that did her work well. circled green. Rings of grass of richer growth than the surrounding sward mark the place of midnight dances of the fairies. See Dryden's Wife of Bath's Tale, II. 3-6; Brand's Popular Antiquities, under " Fairy Mythology." These were the teachings of the nurse; the next two lines represent those of the priest. 39. wit. The eighteenth century worshipped cleverness and intellectual alertness of any kind. This led to the assumption of the character of a wit, by a rather large class who were as much men of fashion as the beaux. 44. The box, at the theatre and the ring, at Hyde Park - often named as places of exhibit of beauty and dress. 46. The sedan chair was still a very common means of conveyance for men as well as women. The chairs were to be had for hire in the streets. Those owned by people of fashion were luxuriously appointed and richly ornamented. 51-54. Pope says in the second Moral Epistle, the one on the Characters of Women: In Men, we various Ruling Passions find; The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway. (ll. 207-210.) 56. ombre. A card game, popular in the period, borrowed from the Spanish. It can be played by two, three, four, or five persons. The eights, nines, and tens are thrown out of the pack. 57-66. The conception of the four orders of beings, corresponding to the four physical elements in which they live, is taken from the Rosicrucian theory. But of course the interpretation is Pope's own. 63-64. In the comedies of manners, and the other literature of the tone of The Rape of the Lock, any woman who seems to be virtuous is a prude; and even the prudery is assumed. She is modest because she has never been tempted to be otherwise, and hence is spiteful and malicious. Thus in Pope's plan a prude becomes a mischievous gnome. Pope says elsewhere, "Every woman is at heart a rake."— Moral Epistle II. 1. 216. 86. That is, she rejects the successive offers of marriage that come to her, in hope of the chance of becoming a Duchess. 106. Ariel was the guardian of the waters, in medieval black art. Shakespeare, in The Tempest, was the first to use Ariel in English poetry; his conception, however, is very different from the Ariel of Pope. 130-137. See Addison in the Spectator, No. 69. II 4. At this time there were in London proper only two bridges over the Thames. Pleasure trips on the river were a favourite form of entertainment. 106. The collecting of china was a fashionable fad; there are many references to it in contemporary plays, etc. 108. masquerade. Masquerades had become a very popular form of amusement. They were often public, as at the Pantheon, and for some of these any one might buy a ticket and go masked. These came to be the occasion of much intrigue, and, in time, of much evil. Besides these public masquerades, others were held at private houses. The mask, or vizard, was much used in the pleasures of the time. Women went masked to the plays of doubtful character, and to the parks and other places of amusement, when bent on unauthorized pleasure. Parties went about masked to undertake frolics. 115. Each name is chosen for its appropriateness. The ear-drops are supposed to be set with brilliants; crisp means to curl or crimp. 134. "Chocolate was made in a kind of mill."- Croker's note. 139. thrid. To thread. Archaic. II2 III 3-4. Hampton Court is on the Thames about fifteen miles from London. It at this time had recently been greatly enlarged for William III., after designs by Christopher Wren. Queen Anne spent little time there, and the grounds seem to have been open then as now to the public. This distich brings out the prosaic possibilities of the heroic couplet. 7-8. In lines 89-90, Canto II., we find the usual complimentary reference to the sovereign. A seventeenth or early eighteenth century writer rarely passed by such an opportunity. In the flippancy of this couplet is found one of the first hints of an inclination to drop the conventional panegyric. 14. The acquisition of Japanese and especially of Indian curiosities and handiwork was also a fashionable fad. 17. "The snuff-box of the beau, and the fan of the woman of fashion, were frequent subjects of ridicule in the Spectator. The fan was employed to execute so many little coquettish manœuvres, that Addison ironically proposed that ladies should be drilled in the use of it, as soldiers are trained to the exercise of arms.” - Elwin. See Spectator, No. 102 and No. 134. The fan often bore an epigram or favourite verse of some kind; or, when political strife was running high, the picture of a favoured candidate or leader. The fans of this time were sometimes of enormous size. 29-100. The section omitted contains the elaborate and, to modern readers, tiresome account of the game of ombre between Belinda and the two knights. It was not included in the first edition. 106. The coffee was ground as well as made at the table. Coffee and tea were drunk to an enormous extent in this period. Coffee was introduced into England about 1650, and in 1715 there were two thousand coffeehouses in London. See Sydney's England and the English in the Eighteenth Century and Timb's History of Clubs and Club Life. 117-118. A great deal of talk on politics went on at the coffeehouses; different coffee-houses drew their patronage from different political sets. It was a time when political partisanship ran very high. 145-146. After giving so much power to the sylphs, Pope must suggest some plausible reason for Ariel's impotence now. 165. Atalantis. The New Atalantis, by Mrs. Delariviere Manley; a collection of scandal about public characters of the time. It was very popular for the moment. 