The Long Eighteenth-Century Literary Period
44
Introduction
Perhaps no other great poet in English Literature has been so differently judged at different times as Alexander Pope. Accepted almost on his first appearance as one of the leading poets of the day, he rapidly became recognized as the foremost man of letters of his age. He held this position throughout his life, and for over half a century after his death his works were considered not only as masterpieces, but as the finest models of poetry. With the change of poetic temper that occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century Pope’s fame was overshadowed. The romantic poets and critics even raised the question whether Pope was a poet at all. And as his poetical fame diminished, the harsh judgments of his personal character increased. It is almost incredible with what exulting bitterness critics and editors of Pope have tracked out and exposed his petty intrigues, exaggerated his delinquencies, misrepresented his actions, attempted in short to blast his character as a man.
Both as a man and as a poet Pope is sadly in need of a defender to-day. And a defense is by no means impossible. The depreciation of Pope’s poetry springs, in the main, from an attempt to measure it by other standards than those which he and his age recognized. The attacks upon his character are due, in large measure, to a misunderstanding of the spirit of the times in which he lived and to a forgetfulness of the special circumstances of his own life. Tried in a fair court by impartial judges Pope as a poet would be awarded a place, if not among the noblest singers, at least high among poets of the second order. And the flaws of character which even his warmest apologist must admit would on the one hand be explained, if not excused, by circumstances, and on the other more than counterbalanced by the existence of noble qualities to which his assailants seem to have been quite blind.
Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21, 1688. His father was a Roman Catholic linen draper, who had married a second time. Pope was the only child of this marriage, and seems to have been a delicate, sweet-tempered, precocious, and, perhaps, a rather spoiled child.
Pope’s religion and his chronic ill-health are two facts of the highest importance to be taken into consideration in any study of his life or judgment of his character. The high hopes of the Catholics for a restoration of their religion had been totally destroyed by the Revolution of 1688. During all Pope’s lifetime they were a sect at once feared, hated, and oppressed by the severest laws. They were excluded from the schools and universities, they were burdened with double taxes, and forbidden to acquire real estate. All public careers were closed to them, and their property and even their persons were in times of excitement at the mercy of informers. In the last year of Pope’s life a proclamation was issued forbidding Catholics to come within ten miles of London, and Pope himself, in spite of his influential friends, thought it wise to comply with this edict. A fierce outburst of persecution often evokes in the persecuted some of the noblest qualities of human nature; but a long-continued and crushing tyranny that extends to all the details of daily life is only too likely to have the most unfortunate results on those who are subjected to it. And as a matter of fact we find that the well-to-do Catholics of Pope’s day lived in an atmosphere of disaffection, political intrigue, and evasion of the law, most unfavorable for the development of that frank, courageous, and patriotic spirit for the lack of which Pope himself has so often been made the object of reproach.
In a well-known passage of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, Pope has spoken of his life as one long disease. He was in fact a humpbacked dwarf, not over four feet six inches in height, with long, spider-like legs and arms. He was subject to violent headaches, and his face was lined and contracted with the marks of suffering. In youth he so completely ruined his health by perpetual studies that his life was despaired of, and only the most careful treatment saved him from an early death. Toward the close of his life he became so weak that he could neither dress nor undress without assistance. He had to be laced up in stiff stays in order to sit erect, and wore a fur doublet and three pairs of stockings to protect himself against the cold. With these physical defects he had the extreme sensitiveness of mind that usually accompanies chronic ill health, and this sensitiveness was outraged incessantly by the brutal customs of the age. Pope’s enemies made as free with his person as with his poetry, and there is little doubt that he felt the former attacks the more bitterly of the two. Dennis, his first critic, called him “a short squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of love; his outward form is downright monkey.” A rival poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not on the best authority, that when Pope once forgot himself so far as to make love to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the lady’s answer was “a fit of immoderate laughter.” In an appendix to the Dunciad Pope collected some of the epithets with which his enemies had pelted him, “an ape,” “an ass,” “a frog,” “a coward,” “a fool,” “a little abject thing.” He affected, indeed, to despise his assailants, but there is only too good evidence that their poisoned arrows rankled in his heart. Richardson, the painter, found him one day reading the latest abusive pamphlet. “These things are my diversion,” said the poet, striving to put the best face on it; but as he read, his friends saw his features “writhen with anguish,” and prayed to be delivered from all such “diversions” as these. Pope’s enemies and their savage abuse are mostly forgotten to-day. Pope’s furious retorts have been secured to immortality by his genius. It would have been nobler, no doubt, to have answered by silence only; but before one condemns Pope it is only fair to realize the causes of his bitterness.
