Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,

And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.

The character of Atossa is an example of the type of characterization in the satire. This attack is especially notable for its ferocity. The characterization in the poem is all, however, of Pope's most venomous type of personal satire. This section was not printed in the first edition, in 1735, and did not appear in any generally circulated edition until after Pope's death. It affords another of the opportunities for dispute and surmise concerning doubtful points in his life. The story was told, based on statements made by Bolingbroke and other contemporaries of Pope, that the Duchess of Marlborough paid him £1000 for the suppression of this sketch, and that he took the bribe, but left the verses in manuscript at his death. By others this account was denied or explained away. See full discussion in the Elwin-Courthope edition of Pope, Vol. III. There is little doubt that the character was intended for that of the Duchess of Marlborough, though Pope, according to Warton, tried to pass the lines as intended for the Duchess of Buckingham, the natural daughter of James II., and even inserted certain verses to mislead the reader to think so.

118. The violent temper of the Duchess of Marlborough was one of the exciting elements in public life in the first part of the eighteenth century. 119. "The fool whom the Duchess painted was no doubt Lord Grimston, whom she caused to be caricatured as an elephant dancing on a tight-rope." - Elwin. 140. The Duchess raised a monument to Queen Anne at Blenheim, but allowed it to be neglected. 149. The Duches of Marlborough had quarrelled with all her children. The next two lines apply to the Duchess of Buckingham rather than to the Duchess of Marlborough.

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT

Printed as the prologue to the Horatian satires; first published in 1734-1735. Dr. Arbuthnot (1667-1735) was one of Pope's most cherished and best-treated friends. He was, with Pope and Swift, a member of the Scriblerus Club and a contributor to its Miscellanies. He was a physician of much skill, and was Physician Extraordinary to the Queen. He was a man of great excellence both of attainments

son.

and character, and was noted for his wit and good sense and for his genial humanity. The following comments on the poem have been confined to the most important points necessary for the intelligent reading of it. 1. John. John Serle, Pope's servant. 8. grot. Pope's famous grotto at Twickenham. It ran under a highway and was very artificially ornamented with spars and corals and mirrors and the like. 12. Debtors were exempt from arrest on Sunday. 13. Mint. In Southwark. In Henry VIII.'s time there was a mint there. Debtors and criminals were exempt from arrest in the Mint and took refuge there from officers of the law. On Sundays debtors could venture out. Nahum Tate died in the Mint. 15. parLaurence Eusden (1688-1730). Laureate from 1718 to 1730. He was a preacher, drank a great deal, and in his verse was abjectly flattering to possible patrons. 23. giddy son. James Moore Smyth, the son of Arthur Moore. He disagreed with and disgusted his father, and took the surname of his grandfather. Pope had an elaborate quarrel with him over some lines of Pope's inserted by Smyth in his Rival Modes. Pope attacked him in a note to the Dunciad, and even after Smyth's death, in the Grub Street Journal. 25. Cornus. Said by Horace Walpole to be Lord Robert Walpole, son of Robert Walpole. His wife left him in 1734. 40. The advice of Horace in Ars Poetica, 11. 386-388. 41. Drury Lane. By this time this street had lost its early respectability, and was occupied partially by residents of the grade of the Grub Street class. 48. A couplet following this in an earlier manuscript makes the lines apply to Theobald, the hero of the first version of the Dunciad. 49. Pitholeon is said to stand for the author Welsted. 53. Curll. A publisher of the period, in bad repute professionally. He published, in 1726, a volume of Pope's letters to Cromwell, secured by Curll without Pope's knowledge. Afterward Pope intrigued to get Curll to publish, on the supposition that they were also pirated, another volume of letters to Wycherley and others. 56. 'Alludes to a tragedy called the Virgin Queen, by R. Barford, published in 1729, who displeased Pope by daring to adopt the fine machinery of his sylphs in an heroi-comical poem called the Assembly." - Warton. 62. Bernard Lintot (1675-1736) and Jacob Tonson (1656?-1736) were the leading book-sellers and publishers of the period. Lintot published Pope's Rape of the Lock and Homer. III. After the publication of the Dunciad and during the counter-attacks to which

it led, the Grub Street Journal was established, in 1730, to carry on the warfare from Pope's side. It purported to criticise Pope and praise his detractors, but its tone was keenly ironical. Pope denied connection with it, but there is no doubt it was really his mouthpiece. It was continued up to 1737. 114. The method of publishing books on subscription, though comparatively recent, was becoming popular. Pope's Homer was published so. 117. Ammon's great son. Alexander. See note on Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 1. 30. Pope's deformities are well known. 118. Pope is said to have really had a very fine eye. 122. Maro. Vergil; Publius Vergilius Maro.

