274. Ajax: His ghost turns bitterly away when his fellow warrior Odysseus encounters him in the underworld (Odyssey, XI).
278. op’ning: Barking, giving tongue.
281. th’ attendant Orator: The governor of 272.
283. sacred from the rod: Protected from being beaten, and therefore, by implication, overindulged.
286. begged the blessing: His mother hopes he will turn into a playboy ‘rake’.
290. Safe and unseen: Aeneas enters Carthage hidden by Venus in a cloud of invisibility (Aeneid, I).
291. let down: Set down in London (having left the university behind).
297. obsequious: The Seine in Paris is as obsequious to the absolute monarchy as the population is understood to be.
298. great Bourbon: Louis XV, King of France at the time.
299. no longer Roman: The modern inhabitants of Rome, where the Tiber flows, have abandoned their own classical culture.
301. bosomed deep in vines: French monasteries (or ‘convents’) often produced excellent wine, much of which the abbot and monks would keep for their own enjoyment.
305. dancing slaves: Not literally slaves, but servile subjects of the monarchy who are content to spend their time in pleasure-seeking.
307–10. her shrine … swain: Venice on the Adriatic, with the winged lion of St Mark as its emblem, had once been a mighty naval and commercial power, but by Pope’s time it attracted visitors mainly for its carnival, opera (where eunuchs starred), and prostitutes. keeps: Dwells.
314. His royal sense: Young Englishmen were supposedly gaining understanding of foreign political systems, but conversation at court centred on operas and beautiful women.
315. stews: Brothels.
316. Intrigued: Carried on sexual intrigues.
317. hors-d’oeuvres … liqueurs: Still regarded as pretentious foreign expressions.
318. greatly-daring: A frequent epithet for Homeric heroes.
319. Latin store: Storehouse of classical learning.
320. acquired no more: Failed to learn any foreign languages, another professed goal of the Grand Tour.
322. turned Air: The young man’s knowledge is now reduced to operatic arias (literally ‘airs’).
323. half-cured: Like meat cured by smoking or salting.
324. solo: Regarded as an affected foreign word.
326. Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber: Extravagant gamblers, who plunder his ‘Estate’ (325) when he returns home.
327. followed by a nun: He brings back a nun as his mistress (‘one Venus more’ (330)).
328. not undone: Immune from prosecution for debt if elected a Member of Parliament.
335. Hero … Dame: The young man and his foreign mistress.
338. senate: The House of Commons, playfully using the Roman term.
341. Paridel: Spenserian name for a young wandering squire, noted for seductions.
347. Annius: Fifteenth-century Italian forger of manuscripts. ebon: Ebony.
348. dissembled: Simulated.
349. cankered: Tarnished or corroded.
350. capon: Rooster castrated so it can be fattened for the table. Pollio: Any rich patron of the arts.
360–63. other Caesars … Cecrops: Heads of emperors and other figures on the forged coins.
361. th’ Athenian fowl: Athena’s emblematic bird, the owl of wisdom, appeared on Athenian coins.
364. the pigeon: In anti-Islamic tradition, Muhammad trained a pigeon to take a grain from his ear, persuading believers that it was a visitation of the Holy Spirit.
366. Lares: Roman household gods, who remain after his house is sold to pay his debts.
367. headless … postpone: Instead of spending time with his bride, he prefers a headless statue of Phoebe, goddess of chastity.
369–70. Otho … Niger: Rare coins issued by emperors whose reigns were very short.
371. Mummius: A collector of Egyptian mummies.
372. Cheops stinks: A fake mummy, supposedly of the emperor Cheops, decomposing disgustingly.
374. sistrum: Rattle used in Egyptian religious rites.
376. hornèd race: The successors of Alexander the Great had themselves depicted on coins with the rams’ horns associated with Jupiter Ammon; see also ‘Essay on Criticism’, 376n.
380. Sallee rovers: North African pirates.
381. Hermes: God of thieves and travellers.
382. Down his own throat: In a long note Pope tells the story of a collector who concealed valuable coins from pirates this way.
383. demigod: As the ancient emperors claimed to be.
391. clear of all design: Not plotting in any way.
