The joke, at once hackneyed and undignified, was struck out by Pope himself in subsequent editions.

1. 145.

this world, 'tis true,

Was made for Caesar.

The allusion to Addison, Cato, act 5, sc. I, would be seized at once by Pope's readers at a time when Cato was still a favourite on the stage.

1. 148. be whose virtue sigb'd to lose a day. This celebrated saying of Titus, is reported by Suetonius in his Life, and repeated after him by innumerable annalists and chroniclers, Eusebius, Aurelius Victor, &c. Sueton. Vitae Caess. Tit. § 8: 'Recollecting at supper that he had not in the whole course of the day conferred any favour on any one, he uttered those memorable and justly commended words, My friends, I have lost a day!' ('Amici diem perdidi!') Cf. Young, Night Thoughts, Night 2 :—

I've lost a day! the prince who nobly cried
Had been an emperor without his crown.'

1. 151. That: i. e. bread.

1. 171. or truth a gown. Not the gown of the clergyman, but of the academical degree of Doctor, as rightly understood by M. de Fontanes, 'Qu'un bonnet de docteur couvre la verité.'

Cf. Moral Essays, I. 137,

A judge is just, a chanc'lor juster still,

A gownman learn'd, a bishop what you will.'

Pope could not be alluding to the refusal by Convocation of the degree of D.C.L. to Warburton, as that visit to Oxford did not take place till 1741. This refusal is pointed at in the Dunciad, 4. 577,

The last, not least, in honour or applause,

Isis and Cam made Doctors of her Laws.'

666

1. 172. its great cure, a crown. Perhaps a petty gibe at William III (died March 8, 1702). An aversion to kings was one of Pope's affectations. Boswell, Life of Johnson, vol. 8, p. 19: ""Mr. Pope, you don't love princes," said Frederick, Prince of Wales, to him one day. "Sir, I beg your pardon.' "Well, you don't love kings, then." "Sir, I own I love the lion best before his claws are grown." Cf. Walpole, Letters to Mann, 1741. Contrast Pope's affectation with the bitter sincerity of Milton, Sonnet to Cromwell, Sonnet 16:

་

And on the neck of crowned fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and His work pursued.'

In the editions of Milton from Philipps to Fenton these lines were mutilated. 1. 190. The lover and the love of bumankind. Love,' in the sense of the beloved person, is old English, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 4, sc. 4: 'I am my master's true confirmed love.'

Spenser, Faery Queene, 1. 3. 28:

Then I leave you, my liefe, yborn of heavenly berth.' But being almost always applied as a familiar term of endearment, it lowers the dignity of the context here. Cf. Latin use of 'amor,' Sueton. Vitae Caes. Tit. 1: Titus, amor ac deliciae generis humani.'

1. 194. Act well your part. The comparison of life to a play is one of those images at once obvious and striking, which were adopted by the moderns from the classical poets, and employed by every writer till taste

revolted at the repetition. Pope, with all his fastidiousness in choice of expression, allows himself to fall sometimes into these hackneyed metaphors. 1. 199. cowl. Wedgwood: Lat. Cucullus; A. S. cugle, cufle, cuble; W. cufl. The origin may perhaps be Gael. coqull, husks of corn in which the grain is cased, as monk's head in his hood.'

1. 204. prunella. Johnson: Prunello a kind of stuff of which the clergymen's gowns are made.'

1. 206. That. That is the demonstrative pronoun, and to be emphasised in reading.

1. 207. Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race. Cf. Habington, Castara; Southey's Poets, p. 992:

'For although the blood

Of Marshall, Standley, and La Pole doth flow
With happy Brandon's in your veines, you owe
Your virtue not to them. Man builds alone

O' th' ground of honour; for desert's our own!'

1. 208. from Lucrece to Lucrece. Lucretia, with the French pronunciation. The allusion is to Boileau, Sat. 5. 85:

'Si leur sang tout pur, ainsi que leur noblesse,

Est passé jusqu'à vous de Lucrèce en Lucrèce.'

1. 211. Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood, &c. Ovid, Met. 13. 140: Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco.'

1. 218. beroes, &c. Cf. this passage with Juvenal's declamatory lines on the same subject, Sat. 10. 133, &c. 1. 219. Macedonia's madman.

