what the Athenæum is now. It is to these that Pope referred, when he said that whenever Addison held forth

raise =

1. 213.

Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise.
applaud. See Essay on Man, 3. 97, note.

Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were be!

C. J. Fox, in Rogers's Recollections, p.
Why laugh if there be such a man?
name cannot add anything to our regret."

10: ' The last couplet is very faulty. Why weep if it be Atticus ?

The

Lintot usually

1. 215. What tho' my name stood rubric on the walls. adorned his shop, which was between the Temple gates and bore the sign of The Cross Keys, with titles of books in red letters. Cf. Dunciad, 1. 40: 'Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast

Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post."

Gay, Trivia, 3, fin.:

High rais'd on Fleet-street posts consigned to fame
This work shall shine.'

Boileau, Sat. 9. 229:

Que Billaine l'étale au deuxième pilier.'

The practice dated from a much earlier period of bookselling. Hall, Satire 5. 2:

'When Mævio's first page of his poesy

Nail'd to a hundred postes for novelty."

1. 218. On wings of winds came flying all abroad. A verse of Hopkins's version of Psalm 104.

1. 222. No more than thou, great George! a birth-day song. sarcasm on the King's well-known contempt for literature.

father, hated all boets and bainters.' Cf. Sat. and Ep. 5. 404:

'But verse, alas, your Majesty disdains!'

Swift, Works, 14. 439: Directions for Making a Birthday Song.

A

He, like his

1. 225. Nor like a puppy, daggl'd through the town. Thomas Cooke applied these lines to Savage, who was said to have lived in convivial familiarity with the town authors, and to have secretly supplied Pope with scandalous anecdotes about them. See Gent. Mag., 1791, December, p. 1093. Pope employs the simile again, Sandys' Ghost; Works, Roscoe, 6. 458:

'Like puppy tame, that uses

To fetch and carry, in his mouth,

The works of all the Muses.'

1. 230. There no reason for doubting the tradition, not doubted by H. Walpole (Royal and Noble Authors, 4) or Johnson (Lives of the Poets), that Bufo was meant for Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. Roscoe's reasoning against it will not bear examination. Pope after having drawn him as Bufo

in 1735, wrote of him in 1738, that he was a peer no less distinguished by his love of letters, than by his abilities in parliament,' a statement not inconsistent with the present character, perhaps even a stratagem of concealment. Until some other personage can be pointed out, to whom the lines on Bufo, including the last,

He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve,

can possibly apply, all answer to objections is unnecessary.

The character of Montagu, and his patronage of letters, is sketched in firm lines by Macaulay, Hist. vol. 5. p. 156, seq. He explains the seeming puzzle that a man who loved literature passionately, and rewarded literary merit munificently, should have been more savagely reviled both in prose and verse than almost any other politician in our history. In Faction Displayed (1706), Halifax figures as 'Bathillo.'

1. 233. Fed with soft dedication all day long, e.g. Addison's Epistle; Steele, Tatler, Dedication of vol. 4.

1. 236. And a true Pindar stood without a head. Cf. Juvenal, Sat. 8. 4. 1. 244. And others, harder still, he paid in kind. Gifford thought that Pope shadowed his Bufo in part from Juvenal, Sat. 7. 38 seq. But the resemblance, though marked in Gifford's translation, is faint in the original.

1. 245. what wonder! This interjection is intended to convey that the great poet disdained to join the throng of poetasters in toadying the Mæcenas. But Dryden belonged, in politics and religion, to the opposite party to that to which Halifax belonged. The best of the answers to Dryden's controversial poem, The Hind and Panther,' was written by Montagu in conjunction with Prior, The Hind and Panther transvers'd to the Story of the Country-mouse and the City-mouse,' 1687.

1. 246. judging eye. Imitated by Gray, Ode for Music, 71:

Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye,

The flower unheeded shall descry.'

1. 247. But still the great have kindness in reserve. Scott, Life of Dryden, P. 471: 'It is seldom the extent of such a deprivation is understood, till it has taken place; as the size of an object is best estimated, when we see the space void which it had long occupied. The men of literature, starting, as it were, from a dream, began to heap commemorations, panegyrics and elegies; the great were as much astonished at their own neglect of such an object of bounty, as if the same had never been practised before; and expressed as much compunction as if it were never to occur again.'

1. 248. He help'd to bury. Stanley, Memorials of Westminster, p. 303: 'Lord Halifax offered to pay the expenses of the funeral, with £500 for

a monument.'

belp'd to starve. Inasmuch as he had not relieved his wants. Halifax

may have not unreasonably thought that a Tory poet, and Catholic convert, a political convert too, might have had his wants supplied by his own party.

...

1. 258. Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb. Stanley, Memorials of Westminster, p. 315: 'Gay died at the house of the Duke of Queensbury, and was buried in the Abbey, 1732. .. Lord Chesterfield and Pope were among the mourners. He had, two months before his death, desired "My dear Mr. Pope, whom I love as my own soul, if a stone shall mark the place of my grave, see these words put upon it,

...

Life is a jest, and all things shew it,

I thought so once, and now I know it."'

The epitaph now inscribed on his monument was written by Pope.

1. 262. To live and die is all I have to do. This line is borrowed from Denham, Of Prudence :

1. 265.

Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too;

To live and die is all we have to do.'

Above a patron, tho' I condescend
Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

These lines describe the relations which had been established between
the wits and the politicians in the reign of Queen Anne. The writers and
wits had raised themselves to equal consideration with the statesmen, in a
way which had never been seen in England before. But it was too unnatural
to last. The inauguration of Parliamentary government and systematic
corruption by Walpole destroyed the influence for which the wits had been
courted. At this time (1735) it was a thing of the past. Like so much
else in this Prologue, e. g. the characters of Bufo and Addison, Pope is draw-
ing upon his recollections, rather than describing the facts of the day. He
belongs already to the past, both in style and matter. See Introd. p. 10.
1. 268. believe, and say my prayers. Cf. Gray, of himself:

No very great wit, he believed in a God.'

