorious for sonnets illustrated with obscene pictures.

  102. happy man … tombs: The guide who showed the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey.

  108. mechanic: ‘a low workman’ (Dictionary).

  111. but one: i.e. just one French servant.

  112. politely: Elegantly.

  113. paduasoy: Corded silk (French soie) in the style of Padua.

  115. dishabille: ‘loosely or negligently dressed’ (Dictionary).

  125. eunuchs, harlequins, and operas: Theatrical attractions regarded by traditionalists as exotic fads: eunuchs were Italian castrati, castrated in boyhood to preserve their soprano voices, frequently used in opera. A harlequin was a stock character, nimble and acrobatic, usually cast as a clever servant in Italian commedia dell’ arte.

  126. simples: Medicinal herbs.

  130. birthnights: Royal birthdays, which were public holidays. shows: Probably puppet shows.

  131. Holinsheds … Stows: Rafael Holinshed, Edward Hall, and John Stow were garrulous Elizabethan chroniclers.

  132. the Queen: It was widely believed that Queen Caroline had immense influence over George II.

  134. rug: Safe, secure (gamblers’ slang).

  135. reversion: Right of succession to an office after the death of its occupant.

  138–9. pawned … government: i.e. someone who has had to pawn his income from rental properties is rescued by being given a lucrative government office.

  142. job: Public office exploited for personal advantage; in 1732 the directors of the Charitable Corporation, intended to lend money to the poor, were convicted of embezzlement.

  144. turnpikes: Toll roads, then held in private hands. cit: See Horace, Epistle, I, i, 89n. clown: See ‘Essay on Criticism’, 321n.

  146. chuck: Play at chuck-farthing, a boys’ coin-tossing game. vole: Win all the tricks at cards.

  147. excising courtier: Member of the court authorized to collect a tax on some activity.

  151. whited wall: Masked by cosmetics; cf. the Scribes and Pharisees likened by Christ to ‘whitened sepulchres’ (Matthew 23:27).

  152. Woodward’s patients: Woodward was fond of administering emetics to his patients.

  154. tops: ‘top: to outgo; to surpass’ (Dictionary).

  155. Gazettes and Post Boys: Popular newspapers.

  156. big wife: Pregnant wife, provoked to vomit (‘cast’ (157)) by disgusting foods.

  159. Great Man: A common satirists’ epithet for Sir Robert Walpole, whose administration was notorious for accepting bribes.

  160. entailed: Legally settled on an individual and his descendants.

  163–5. wars thrive ill … port: Walpole’s opponents charged that his reluctance to wage war abetted the growth of French power, and that he was culpably ignoring both the seizure of English merchant ships by the Spanish and the failure of the French to honour a treaty by which the fortifications of Dunkirk should have been demolished.

  166. Circe’s guests: Odysseus’ mariners, transformed into pigs by her magic (Odyssey, X).

  168. subject: Of the king.

  171. pox: Venereal disease, not curable then.

  173. ope: Open.

  174. nice: Delicate.

  175. just a-tilt: i.e. a barrel full of lies is tilting and about to spill over. Minister: Cabinet member.

  177. Umbra: See ‘Essay on Man’, IV, 278n.

  178. Fannius: Lord John Hervey: See ‘Arbuthnot’, Advertisement note.

  183. actions: Legal actions.

  194. becomes: Suits, is becoming to.

  199. serving-man: Manservant, here used ironically for a noble but sycophantic courtier.

  203. ball: The globe.

  206. a court in wax: ‘a famous show of the court of France in waxwork’ (Pope’s note).

  209. gewgaws: Showy baubles.

  213. Fig’s … felons: ‘Fig’s, a prize-fighter’s academy, where the young nobility received instruction in those days; White’s was a noted gaming-house. It was also customary for the nobility and gentry to visit the condemned criminals in Newgate’ (Pope’s note).

  217. fair fields: Land sold off to pay for finery.

  219. King Lear: Cast-off aristocratic clothing was given or sold to actors, for instance, performing in Shakespeare’s play.