394. Douglas: James Douglas, well-known obstetrician and also collector of rare books.
407. leaves: Petals.
409. CAROLINE: George II’s queen, for whom a superb new hybrid might be named; she had died in 1737.
411. pencil: Paintbrush; i.e. the hybrid flower has colours that Nature would never produce.
415. the wretch: A rival in horticulture. insect lust: Destroying the flower as an insect would.
417. Elysian: The Elysian Fields in the underworld, where it is forever springtime and flowers do not fade.
421. enamelled race: Butterflies.
422. zephyrs: Gentle breezes.
425. vernal: In springtime.
430. bird: Any flying creature; here, a butterfly.
435. paper: On which the butterfly is mounted.
440. our sleeping friends: The lolling loiterers whom Dullness put to sleep (337–46).
444. what’s o’clock: The night watchman would call out the hours.
448. Congenial … cockle-kind: The collector feels a personal affinity with the tightly closed shellfish.
451. superlunar things: Unchangeable and eternal verities, playing on the old terminology in which ‘sublunary’ things were mutable.
452. Poised: Balanced. Wilkins’ wings: Bishop John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society and author of The Discovery of a World in the Moon, suggested that it might be possible some day to fly there.
459. Clerk: Pronounced ‘clark’: cleric, clergyman; with a pun on the name of the Rev. Samuel Clarke, regarded as a freethinker whose books promoted deistic ‘natural religion’.
460. Myst’ry: The mysteries of Christian revelation; Pope is defending himself from the criticism that ‘Essay on Man’ ignored revelation and faith. divinely dark: i.e. the arguments of the rationalist ‘divine’ are unintelligible.
463. implicit faith: Doctrines accepted on faith, even if not fully understood.
464. impose … dogmatize: Though attacking orthodox dogma, freethinkers are quick to impose their own views and dogmas.
471. high priori: Pun on ‘a priori’; having reasoned ‘downward’ (472) from preconceived assumptions, such as that a just God could not permit the existence of evil, the thinker ends by doubting God’s existence altogether.
475–6. mechanic cause … diffuse in space: ‘The first of these follies is that of Descartes, the second of Hobbes, the third of some succeeding philosophers’ (Pope’s note).
477. at one bound: Recalling Satan invading Paradise ‘at one slight bound’ (Paradise Lost, IV, 181).
478. Make God Man’s image: Reversing the biblical statement that man was made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). final Cause: The ultimate end or purpose of the creation.
479. Virtue local: i.e. not universal. all Relation scorn: Scorn relationships with other human beings and with God.
482. Soul and Will: ‘two things the most self-evident, the existence of our soul, and the freedom of our will’ (Pope’s note).
484. Lucretius drew: In De Rerum Naturae, the Roman poet Lucretius imagined the gods as indifferent to humanity.
487. bright Image: ‘the title given by the later Platonists to that idea of Nature which they had formed in their fancy’ (Pope’s note).
488. Theocles: The speaker in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s The Moralists, who extols a ‘Nature’
that seems virtually divine.
489. Genius: Guardian spirit.
492. Tindal: See II, 399n. Silenus: Drunken tutor to the wine god Dionysus (thus, ‘the boozy sire’ (493)); Pope seems to have had in mind the corpulent Thomas Gordon, a freethinker and Commissioner for Wine Licences under Walpole.
494. seeds of fire: A Virgilian phrase, semina ignis (Eclogue, VI, 33) and semina flammae (Aeneid, VI, 6).
495. snapped his box: Snapped shut his tobacco box.
496. gown: As worn by the clergy.
498. the Youth: Understood as a plural, ‘the Youths’.
499. priestcraft: A term of contempt used by critics of the established Church.
501. vassal to a name: Giving unquestioning obedience to some authority, such as Aristotle.
502. child and man the same: He never grows into independent adulthood.
504. A trifling … heart: Echoing the portrait of Sporus in ‘Arbuthnot’, 327.
506. a Queen: Another dig at the late Queen Caroline, who patronized freethinking clergymen.
510. in pension, or in punk: Corrupted by government pay or by prostitutes.