166. A small ornamental pillow used for dressing the bed when ladies received visits in their bed-chambers, as was the custom among both men and women. 171-178. This irrelevant interpolation is merely another device to lessen the apparent responsibility of the characters. IV 20. The 16. The spleen was held responsible for a great number of the real and imaginary diseases of the time. Ill-humour, low spirits, the vapours, melancholy, all went under the name of spleen. east wind was supposed to cause spleen. 31-38. This was a favourite jibe of the time. It had a basis in fact, for the special feminine affectation of the period was physical delicacy or hypochondriacal whimsies, chiefly under the name of spleen, or vapours. As guests were received in the bedrooms, there was an abundant opportunity for a display of invalid graces. 69. citron-waters. A drink distilled from the rind of citrons; much used by ladies. 79-84. Belinda's very unbecoming passion is to be due to an outside agency, also. 102. Croker says that pliant lead was used to fasten ladies' curl-papers. It has been used for the same purpose in modern times. 118. Bow. The famous bells on the church of St. Mary le Bow. The present bells, however, date only from 1762. The district about the church had already become unfashionable. Grub Street was in the neighbourhood. 123. Sir Plume. A certain Sir George Brown. "Nobody but Sir George Brown was angry, and he was a great deal so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing but nonsense." Pope, quoted by Spence, in his Anecdotes, pp. 194-195. Spence added that he had been assured that this account of Sir George Brown was the very picture of the man. 124. clouded cane. Mottled with light and dark. See the Tatler, No. 103. 156. bohea. At that time pronounced to rime with way. Cf. tea, Canto I. 1. 62, Canto III. 1. 8. 162. patch-box. A black silk or velvet patch to be worn on the face was a usual part of a lady's toilet. At one time the placing of the patch indicated the wearer's political preferences. V 2. Introduced to relieve the baron of blame. 5. Trojan. Æneas. 7. Clarissa. "A new character introduced in the subsequent editions, to open more clearly the moral of the poem, in a parody of the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucis in Homer." Pope. 14. side box. The ladies occupied the front-boxes, the gentlemen the sideboxes at the theatre. 20. small-pox. The smallpox was as common as any contagious disease of the present time. It was as probable an experience of every one, as measles is now. Evelyn tells of visiting his friend Mrs. Graham when there was smallpox in her family; she was deliberately exposing her children to it that they might undergo it while young. It was held before every beauty as a possible disaster and a warning to her vanity. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation after her return from Constantinople in 1718. 106. the vaulted roofs rebound. From Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 1. 36. 133. Mall. The Mall now runs from Buckingham Palace to the Duke of York's Column. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House are on it. 136. Rosamonda's Lake. A pond in St. James's Park at that time; since filled up. 137. Partridge. The butt of the famous joke of Swift and his friends. He was a quack astrologer and an almanac-maker, who published predictions of coming events. Swift published a prediction of Partridge's death, giving the date; after the date had passed he announced the fulfilment of the prediction, giving the circumstances of Partridge's death. ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY Published in 1717, in first collection of Pope's works. The basis of the poem is undetermined. Nearly every eighteenth century commentator on Pope had a story for it, but none have been proved and most of them disproved. There is no known clew to any identification of the lady or any facts concerning her. The whole matter may be an invention of Pope's. It need never have caused so much comment, had not Pope taken some pains to mystify inquirers and make them think he had had some connection with such a mysterious lady. 60-62. Having died by suicide, she was not allowed rites of burial or a place in consecrated ground. ESSAY ON MAN Published in 1732-1734. It was intended as part of a larger plan never carried out. It was conceived and composed during the period of Pope's intimacy with Bolingbroke, and the basis of thought in it is Bolingbroke's. The Essay so far as completed consists of four epistles on Man: I., with respect to the universe; II., with respect to himself; III., with respect to society; IV., with respect to happiness. The poem had tremendous success, and for some time was regarded as embodying great philosophical wisdom. But even the extracts given show that much of the poem's apparent profundity is reducible to easily recognizable and long-known maxims. CHARACTER OF ATOSSA The division of Pope's work known as the Moral Essays includes the Essay on Man and the four Epistles. They were all, Pope said, to be fitted into an extensive plan that would cover almost every aspect of human life. This extract is from Epistle II. (to a Lady); Of the Characters of Women. The lady was Martha Blount, for many years Pope's chief woman friend. Their relation was so intimate that some writers have believed a secret marriage existed. The Epistle is a general satire on women, for the most part very scathing. The opening lines are: Nothing so true as what you once let fall, |