  227. cochine’l: Cochineal, a South American insect used to make red dye.

  229. vessel: With a pun on woman as ‘the weaker vessel’ (1 Peter 3:7).

  230. Top-gallant: The highest sails on a ship, with a pun on the courtier as a ‘gallant’.

  231. striking sail: Lowering sails in acknowledgement of defeat in battle.

  233. Sir Fopling: See ‘Rape of the Lock’, V, 63n.

  236. Heraclitus: Greek ‘weeping philosopher’, who would nevertheless have been provoked to laughter by Fopling and by Courtin (generic name for any court lady).

  238. Presence: The presence chamber ‘in which a great person receives company’ (Dictionary).

  239. Mahound: Muhammad. pagod: Temple of an idol in India.

  240. Durer’s rules: Albrecht Dürer wrote a Treatise on Human Proportion.

  243–5. venial sins … a hole: i.e. they regard their actual sins as trivial (as tiny as an atom, not worth a straw), but are horrified by a hole in their clothing.

  246. one … less: i.e. one less pound of powder.

  249. the fair: Fair ladies.

  251. band: Clergyman’s collar.

  252. Sharon: The ‘rose of Sharon’ in Song of Solomon 2:1.

  253. impertinent: Inappropriate, not pertinent.

  255. protest: Declare, with a casual invocation of God (‘Jesu! Jesu!’ (257)).

  262. bullet: Unclear (‘solid as a bullet’?). buff: Like brownish leather.

  264. fore-right: Directly ahead.

  267. Herod’s hang-dogs: The ruffianly soldiers who crucified Christ.

  268. breeding woman’s curse: Fright
ening sights were thought to provoke miscarriages.

  271. licensed fool: Medieval jester, who was permitted to speak freely.

  274. hung with deadly sins: At Hampton Court Palace, ‘the room hung with tapestry, now very ancient, representing the Seven Deadly Sins’ (Pope’s note). For the sins, see ‘Essay on Man’, II, 187–94n.

  276. Ascapart: ‘a giant famous in romances’ (Pope’s note).

  277. quoits: Game similar to horseshoes in which metal rings are pitched at a stake. Temple Bar: Massive stone gateway that spanned Fleet Street. Charing Cross: Stone cross (replaced in 1675 by a statue of Charles I) marking the centre of London.

  282. great rebukes endure: i.e. great men are willing to accept rebukes.

  286. apocrypha: Writings not included in the Protestant Bible (‘holy writ’ (287)), but are in the Roman Catholic version.

  An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot This poem, Pope’s subtlest self-portrait and apologia, was composed in several stages, and Samuel Johnson rightly called it ‘many fragments wrought into one design’ (Life of Pope, p. 246). John Arbuthnot, who died a month after the poem was published in January 1735, had been a distinguished physician, an occasional writer, and Pope’s collaborator in the Scriblerus Club. Pope pays tribute both to Arbuthnot’s professional skill in helping him to endure ‘this long disease, my life’, and to his genial wit as exemplary of true satire, and as contrasted with the innuendos and lies put about by Pope’s enemies. The immediate incentive was the attacks by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord John Hervey that are mentioned in the ‘Advertisement’; because of their high standing in society and at court, Pope found their criticism more upsetting than the routine abuse of minor writers whom he dismissed as Grub Street ‘dunces’. He also had a score to settle with the late Joseph Addison, celebrated co-author of the Spectator, who had encouraged him in his youth but then attempted to sabotage the translation of Homer on which Pope staked his reputation and fortune; he was covertly jealous of Pope’s reputation. The portraits of Hervey as Sporus and Addison as Atticus are accordingly the highlights of ‘Arbuthnot’. When he was completing it in the autumn of 1734, Pope wrote to Arbuthnot, who knew that he was suffering from a terminal illness, that it would be ‘the best memorial I can leave, both of my friendship to you, and of my character’. But for all its assertiveness, ‘An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot’ reveals much anxiety about the shift Pope had made from solemn ‘high’ verse to satire and invective, when he ‘stooped to truth, and moralized [my] song’.