Truth is here sacrificed to alliteration. The overthrow of the Persian empire was not the enterprise of a madman. The retreat of the ten thousand (B. C. 400) had disclosed the want of internal cohesion in that monarchy, and from that time forward the conquest became a topic of national speculation. Roman criticism was even inclined to underrate the magnitude of the enterprise. Nihil magis ausus quam vana contemnere,' says Livy, 9. 16. In a better tone than Pope, Pope's favourite, Surrey, Poems, p. 44 (ed. Nott):

The great Macedon that out of Persia chas'd
Darius, of whose huge power all Asia rang.'

1. 220. the Swede. The epithet madman which has adhered to Alexander the Great, ought to have been joined to the Swede. The instance of Charles XII is more appropriate than most of the historical examples pitched upon by Pope in the Essay. Charles XII's extraordinary career was still recent; he was killed at Frederickshall, 1718. It was sufficient to allude to him as the Swede, since public attention had been recalled to him by Voltaire's brilliant monograph, published in 1731, with the false date (?) of 'Rouen.'

1. 224. Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose. Observe the effect of this single line in vulgarizing the whole context.

1. 225. No less alike the politic and wise. Alike corresponds to much the same in 1. 219; resemble each other.'

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1. 235. Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was emperor from A.D. 161 to 180. He left a book of Reflections.' It was translated into English by

(among others) Jeremy Collier, 1701. The Essay on Man shews throughout traces of Pope's familiarity with this book over and above the passages directly borrowed.

1. 236. bleed. Bleed seems as improperly said of the death of Socrates, as reign of Marcus Aurelius.

I. 237. Dugald Stewart, Works, 6. 148: 'That the desire of esteem, if a fantastic principle of action in one of these cases (i. e. posthumous fame), is equally so in the other (i. e. contemporary reputation) is remarked by Pope. But instead of availing himself of this consideration to justify the desire of posthumous renown, he employs it as an argument to expose the nothingness of fame in all cases whatsoever.'

1. 237. What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath. Cf. Pope, Temple of Fame, 505:

How vain that second life in others' breath,

Th' estate which wits inherit after death.'

Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. 3. 47.

He

1. 244. Eugene. Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose signal defeat of the Turks at Peterwaradin in 1696, and share in the victories of the War of the Spanish Succession, had earned for him the highest military renown. died in 1736, and was therefore living when the Essay on Man was published.

1. 247. A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod. Alluding to the pen with which the wit writes, and the baton which was the symbol of the authority of the general. But the allusion is so obscure that the line, often as it quoted, seems to be generally misunderstood.

1. 252. Is hung on high, to poison half mankind. Alluding to the barbarous practice of hanging in chains, a practice which was not discontinued till the present century.

1. 256. buzzas rhymes with weighs, according to the pronunciation of the last vowel, which then ruled. The present pronunciation huzza is etymologically more correct. The word represents a cry of the chase (? Norman),

bou! ça!

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1. 257. Marcellus. Marcus Marcellus (died B. C. 46) may be ranked with M. Cato as the best and most public-spirited of the Pompeian party. After Pharsalus, he withdrew to Mitylene, where he devoted himself to literature and philosophy. Warton has preserved a tradition that by Marcellus, Pope meant the Duke of Ormonde. James, second Duke, was attainted of high treason, 1715, along with Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford. He was now (1734) living in exile in France in the service of the Pretender.

1. 266. All fear, none aid you, and few understand. The constant complaint of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius; see his De Rebus Suis, passim. 1. 267. Painful prebeminence! Cf. Byron, Childe Harold, canto 3, st. 45, He who ascends to mountain tops shall find

The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind

Must look down on the hate of those below.'

1. 278. Mark bow they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy. It has been thought that Lord Melcombe and Sir William Yonge are here intended. But Bubb Dodington was only advanced to the peerage as Lord Melcombe in

I

1761; and there is no point in supposing any real character to be aimed at here. The only reason for so thinking is, that in l. 280,

Look but on Gripus or on Gripus' wife,'

the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough are intended, as the context, 1. 302, foll., shews.

1. 281. Bacon. Francis Bacon, born 1560, died 1626, aet.66. Party rancour pressed against him certain charges of venality in the discharge of his judicial functions as Lord Chancellor. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to pay a fine of 40,000l., to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure, and was declared incapable of holding any office or of sitting in parlia

ment.