511. Kent … Berkeley: Henry de Grey, Duke of Kent, and James, third Earl of Berkeley, accused (somewhat obscurely here) of corruption.
513. Warwick: The Earl of Warwick, a dissipated nobleman who died young.
516. Magus: Magician, wizard (517).
517. his Cup: ‘the cup of self-love, which causes a total oblivion of the obligations of friendship or honour, and of the service of God or our country, all sacrificed to vainglory, court-worship, or yet meaner considerations of lucre and brutal pleasures’ (Pope’s note).
520. Star: Emblem of a knightly order. Endymion: Mortal who loved Selene, the moon, and died of longing (or, in other versions, fell into perpetual sleep); the implication is that desire for a knighthood causes one’s principles to die.
521. Feather: In the cap of the Order of the Garter.
528. human shape: ‘the effects of the Magus’s cup are just contrary to that of Circe: hers took away the shape, and left the human mind; this takes away the mind, and leaves the human shape’ (Pope’s note). The enchantress Circe used a magical potion to turn Odysseus’ sailors into swine (Odyssey, X).
531. strait: Straightway, immediately.
532. Cimmerian gloom: See III, 4n.
538. Int’rest: Political allegiance. parti-coloured: ‘having diversity of colours’ (Dictionary), with a pun on political ‘party’.
541. syren sisters: Opera singers (likened to the seductive sirens in Odyssey, IV).
545. Cowper … King: Peers who rose to distinction by their own efforts, and whose sons were undistinguished.
549. priest succinct in amice white: i.e. a French chef in tightly belted (‘succinct’) white linen; amice: ‘the first or undermost part of a priest’s habit’ (Dictionary, citing this line).
550. all flesh is nothing: Alluding to John 6:63: ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing’; invoked ironically to describe an elaborate process of reducing meat.
551. Beeves: Plural of ‘beef’.
553. board: Table. specious: Plausible.
554. hares … toads: There was a fashion for altering the appearance of a dish to simulate something else.
556. sève and verdeur: The wine’s qualities of strength and tartness (French).
558. Perigord: French province. Bayonne: French town.
559. French libation: Wine. Italian strain: Opera (musical ‘strains’).
560–61. Bladen … Knight: Well-known gamblers. crowds undone: By the collapse of the South Sea Bubble investment scheme, itself a kind of gambling, in which these individuals were apparently involved.
562. three essential partridges in one: ‘two dissolved into quintessence to make sauce for the third’ (Pope’s note), with an ironic allusion to the Holy Trinity.
568. Inns of Court: The complex of buildings belonging to the legal societies, whose members neglect their profession in favour of literary dabbling.
569. Vertù: connoisseurship (Gallic form of Italian virtù).
570. F. R. S.: Fellow of the Royal Society, a distinguished honour which Pope nevertheless disparages.
571–2. Freemasons … Pythagoras: i.e. for members of the secret society of Freemasons, as for ancient followers of Pythagoras, ‘taciturnity is the only essential qualification’ (Pope’s note).
573. Florists at the least: i.e. merely producing flowers for show, hence inferior to botanists who seek scientific knowledge.
574. annual feast: Of any civic or professional organization.
576. Gregorian … Gormogon: Societies founded to make fun of the Freemasons.
578. Isis and Cam: Rivers at Oxford and Cambridge.
585. cap and switch: Of a jockey. his Grace: A duke.
586. staff and pumps: Stick and shoes used by ‘running footmen’ who trotted alongside their master’s coach; here, the young Marquis amuses himself by dressing as a footman.
587. licensed Earl: He has obtained a licence permitting him to drive a stagecoach, an occupation obviously beneath him.
588. the Sun: In Greek mythology, Helios, who drives his chariot daily from east to west.
589. design: Sketch, draw.
590. Arachne: The spider; the baron seeks a way to make silk from spiderwebs.
591. sergeant: Or serjeant: a barrister in the common law, who would address his fellow lawyers as ‘brother’; the ‘dance’ refers to ceremonial revels at the Inns of Court.
593. The Bishop: William Talbot, Bishop of Durham, who would have a hundred turkeys reduced by cooking until they filled a single pie.