  Epigraph: ‘Pay no attention to the talk of the vulgar crowd, nor place your hopes for your exploits in human rewards; for you it is fitting that virtue itself draw you on to true glory by its own attractions. Let others say what they will about you, as in any case they will’ (Cicero, De Re Publica, VI, xxiii).

  Advertisement: persons of rank and fortune: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey, whose satiric attacks had been published two years previously; the Epistle Pope mentions was by Hervey, and the Verses by Hervey and Lady Mary in collaboration: See also headnote. sentiment: ‘a striking sentence in a composition’ (Dictionary). vicious: Connoting immorality as well as malice.

  1. John: John Serle, Pope’s gardener and servant.

  3. dog-star: Sirius, visible in August when poetry competitions were held in ancient Rome, and believed to cause insanity.

  4. Bedlam: Bethlehem Hospital for the insane. Parnassus: See ‘Essay on Criticism’, 94n.; also 96 below.

  8. grot: See ‘Eloisa and Abelard’, 20n.

  10. chariot: Carriage. barge: Boat on the Thames, which flowed at the bottom of Pope’s lawn.

  12. Ev’n Sunday: Debtors could not be arrested on Sundays.

  13. the Mint: Area south of the Thames that was a refuge for debtors.

  15. a parson: The Reverend Laurence Eusden, Poet Laureate until his death (1730) and a notoriously heavy drinker (‘bemused in’ hints unmistakably at ‘Eusden’).

  17. cross: ‘to thwart; to obstruct; to hinder’ (Dictionary).

  18. engross: ‘to copy in a large hand’ (Dictionary, citing this line).

  23. Arthur … son: Arthur Moore, a politician whose son, James Moore-Smyth, was a would-be poet; see also 98n. and ‘Dunciad’, II, 50n.

  25. Cornus: Cuckold (from cornu, horn); cuckolds conventionally wore horns.

  29. drop or nostrum: Patent medicines.

  31. sped: Dispatched, killed.

  40. nine years: As advised by Horace, Ars Poetica, 388–9.

  41–4. Drury Lane … friends: The impoverished poet lives in a cheap garret in the seedy neighbourhood of Drury Lane; he writes for money, but gives the conventional explanation that his friends have implored him to publish. See also ‘Dunciad’, I, 322n.

  43. term: Period during which courts were in session; books were often published then.

  48. prologue: To be spoken at the beginning of a play; its success would be likelier if a famous poet introduced it.

  49. Pitholeon: ‘The name taken from a foolish poet at Rhodes, who pretended to much Greek’ (Pope’s note). his Grace: A nobleman.

  50. place: Official appointment.

  53. Curll: Edmund Curll: See ‘Dunciad’, I, 40n.

  54. journal: Contemporary scandal-sheet. divine: Clergyman.

  55. sues: ‘sue: to beg; to entreat; to petition’ (Dictionary).

  61. house: The theatre. ’Sdeath: ‘God’s death’, a mild oath.

  62. interest: Influence. Lintot: Bernard Lintot, publisher of many of Pope’s works, including his Homer.

  66. snacks: Shares.

  69. Midas: King of Phrygia, who judged Pan to be a better singer than Apollo, and was punished with ass’s ears, a secret which was revealed (in different versions of the story) by either a servant or his queen.

  74. perks: Thrusts impudently.

  79. Dunciad: The first version of Pope’s satire on bad writers was published in 1728, seven years before this poem.

  85. Codrus: Proverbially bad poet, mentioned by Virgil and Juvenal.

  87. Pit, box, and gallery: From front to back, the three sections of a theatre.

  94. flimsy lines: The spiderweb, and by analogy the ‘lines’ of the scribbler.

  96. Parnassian: As if from Mount Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and the Muses.

  97. Colley: Colley Cibber, actor and minor author, named Poet Laureate in 1730, and later the anti-hero of Pope’s revised ‘Dunciad’.

