the kingdom of poets.
"232"
His name was coupled with that of Horace as a poet and critic.
"234 Pindar without a head:"
some headless statue which Bufo insisted was a genuine cla.s.sic figure of Pindar, the famous Greek lyric poet.
"237 his seat:"
his country seat.
"242 paid in kind:"
What does this phrase mean?
"243"
Dryden died in 1700. He had been poor and obliged to work hard for a living in his last years, but hardly had to starve. Halifax offered to pay the expenses of his funeral and contribute five hundred pounds for a monument, and Pope not unreasonably suggests that some of this bounty might have been bestowed on Dryden in his lifetime.
"249"
When a politician wants a writer to put in a day"s work in defending him. Walpole, for example, who cared nothing for poetry, spent large sums in retaining writers to defend him in the journals and pamphlets of the day.
"254"
John Gay, the author of some very entertaining verses, was an intimate friend of Pope. On account of some supposed satirical allusions his opera "Polly" was refused a license, and when his friends, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry (see l. 260) solicited subscriptions for it in the palace, they were driven from the court. Gay died in 1732, and Pope wrote an epitaph for his tomb in Westminster Abbey. It is to this that he alludes in l. 258.
"274"
Balbus is said to mean the Earl of Kinnoul, at one time an acquaintance of Pope and Swift.
"278"
Sir William Yonge, a Whig politician whom Pope disliked. He seems to have written occasional verses. Bubo is Bubo Doddington (see note on l 230).
"297-298"
In the Fourth Moral Essay, published in 1731 as an "Epistle to the Earl of Burlington", Pope had given a satirical description of a n.o.bleman"s house and grounds, adorned and laid out at vast expense, but in bad taste. Certain features of this description were taken from Canons, the splendid country place of the Duke of Chandos, and the duke was at once identified by a scandal-loving public with the Timon of the poem. In the description Pope speaks of the silver bell which calls worshipers to Timon"s chapel, and of the soft Dean preaching there "who never mentions h.e.l.l to ears polite." In this pa.s.sage of the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" he is protesting against the people who swore that they could identify the bell and the Dean as belonging to the chapel at Canons.
"303 Sporus":
a favorite of Nero, used here for Lord Hervey. See introduction to this poem, p. 128.
"304 a.s.s"s milk":
Hervey was obliged by bad health to keep a strict diet, and a cup of a.s.s"s milk was his daily drink.
"308 painted child":
Hervey was accustomed to paint his face like a woman.
"317-319"
Pope is thinking of Milton"s striking description of Satan "squat like a toad" by the ear of the sleeping Eve ("Paradise Lost", IV, 800). In this pa.s.sage "Eve" refers to Queen Caroline with whom Hervey was on intimate terms. It is said that he used to have a seat in the queen"s hunting chaise "where he sat close behind her perched at her ear."
"322 now master up, now miss":
Pope borrowed this telling phrase from a pamphlet against Hervey written by Pulteney, a political opponent, in which the former is called "a pretty little master-miss."
"326 the board":
the Council board where Hervey sat as member of the Privy Council.
"328-329"
An allusion to the old pictures of the serpent in Eden with a snake"s body and a woman"s, or angel"s, face.
"330 parts":
talents, natural gifts.
"338-339"
An allusion to Pope"s abandoning the imaginative topics to his early poems, as the "Pastorals" and "The Rape of the Lock", and turning to didactic verse as in the "Essay on Man", and the "Moral Epistles".
"347"