1. 280. Sir Will. Sir William Yonge, Bart., Secretary at War 17351746. Cf. Sat. and Ep., Epilog. 1. 68.

Bubo. George Bubb Dodington, created, 1761, Lord Melcombe. The two are coupled again, Sat. and Ep., Epil. 1.

68:

'The flow'rs of Bubo, and the flow of Yonge.'

Moral Essay, 4. 20. He is probably meant also, Moral Essay, 1. 59: 'When universal homage Umbra pays,

All sees 'tis vice and itch of vulgar praise.'

1. 283. Curst be the verse, &c. For the sentiment cf. Skelton, Colin Cloute, 1091:

'For I rebuke no man

That vertuous is, why than

Wreke ye your anger on me?
For those that vertuous be
Have no cause to say

That I speke out of the way.'

1. 299. Who to the Dean and silver bell can swear. Moral Essays, 4. 141: 'And now the chapel's silver bell you hear.' 4. 149: To rest the cushion. and soft Dean invite.' The reference is to the description of Timon's Villa in the 4th Moral Essay. Pope wishes to insinuate that that description was imaginary. But is impossible to doubt that by Timon's villa he intended Canons. The denial was a part of his system, which is justly described by Mr. Carruthers, Life, p. 290: To equivocate genteelly, as he termed it, or to deny firmly as circumstances might require, were expedients he never hesitated to adopt. Imaginary details being generally worked in to his pictures, he could always quibble, and deny part with truth.' Johnson, Life of Pope: From the reproach which an attack on a character so amiable brought on him, he tried all means of escaping. He was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions.'

1. 300. And sees at Cannons what was never there. On the estate of Canons, near Harrow and Edgware, a magnificent mansion was built at a cost of £200,000, in 1712, by Mr. Brydges, created, in 1719, Duke of Chandos. He was the patron of art and learning in an age when they had ceased to be in repute, and when the great nobles were lavishing their wealth on electioneering contests. He contributed £200 towards the publication of Hudson's Josephus, and a like sum to Berkeley's Bermuda College. The place being too expensive for his successor, in 1747 Canons was pulled down. Cf. Gay, Epist. 4:

'If Chandos with a liberal hand bestow,

Censure imputes it all to pomp and shew;
When if the motive right were understood,
His daily pleasure is in doing good.'

1. 305. Sporus. John, Lord Hervey, son of the Earl of Bristol, personally attached to the Court of George II., in the capacity of Vice-Chamberlain. Pope hated this nobleman with a malignity beyond what can be accounted for by his being a Whig, and a favourite at Court. The first attack was in 1727, in the Miscellanies. In 1733 (Sat. and Ep. 1) he was again sneered at under the name of 'Lord Fanny.' To this Lord Hervey replied in Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Pope retorted, in a prose Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Roscoe, 7. 397), which he followed up by the present character of Sporus. The name itself—that of one of Nero's minions-was designed as an insult, though it had been employed by Marston, 1598 (Sat. 1), without

the insinuation. A full account of the feud between Pope and Lord Hervey is given by J. W. Croker, in his Introduction to Lord Hervey's Memoirs. He says, p. xliii., 'It is impossible not to admire, however we may condemn, the art by which acknowledged wit, beauty, and gentle manners, the Queen's favour, and even a valetudinary diet, are travestied into the most odious defects and offences.' But it seems questionable if the poet's virulence here be not an error in point of art, as it undoubtedly is an offence against public morality. The accumulation of odious epithets and disgusting images revolts the imagination and enlists our sympathy against the writer. Like all overcharged statements, it arouses mental resistance, and prompts disbelief. Only a knowledge of Lord Hervey's real character enables us to understand how much the distorted picture wants truth, but every reader feels how much it wants probability.

1. 319. Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad. The allusion is to Milton. Lord Hervey was trusted and consulted by Queen Caroline, who governed George II. Familiar, used often in this sense by Milton, Par. Lost, 2. 219, 761; 11. 305.

1. 330.

Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have exprest,

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.

For the opinion that Eve's tempter was not any natural serpent, but Satan in a form half seraphic, half serpentine, see Mayer, Historia Diaboli, p. 218 (ed. 1780). And so, no doubt from Jewish tradition, in early Christian art. Though in the thirteenth century the serpent is generally represented with plain zoological characters, yet he sometimes appears with human head and arms. The head is sometimes that of a woman, sometimes that of a man. See Didron, Archéol. de l'Art, p. 74.

1. 349. The blow unfelt. The allusion is to a lampoon published in 1728, professing to give an account of a whipping inflicted on Pope in Ham Walks. For a full account, see Carruthers, Life, p. 268. Pope confidently believed that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the fabricator of this story.

1. 351. Th' imputed trash. Pope notes on this such as profane Psalms, Court Poems, and other scandalous things printed in his name by Curll and others.' Dr. Johnson, however, and Mr. Carruthers, both think that Pope was author of a Roman Catholic Version of the First Psalm for the Use of a Young Lady, 1716, which was attributed to him at the time. Boileau makes a similar complaint of the trash that was fathered upon him. Ep. to Lamoignon:

...Vient-il de la province une satyre fade,

D'un plaisant du pays insipide boutade,' &c.

1. 353. the pictur'd shape. Warton: Hay, in his Essay on Deformity, has remarked that Pope was so hurt by the caricature of his figure, as to