1. 282. The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind. It is painful to turn,' says Macaulay, from contemplating Bacon's philosophy, to contemplating his life.' So much truth requires us to say. But Pope goes beyond the truth. Bacon was not the meanest of mankind. Pope cannot forego an antithetical effect at whatever cost it has to be obtained. And in estimating historical characters he seems to have been without any proper standard, and wholly at the mercy of prevailing social prejudices. In the Essay alone we have such mistakes in the cases of Alexander the Great, Cromwell, Newton, Bacon, &c. Cf. 4. 492. Thomson had excused Bacon in lines as much better in sentiment as they are weaker in expression. Seasons; Summer, 15.34: Hapless in his choice,

Unfit to stand the civil storms of state,

And through the smooth barbarity of courts
With firm but pliant virtue, forward still

To urge his course; him for the studious shade
Kind nature formed, deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact and elegant;' &c.

1. 283. ravish'd with. Spenser uses this construction, Sonnet 3,
'Ravished with fancy's wonderment.'

Drummond, Hymn on Fairest Fair,

But ravished with still beholding thee.'

ravish'd with the whistling of a name. Alluding to the proverb, The fowler's whistle the bird's death.' See Gosson, School of Abuse, p. 1o. Pope probably remembered Cowley, Ess. Trans. of Virg. Georg. 2,

Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name.'

1. 284. Cromwell. See note on 4. 281.

1. 285. all, united: i. e. the rich, the honour'd, fam'd, and great.

1. 290. How happy! those to ruin, these betray. Pope has here carried condensation to obscurity.

1. 292. From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice rose. Pope is affecting to redress the false scale of the common estimates of human affairs. A true sense of greatness would not have permitted him to sneer at the humble origin of Venice, which in 1735, though she had not lost her independence, had fallen from her splendour. More just was the sentiment of the Latin poets, who always refer to the lowly origin of Rome in a spirit of pride, e. g. Propertius, Eleg. 4. I,

'Hoc, quodcunque vides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est,
Ante Phrygem Aeneam, collis et herba fuit.'

Thomson again is in a nobler tone (of Venice), Liberty, pt. 4, 1. 294,
Where pushed from plunder'd earth a remnant still
Inspired by me, through the dark ages, kept

Of my old Roman flame some sparks alive;
The seeming god-built city,' &c.

Alluded to by Byron, Childe Harold, c. 4, st. 13,

Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks like a sea-weed into whence she rose.'

Cf. Rogers' Italy, Venice.

1. 303. story'd. A Miltonic epithet misused. Milton, Penseroso 158, says 'storied windows,' that is, representing ancient story, Cf. Harrison, Description of England, bk. 2, c. I, 'As for our churches, all images, shrines, tabernacles, rood loftes, and monuments of idolatry, are removed, onely the stories in the glass windowes, excepted.' story'd balls can only mean halls famed in story, historic. Cf. Comus, 516,

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What the sage poets taught by th' heavenly muse
Storied of old in high immortal verse.'

11. 307, 308. See 299, 300. This recurrence of the same rhyme, fameshame, within ten lines is an instance of negligence.

1. 314. Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives. Cf. Merchant of Venice, 4. I,

1. 347.

It is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.' (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind

Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find.) The parenthetical couplet suggests, but obscurely, the argument for a future life from the human instinct of immortality. This argument is shortly stated by Dr. S. Clarke, Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion (1705), p. 271 (ed. 1749), ''Tis not at all probable that God should have given men appetites which were never to be satisfied; desires which had no objects to answer them; and unavoidable apprehensions of what was never really to come to pass.'

1. 352. to assist the rest. It is not clear whether other motives, or other people, are intended.

1. 364. As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake. Chaucer, House of Fame, 2. 280:

If that thou

Threw in a water now a stone,
Well wost thou it will make anone
A littell roundell as a cercle,
Paraventure as broad as a covercle,

And right anone thou shalt see wele

That whele cercle will cause another whele.'

Cf. Shakespeare, Henry VI. pt. 1, act I, sc. 2,

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceases to enlarge itself

Till by broad spreading, it disperse to nought!'

1. 373. come along. This vulgarism is a blemish in the outset of this fine concluding address to Bolingbroke.