130. Cf. line 23. 135. George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (1667– 1735), prominent in public affairs during Anne's reign. He did some dramatic and poetic, as well as political, writing. He was one of Pope's early critics and urged the publication of Windsor Forest, which Pope dedicated to him. 136. William Walsh (1663–1708), a country gentleman, who wrote a little superficial poetry. His critical abilities were greater than his poetic, and Dryden called him the best critic in England. His advice to Pope, to "be correct," is well known. He is perhaps better known through his' connection with Pope than through his own achievements. 137. Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1719), the author of The Dispensary. Pope called him " the best-natured of men.” 138. And Congreve loved. Lady Montagu denies this in a letter to Arbuthnot. 147-156. It is true that Pope's earliest published work was pastoral and innocuous, but as early as in the Essay on Criticism, he made an unpleasant allusion to Dennis which drew that writer's ill-will upon him. This led to the first of his literary quarrels. John Dennis (1657-1734) was a poor poet, dramatist, and critic. He was rather boorish by nature, but up to this point had done Pope no harm. Gildon had inserted some abuse of Pope in a Life of Wycherley that he wrote. 164. It was Richard Bentley, the great classical scholar, that said of Pope's Homer, "a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Pope retaliated in the Dunciad and in this. 179. bard. Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749), a friend of Addison. His Pastorals were published by Tonson in the same Miscellany with Pope's. The favourable comment on Philips made Pope jealous, and he tried eventually to revenge himself on Philips and at the same time bring about a quarrel between him and Addison and Steele. Pope implies that Philips's Pastorals were not his own work. 180. It was said that

Philips received thirty pence each for his Persian Tales. 190. Nahum Tate (1652-1715) was laureate from 1692. 193-214. The date of production of this section is one of the much-discussed questions concerning the poem. Pope stated that he wrote it during Addison's life and sent it to Addison. But certain evidence seems to contradict that. It may have been written before Addison's death (1719), but there is no proof that he ever saw it. It was printed first in 1723. In 1722 it was circulating in manuscript; the very first mention of it is made in 1722. See the introduction to the Epistle, in Elwin's edition of Pope, Vol. III. This characterization is Pope's best piece of satire. It is not more true than any other, but in it, instead of ridiculing a man's physical defects or his poverty, or inventing an absurd situation for him, Pope really attacks vulnerable points. It is unfair, and false in part, and yet Pope manages to suggest that he is not a virulent enemy of Addison, but a reluctant and regretful critic. 208. obliged. At that time not yet anglicized from the French, and riming with besieged. 211. Templars. See note on Swift's Description of a City Shower, 1. 35. 230. Bufo. In the final draft of the poem intended for Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. The section omitted contains an attack on him. 249-254. Pope could afford this gibe, for in an age of literary patronage, he was one of the very first writers to succeed, financially and otherwise, without the aid of a patron. 258. Pope wrote the epitaph on Gay in Westminster Abbey. Printed in collections of Pope's Poems. 260. Gay spent his last four years in the household of the Duchess of Queensbury, and died there. He had been under the patronage of the Queensburys for years before that. 276. Balbus. The Earl of Kinnoul. 280. Sir Will. Sir William Yonge. Bubo. Bubb Dodington, Baron Melcombe (1691-1762), somewhat prominent in politics at the time, though of unsavory political reputation. He was one of the last of the patrons, and Thomson and Young were among his protégés. 299. Dean and silver bell. Referring to an interpretation that had been put on certain lines in Epistle IV. of the Moral Essays. Pope had denied the inference drawn. 343. stood. Withstood. 349. "It was reported that he had been beaten in Ham Walks and that he shed tears from the pain. The story was told in a pamphlet called A Pop upon Pope, which the poet believed to have been written by Lady M. W. Montagu." — Elwin. The examples of ill-treatment cited throughout the paragraph are not hypothetical, but

are references to fact or to what Pope believed to be fact. His quarrels were beyond number. 363. Sporus. Lord Hervey, a friend of Lady Montagu, and, through collaboration with her in her satires on Pope, an object of bitter attack on the part of Pope. The section omitted, lines 305-331, contains a ferocious characterization of Hervey. Japhet. Japhet Cooke, alias Sir Peter Stranger. See Epistle III., 1. 86. 365. Knight of the Post. “The so-called 'Knights of the Post' stood about the sheriff's pillars near the Courts in readiness to swear anything for pay."-Ward. 369. Sappho. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It is not definitely known how the quarrel between her and Pope arose. They had at one time been friends, and Pope had addressed some very extravagant letters and lines to her. 371. Dennis fell into great distress in his last years. Not long before his death a benefit performance of the Provoked Husband was given for him in the Haymarket theatre. Pope wrote the prologue. The apparent kindness was modified somewhat by the tone of some of the lines. 374. "It was so long, after many libels, before the author of the Dunciad published that poem; till when he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him." - Pope.

375

“This man had the impudence to tell in print, that Mr. Pope had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of. He also published that he libelled the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr. Pope never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from any great man whatsoever." - Pope. He mentions Welsted in the Dunciad also, Bk. II. ll. 207–210. 378-379. Certain writings in the Grub Street Journal. Budgell was accused of forging a will in his own favour; in consequence of the accusation, he drowned himself. 380. Curll and Lord Hervey. 393. Addison's marriage with the Countess of Warwick was supposed to have proved unhappy. 417. Arbuthnot was physician to Queen Anne, and attended her in her last illness. On the accession of George I. he lost his place at Court.