  98. Henley: Delivered a sermon in praise of butchers; see ‘Donne’, 51n. Moore: Moore-Smyth, a prominent Freemason; see 23n.

  99. Bavius: Another bad poet, in Horace and Virgil.

  100. one bishop Philips: The minor poet Ambrose Philips was secretary to the Archbishop of Armagh; also 179 and 180 and notes.

  101. Sappho: See ‘II A Lady’, 24n.

  103. twice as tall: Arbuthnot is imagined as alluding to Pope’s diminutive height.

  106. slaver: Saliva.

  111. Grub Street: ‘originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grubstreet’ (Dictionary).

  113. prints my letters: Pope secretly connived at the supposedly unauthorized publication of his letters by Curll in 1726.

  114. Subscribe: Expensive editions were funded by selling advance subscriptions.

  116. cough … short: Horace referred to his cough and his small size.

  117. Ammon’s great son: See ‘Essay on Criticism’, 376n.

  118. Ovid’s nose: Ovid’s full name was Publius Ovidius Naso.

  121. languishing in bed: Pope was often bedridden with his chronic illness.

  122. Maro: Virgil, whose full name was Publius Vergilius Maro.

  131. not wife: It was deeply disappointing to Pope that his physical condition made marriage unlikely.

  133. second: ‘to support, to assist’ (Dictionary).

  134. teach … to bear: i.e. teach me to endure the existence you have preserved.
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  135–41. Granville … Walsh … Garth: ‘persons with whom [the author] was conversant (and he adds beloved) at 16 or 17 years of age’ (Pope’s note). Congreve: The dramatist William Congreve. Swift: Pope’s close friend Jonathan Swift. See ‘Windsor Forest’, 5n., and ‘Essay on Criticism’, 729n. and 619n., respectively. Talbot, Somers, Sheffield: Statesmen and patrons. Rochester: Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester; see 355n. and ‘Dunciad’, IV, 22n. St John: Another close friend, the politician and writer Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke; see also Horace, Satire, II, i, 127n.

  146. Burnets, Oldmixons … Cooks: ‘authors of secret and scandalous history’ (Pope’s note).

  149. Fanny: One of Pope’s names for Hervey, adapted from ‘Fannius’, a feeble Roman poet known only because Horace mentioned him with contempt (Satire, I, iv).

  150. A painted … stream: As Pope remarks in a note, he has deliberately borrowed a line from Addison’s poem ‘A Letter from Italy’ (1704), substituting ‘painted mistress’ for ‘painted meadow’. Pope’s implication is that nobody took offence at his poems when they celebrated a lady putting on make-up (‘Rape of the Lock’) or a pastoral stream (‘Windsor Forest’).

  151–3. Gildon … Dennis: Charles Gildon and John Dennis, critics who had abused Pope. For Dennis, see ‘Essay on Criticism’, 270n.; see also 371 and note below.

  157. come abroad: i.e. show himself.

  158. kissed the rod: Proverbial for willingly accepting punishment.

  161. points: Punctuation.

  163. laurel: Traditional reward for poetic prowess.

  164. Bentley: See Horace, Epistle, II, i, 104n. Tibbalds: Shakespearean editor Lewis Theobald, who criticized Pope’s edition of Shakespeare and became the anti-hero of the original ‘Dunciad’; see also its headnote and I, 133n.

  165. wight: See ‘Donne’, 38n. scans: Establishes poetic metre by rote rules.

  173. Were others angry: i.e. if others were angry.

  177. casting-weight: That which turns the scale.

  179. pilfered pastorals: Pope accused Ambrose Philips of plagiarizing parts of his pastoral poems.

  180. Persian tale: Persian Tales was the title of a collection of translations by Philips. half a crown: A very modest payment.

  183. wanting: Lacking, needy.

  187. fustian: ‘swelling; unnaturally pompous; ridiculously tumid; used of style’ (Dictionary); see also ‘Preface to Iliad’, note 16.