602. First Ministers: Prime ministers; Walpole (the ‘daring son’ (599)), who had recently fallen from power, was thought by the opposition to have had excessive influence over George II.
603. three Estates: The Lords Spiritual (bishops), Lords Temporal (peers), and Commons.
608. St James’s: The chapel royal. Gilbert: John Gilbert, Archbishop of York, who is ‘leaden’ in helping to bring in the Age of Lead.
609. Hall: The law courts at Westminster Hall.
610. Convocation: Assembly of clergy.
611. Nation’s Sense: A majority decision by the House of Commons was sometimes called ‘the sense of the nation’.
614. Palinurus: The pilot of Aeneas’ ship, who went to sleep and fell into the sea; thus, Walpole losing office.
618. navies yawned for orders: The opposition denounced Walpole for resisting going to war to avenge Spanish attacks on English shipping. the main: The sea.
627. In vain: The asterisks indicate a break to set off the eloquent conclusion.
633. Wit: Intelligence.
635. Medea: In Seneca’s Medea, the sorceress calls upon the monsters of the celestial constellations as she prepares to murder her children.
637. Argus’ eyes: Hermes, messenger of the gods, used his caduceus ‘wand’ (the herald’s staff with wings and entwined snakes) to put the hundred-eyed monster Argus to sleep, and then slew him.
642. Casuistry: Specious reasoning.
644. second cause: God being the ‘first cause’, a ‘second cause’ acts in reaction to something else; the reference appears to be the scientific theorists who stop at material causes and ignore the ultimate power of God.
645. Physic: Science, also medicine.
647. Mystery to Mathematics fly: i.e. deists claim that the laws of physics, rather than the ‘mysteries’ of faith, can confirm the existence and goodness of God.
650. unawares Morality expires: Since morality has been dependent on religion, it unexpectedly expires.
654. uncreating word: Reversing the Word of divine creation: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1), and ‘God said, Let there be light, and there was light’ (Genesis 1:3).
655. Anarch: Monarch of anarchy, a term Milton uses for Chaos (Paradise Lost, II, 988).
PROSE W
RITINGS
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ILIAD
Pope’s preface appeared in 1715 in the first instalment of his Iliad translation; approximately half of it is given here. With allusions to theorists of epic and to previous translators, he describes his attempt to achieve a poetic style that will make the archaic poem fresh and alive for his contemporaries, with equivalents for expressions that they would find obscure or peculiar. Invoking a traditional contrast between Homer and Virgil, Pope insists that Homer’s greatness lies in creative ‘invention’, and in the poetic energy that he calls ‘spirit and fire’.
1. invention: Creative power (literally ‘finding out’ the possibilities of a work).
2. ‘They pour … it’: Iliad, II, 780.
3. numbers: Metre, versification.
4. vivida vis animi: ‘active power of mind’ (Lucretius, De Rerum Naturae).
5. Lucan: Author of Pharsalia, an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Statius: Author of the Thebaid, an epic poem about the legendary conflict between the sons of Oedipus in the Greek city Thebes.
6. fable: ‘the series or contexture of events which constitute a poem epic or dramatic’ (Dictionary).
7. ‘soul of poetry’: Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 6.
8. Aristotle expresses it: Poetics, ch. 24. Manners are ‘general way of life; morals; habits’ (Dictionary).
9. sentiments: ‘sentiment: thought; notion; opinion’ (Dictionary).
10. Longinus: Greek rhetorician, supposed author of a treatise On the Sublime.
11. Gnomologia Homerica: By James Duport, Cambridge classicist, whose book (1660) compares aphorisms from Homer to sayings from the Bible.
12. an excellent modern writer: Joseph Addison, in Spectator, 279.
13. living words: Aristotle, Rhetoric, III, 11.
14. machines: Supernatural beings or ‘Machinery’ intervene in human affairs.
15. Ancient: Ever since the previous century, there had been an ongoing controversy between ‘ancients’, who championed the superiority of classical literature, and ‘moderns’.
16. fustian: ‘a high swelling kind of writing made up of heterogeneous parts, or of words and ideas ill associated; bombast’ (Dictionary).
17. tricked up: Adorned in a showy manner.
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) Page 57