Pope’s education was short and irregular. He was taught the rudiments of Latin and Greek by his family priest, attended for a brief period a school in the country and another in London, and at the early age of twelve left school altogether, and settling down at his father’s house in the country began to read to his heart’s delight. He roamed through the classic poets, translating passages that pleased him, went up for a time to London to get lessons in French and Italian, and above all read with eagerness and attention the works of older English poets, — Spenser, Waller, and Dryden. He had already, it would seem, determined to become a poet, and his father, delighted with the clever boy’s talent, used to set him topics, force him to correct his verses over and over, and finally, when satisfied, dismiss him with the praise, “These are good rhymes.” He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, all of which he afterward destroyed and, as he laughingly confessed in later years, he thought himself “the greatest genius that ever was.”
Pope was not alone, however, in holding a high opinion of his talents. While still a boy in his teens he was taken up and patronized by a number of gentlemen, Trumbull, Walsh, and Cromwell, all dabblers in poetry and criticism. He was introduced to the dramatist Wycherly, nearly fifty years his senior, and helped to polish some of the old man’s verses. His own works were passed about in manuscript from hand to hand till one of them came to the eyes of Dryden’s old publisher, Tonson. Tonson wrote Pope a respectful letter asking for the honor of being allowed to publish them. One may fancy the delight with which the sixteen-year-old boy received this offer. It is a proof of Pope’s patience as well as his precocity that he delayed three years before accepting it. It was not till 1709 that his first published verses, the Pastorals, a fragment translated from Homer, and a modernized version of one of the Canterbury Tales, appeared in Tonson’s Miscellany.
With the publication of the Pastorals, Pope embarked upon his life as a man of letters. They seem to have brought him a certain recognition, but hardly fame. That he obtained by his next poem, the Essay on Criticism, which appeared in 1711. It was applauded in the Spectator, and Pope seems about this time to have made the acquaintance of Addison and the little senate which met in Button’s coffee house. His poem the Messiah appeared in the Spectator in May 1712; the first draft of The Rape of the Lock in a poetical miscellany in the same year, and Addison’s request, in 1713, that he compose a prologue for the tragedy of Cato set the final stamp upon his rank as a poet.
Pope’s friendly relations with Addison and his circle were not, however, long continued. In the year 1713 he gradually drew away from them and came under the influence of Swift, then at the height of his power in political and social life. Swift introduced him to the brilliant Tories, politicians and lovers of letters, Harley, Bolingbroke, and Atterbury, who were then at the head of affairs. Pope’s new friends seem to have treated him with a deference which he had never experienced before, and which bound him to them in unbroken affection. Harley used to regret that Pope’s religion rendered him legally incapable of holding a sinecure office in the government, such as was frequently bestowed in those days upon men of letters, and Swift jestingly offered the young poet twenty guineas to become a Protestant. But now, as later, Pope was firmly resolved not to abandon the faith of his parents for the sake of worldly advantage. And in order to secure the independence he valued so highly he resolved to embark upon the great work of his life, the translation of Homer.
“What led me into that,” he told a friend long after, “was purely the want of money. I had then none; not even to buy books.”
It seems that about this time, 1713, Pope’s father had experienced some heavy financial losses, and the poet, whose receipts in money had so far been by no means in proportion to the reputation his works had brought him, now resolved to use that reputation as a means of securing from the public a sum which would at least keep him for life from poverty or the necessity of begging for patronage. It is worth noting that Pope was the first Englishman of letters who threw himself thus boldly upon the public and earned his living by his pen.
The arrangements for the publication and sale of Pope’s translation of Homer were made with care and pushed on with enthusiasm. He issued in 1713 his proposals for an edition to be published by subscription, and his friends at once became enthusiastic canvassers. We have a characteristic picture of Swift at this time, bustling about a crowded ante-chamber, and informing the company that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist) who had begun a translation of Homer for which they must all subscribe, “for,” says he, “the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.” The work was to be in six volumes, each costing a guinea. Pope obtained 575 subscribers, many of whom took more than one set. Lintot, the publisher, gave Pope £1200 for the work and agreed to supply the subscription copies free of charge. As a result Pope made something between £5000 and £6000, a sum absolutely unprecedented in the history of English literature, and amply sufficient to make him independent for life.
But the sum was honestly earned by hard and wearisome work. Pope was no Greek scholar; it is said, indeed, that he was just able to make out the sense of the original with a translation. And in addition to the fifteen thousand lines of the Iliad, he had engaged to furnish an introduction and notes. At first the magnitude of the undertaking frightened him.
“What terrible moments,” he said to Spence, “does one feel after one has engaged for a large work. In the beginning of my translating the Iliad, I wished anybody would hang me a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first that I often used to dream of it and do sometimes still.”
In spite of his discouragement, however, and of the ill health which so constantly beset him, Pope fell gallantly upon his task, and as time went on came almost to enjoy it. He used to translate thirty or forty verses in the morning before rising and, in his own characteristic phrase, “piddled over them for the rest of the day.” He used every assistance possible, drew freely upon the scholarship of friends, corrected and recorrected with a view to obtaining clearness and point, and finally succeeded in producing a version which not only satisfied his own critical judgment, but was at once accepted by the English-speaking world as the standard translation of Homer.
The first volume came out in June, 1715, and to Pope’s dismay and wrath a rival translation appeared almost simultaneously. Tickell, one of Addison’s “little senate,” had also begun a translation of the Iliad, and although he announced in the preface that he intended to withdraw in favor of Pope and take up a translation of the Odyssey, the poet’s suspicions were at once aroused. And they were quickly fanned into a flame by the gossip of the town which reported that Addison, the recognized authority in literary criticism, pronounced Tickell’s version “the best that ever was in any language.” Rumor went so far, in fact, as to hint pretty broadly that Addison himself was the author, in part, at least, of Tickell’s book; and Pope, who had been encouraged by Addison to begin his long task, felt at once that he had been betrayed. His resentment was all the more bitter since he fancied that Addison, now at the height of his power and prosperity in the world of letters and of politics, had attempted to ruin an enterprise on which the younger man had set all his hopes of success and independence, for no better reason than literary jealousy and political estrangement. We know now that Pope was mistaken, but there was beyond question some reason at the time for his thinking as he did, and it is to the bitterness which this incident caused in his mind that we owe the famous satiric portrait of Addison as Atticus.
The last volume of the Iliad appeared in the spring of 1720, and in it Pope gave a renewed proof of his independence by dedicating the whole work, not to some lord who would have rewarded him with a handsome present, but to his old acquaintance, Congreve, the last survivor of the brilliant comic dramatists of Dryden’s day. And now resting for a time from his long labors, Pope turned to the adornment and cultivation of the little house and garden that he had leased at Twickenham.
Pope’s father had died in 1717, and the poet, rejecting politely but firmly the suggestion of his friend, Atterbury, that he might now turn Protestant, devoted himself with double tenderness to the care of his aged and infirm mother. He brought her with him to Twickenham, where she lived till 1733, dying in that year at the great age of ninety-one. It may have been partly on her account that Pope pitched upon Twickenham as his abiding place. Beautifully situated on the banks of the Thames, it was at once a quiet country place and yet of easy access to London, to Hampton Court, or to Kew. The five acres of land that lay about the house furnished Pope with inexhaustible entertainment for the rest of his life. He “twisted and twirled and harmonized” his bit of ground “till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods.” Following the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his lawns with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel decorated fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass, which Pope dug under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state, and his house and garden was for years the center of the most brilliant society in England. Here Swift came on his rare visits from Ireland, and Bolingbroke on his return from exile. Arbuthnot, Pope’s beloved physician, was a frequent visitor, and Peterborough, one of the most distinguished of English soldiers, condescended to help lay out the garden. Congreve came too, at times, and Gay, the laziest and most good-natured of poets. Nor was the society of women lacking at these gatherings. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the wittiest woman in England, was often there, until her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old Duchess of Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope’s last years; and the Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from first to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed, sweet-tempered Patty Blount, Pope’s best and dearest friend. Not long after the completion of the Iliad, Pope undertook to edit Shakespeare, and completed the work in 1724. The edition is, of course, quite superseded now, but it has its place in the history of Shakespearean studies as the first that made an effort, though irregular and incomplete, to restore the true text by collation and conjecture. It has its place, too, in the story of Pope’s life, since the bitter criticism which it received, all the more unpleasant to the poet since it was in the main true, was one of the principal causes of his writing the Dunciad. Between the publication of his edition of Shakespeare, however, and the appearance of the Dunciad, Pope resolved to complete his translation of Homer, and with the assistance of a pair of friends, got out a version of the Odyssey in 1725. Like the Iliad, this was published by subscription, and as in the former case the greatest men in England were eager to show their appreciation of the poet by filling up his lists. Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig statesman, took ten copies, and Harley, the fallen Tory leader, put himself, his wife, and his daughter down for sixteen. Pope made, it is said, about £3700 by this work.
In 1726, Swift visited Pope and encouraged him to complete a satire which he seems already to have begun on the dull critics and hack writers of the day. For one cause or another its publication was deferred until 1728, when it appeared under the title of the Dunciad. Here Pope declared open war upon his enemies. All those who had attacked his works, abused his character, or scoffed at his personal deformities, were caricatured as ridiculous and sometimes disgusting figures in a mock epic poem celebrating the accession of a new monarch to the throne of Dullness. The Dunciad is little read to-day except by professed students of English letters, but it made, naturally enough, a great stir at the time and vastly provoked the wrath of all the dunces whose names it dragged to light. Pope has often been blamed for stooping to such ignoble combat, and in particular for the coarseness of his abuse, and for his bitter jests upon the poverty of his opponents. But it must be remembered that no living writer had been so scandalously abused as Pope, and no writer that ever lived was by nature so quick to feel and to resent insult. The undoubted coarseness of the work is in part due to the gross license of the times in speech and writing, and more particularly to the influence of Swift, at this time predominant over Pope. And in regard to Pope’s trick of taunting his enemies with poverty, it must frankly be confessed that he seized upon this charge as a ready and telling weapon. Pope was at heart one of the most charitable of men. In the days of his prosperity he is said to have given away one eighth of his income. And he was always quick to succor merit in distress; he pensioned the poet Savage and he tried to secure patronage for Johnson. But for the wretched hack writers of the common press who had barked against him he had no mercy, and he struck them with the first rod that lay ready to his hands.
During his work on the Dunciad, Pope came into intimate relations with Bolingbroke, who in 1725 had returned from his long exile in France and had settled at Dawley within easy reach of Pope’s villa at Twickenham. Bolingbroke was beyond doubt one of the most brilliant and stimulating minds of his age. Without depth of intellect or solidity of character, he was at once a philosopher, a statesman, a scholar, and a fascinating talker. Pope, who had already made his acquaintance, was delighted to renew and improve their intimacy, and soon came wholly under the influence of his splendid friend. It is hardly too much to say that all the rest of Pope’s work is directly traceable to Bolingbroke. The Essay on Man was built up on the precepts of Bolingbroke’s philosophy; the Imitations of Horace were undertaken at Bolingbroke’s suggestion; and the whole tone of Pope’s political and social satire during the years from 1731 to 1738 reflects the spirit of that opposition to the administration of Walpole and to the growing influence of the commercial class, which was at once inspired and directed by Bolingbroke. And yet it is exactly in the work of this period that we find the best and with perhaps one exception, the Essay on Man, the most original, work of Pope. He has obtained an absolute command over his instrument of expression. In his hands the heroic couplet sings, and laughs, and chats, and thunders. He has turned from the ignoble warfare with the dunces to satirize courtly frivolity and wickedness in high places. And most important of all to the student of Pope, it is in these last works that his personality is most clearly revealed. It has been well said that the best introduction to the study of Pope, the man, is to get the Epistle to Arbuthnot by heart.
Pope gradually persuaded himself that all the works of these years, the Essay on Man, the Satires, