1

rank it among the most atrocious injuries he received from his enemies.' According to Fenton, Atterbury once said of his friend Pope, that there was a crooked mind in a crooked body.'

1. 354. Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread. Carruthers, Life, p. 151: Curll the bookseller published every scrap which he could rake out of the sinks of literature against Pope and his friends.'

1. 363. Japhet, i. e. Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger. Cf. Sat. and Ep., Epil. 1. 120:

'Shall Japhet pocket, like his Grace, a will.'

1. 365. Knight of the Post. Cunningham, Handbook of London, p. 543: Shameless ruffians who sought employment in Westminster Hall as hired witnesses, and walked openly, with a straw in their shoe to denote their quality.' Butler, Miscellaneous Thoughts:'

'Discharge all damages and costs

Of knights and squires of the Post.'
Knight of the Post from Hell, 4to. 1606.

Nash, Return of the

or of the shire.

The opposite end of the social scale. The representative in Parliament of an English county, as distinguished from the representatives of the cities and towns, who are called burgesses.

1. 371. friend to his distress. Towards the close of his life Dennis was in distressed circumstances. The Provoked Husband was brought out at the Haymarket for his benefit, and Pope furnished a Prologue.

Dennis' Character of earliest of the libels

1. 374. Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply? Mr. Pope was published in 1716, and was perhaps the upon him. The first Dunciad, bks. 1-3, which was Pope's reply, was published in 1728.

==

1. 375. Three thousand suns had told two lies. One, that Timon's Villa meant the Duke of Chandos' seat at Canons. But the Fourth Moral Essay was written in 1731, and was apologised for, or the allusions disclaimed, immediately. This, therefore, is not the lie on which three thousand suns were suffered to go down. We must therefore, with Mr. Carruthers, refer the lie in question to Welsted's Triumvirate,' 1718. The story of this lie, of very small importance, which Pope avenges in the present line, may be read in Carruthers' Life, pp. 79-80.

poeticè, ten years. Welsted, it seems,

lie. As to Pope's thus giving the lie to a living person (Welsted died 1748), we must remember that brutal language of that kind passed between Englishmen of that time more easily than it now does. An extreme case is furnished by Lady Cowper's Diary, 1715. Lord Townshend was sent to the Duke of Somerset by George I., to tell him he was dismissed. The Duke enquired the reason. Lord Townshend answered that he did not know. Then said the Duke, By God, my Lord, you lie; you know that

the King puts me out for no other cause but for the lies which you and such as you have invented and told of me.'

==

1. 378. Let Budgel charge. Not imperative, but past tense indicative; 'he suffered Budgel to charge.'

charge low Grub-street on his quill, i.e. charge Pope's pen with having been employed in contributing to the Grub-street Journal. Pope, in a note on this line, asserts that he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal' of the paper. It is ascertained that he had frequently communicated paragraphs to it.

Grub-street. Johnson, Dict.: The name of a street in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called Grub-street.' It is now called 'Milton-street,' from its proximity to the Bunhill residence of the great

poet.

1. 379. except his will. Budgel was charged by common repute with having forged the will of Dr. Matthew Tindal. See Sat. and Ep. 4. 64. 1. 380. the two Curls. Curl the bookseller. and Lord Hervey. Lord Hervey is here coupled with the libellous bookseller, as above, 1. 363, he was paired with Japhet Crook. On Curl, see Gay, Epist. 4:

Y

'Were Prior, Congreve, Swift, and Pope unknown,
Poor slander-selling Curll had been undone.'

1. 385, James Moore. Son of Arthur Moore, and Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford; a friend of the Blounts of Maple-Durham, with whom he corresponded under the name of Alexis. See above, l. 23: 'Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the law.'

1. 388. Of gentle blood. Pope claimed to be connected on the father's side with the Earls of Downe. The claim, founded only on family tradition, wants direct confirmation. It is, however, allowed by Mr. Hunter to be not in itself improbable. (See Hunter, Pope, his Descent and Family, 1857.) Dr. Bolton, Dean of Carlisle, said that Pope's grandfather was a clergyman in Hampshire. Mr. Hunter is inclined to identify him with Alexander Pope, Rector of Thruxton, 1631. Pope's mother was daughter of William Turner, a Roman Catholic gentleman of Yorkshire.

part shed in bonour's cause. One of the Turners was killed, and another died. in the service of Charles I.

1. 391. than Bestia's from the throne. The key to this allusion has not been found. But in Sat. and Ep. 3. 90, Bestia stood in first ed. in place

of D * 1.

Dryden, and after him

1. 393. Nor marrying discord in a noble wife. Addison, had sought advancement by connecting themselves with noble families, but only reaped domestic unhappiness.

1.397. Nor dar'd an oath. As a Roman Catholic he declined to take

various oaths which were at that time necessary qualifications for civil offices.

1. 398. no schoolman's subtile art. The Jesuit Casuists had treated with great subtlety the theory of equivocal propositions, with especial reference to the test oaths imposed in this country. Strictly speaking the Casuists and the Schoolmen were two very different classes of writers. Cf. Dunciad, 4.27:

Morality, by her false doctrines drawn,

Chicane in furs and casuistry in lawn.'

11. 406-413. The pathetic sweetness of these concluding lines is not surpassed by anything else which Pope has written. Their effect is founded on the truth they express. Pope's filial piety is well attested, and the affectionate solicitude with which he surrounded the declining years of his aged mother held the leading place in his duties and occupations. He is, therefore, here expressing a sentiment genuine and deep. But mixed up with this, as seems inevitable in all that comes from Pope, is a strain of deception. (1) The lines as originally conceived, had another subject, and were afterwards altered and applied to Mrs. Pope. (See Letter to Aaron Hill, Sept. 3, 1731.) (2) When this Epistle to Arbuthnot was published, Mrs. Pope had been dead eighteen months. She died June 7, 1733. It was only by the fiction of supposing himself to have been composing the Epistle as far back as the first half of 1733, that he could speak of himself as 'rocking the cradle of reposing age.'

1. 417. And just as rich as when be serv'd a queen. Arbuthnot had been physician to Queen Anne, and had apartments in the Palace at St. James's. On the Queen's death, he had to leave these; and he writes to Swift, August 12, 1714: 'My case is not half so deplorable as poor Lady Masham's and several of the Queen's servants, some of whom have no chance for their bread, but the generosity of his present Majesty."

SATIRES AND EPISTLES. I.

(Imitation of Horace, 2 Sat. 1.)

1733.

Pope told Spence, Anecdotes, p. 62: When I had a fever one winter in town, that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning it over, dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how well that would suit my case, if I were to imitate it in English. After

he was gone, I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my imitating some other of the Satires and Epistles.'

This Satire was first published alone, in 1733, under the title 'Dialogue between Alexander Pope of Twickenham in com. Midd. on the one part, and the Learned Counsel on the other.'

To Mr. Fortescue. William Fortescue, a descendant of the celebrated Judge Sir John Fortescue, called to the Bar in 1715, was at this time Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales. He was intimate with the wits and literary men of the day, yet was not considered a bad lawyer. He became Baron of the Exchequer in 1736, and Master of the Rolls in 1741. Cf. Gay, Trivia, 2. 475:

'Come Fortescue! sincere, experienc'd friend,

Thy briefs, thy deeds, and e'en thy fees suspend.'

1. 3. wise Peter. Peter Walter, who had acquired a very large fortune as attorney and money-scrivener. He was Clerk of the Peace for Middlesex, and, at this time, M.P. for Winchelsea, voting with the Court. He lived at Stalbridge, Dorsetshire, and Pope had been in the way of hearing about him when staying with Lord Digby at Sherborne. Peter Walter was the original of Peter Pounce in Joseph Andrews.

1. 4. Chartres. See Essay on Man, 4. 130, note.

1. 6. Lord Fanny. Cf. Sat. and Ep., Prol. 149: 'gentle Fanny,' i.e. Lord Hervey. Pope pretended that it was only the anglicised form of the Latin 'Fannius' (the ineptus Fannius' of Hor. I Sat. 10. 79), but his readers saw through the excuse which scarcely affected to be serious. See Sat. and Ep., Prol. 305, note.

a thousand such a day. It is said of Lucilius that he would dictate two hundred lines at one time. Ronsard boasted of being able to write two hundred lines before dinner, and as many again after. Nisard, Lit. Franç. 2. 296.

1. 8. counsel, council' in Warburton's ed. 1751, in ed. 1740, and in the original fol. 1733. It must have been originally a clerical error.

1. 10. Advice, and, as you use, without a fee. Horace applies for advice to Trebatius, a lawyer, but who was also noted as a drinker and swimmer. Hence the point of his answers, which is lost in those put into the mouth of Fortescue.

1. 18. cowslip wine. Pope, Letter to Cromwell, 1708: Well, for the future, I'll drown all high thoughts in the Lethe of cowslip wine. As for fame, renown, reputation, take 'em critics!'

1. 20. Hartshorn. 'Sirop of cowslep, and hartshorn' occur in a sleeping potion prescribed by Dr. Radcliffe for Swift, 1733. Scott, Life of Swift, P. 28.

1. 22. the bays. The insignia of the poet laureate.

I. 23. Sir Richard. Blackmore, knighted by William III., in 1697. Cp. Sat. and Ep. 5. 387.

rumbling, rough, and fierce. See Blackmore's Poem on the Duke of Marlborough's Victories, 1706.

1. 27. Budgel. This is to punish Budgell for having suggested in The Bee, Feb. 1733, that Pope contributed to the Grub-street Journal. Poor Budgell, who had been ruined, partly by powerful enemies, partly by South Sea speculation, was beneath Pope's notice. But besides twice mentioning him in the present Satire (see 1. 100), he returned to the attack in 1735. See Sat. and Ep., Prol. 378. The name spelt by Pope, Budgel, is written by himself, Budgell.

1. 28. Paint angels trembling round his falling borse. Allusion to the Battle of Oudenarde, 1708. It was begun by a charge of combined English and Hanoverian horse, in which the Prince of Hanover rode, and had his horse shot under him.

1. 30. Carolina. Queen-Consort of George II., a Princess of Branden. burg-Anspach. During ten years she may be said to have governed England. She was the especial object of hatred to the Tory opposition, though with the nation at large she was more popular than any other member of her family till George III. See Stanhope, History of England,

ch. 15.

1. 35. Cæsar scorns the poet's lays. Cf. Sat. and Ep., Prol. 222, note. Pope returns to the charge again, Sat. and Ep., Ep. 5. 404:

'But verse, alas! your majesty disdains.'

On the King's want of literature, cf. Lord Hervey's sarcasm, Ep. to the Queen,' Mem. vol. 2. p. 152:

For admittance to your eyes, I plead

That some great princes certainly could read.'

1. 36. It is to history he trusts for praise. With Pope's sarcasm, cf. Boileau's flattery to Louis XIV., Épître 1 :

Qui mit à tout blâmer son étude et sa gloire,

A pourtant de ce roi parlé comme l'histoire.'

1. 42. A bundred smart. Ben Jonson, Hor. 2 Sat. I:

'In satire each man though untouch'd complains As he were hurt, and hates such biting strains.' And cf. Phædrus, Fab. lib. 3. prol.

in Timon and in Balaam. Timon, Mor. Ess. 4. 99 seq.; Balaam, Mor. Ess. 3. 339 seq. Timon is ingeniously introduced here to back up his

declaration that the Duke of Chandos was not intended.

1. 43. The fewer still you name, you wound the more. Pope says (Sat. and Ep., Prol., Adv.), 'Many will know their own pictures, there being not a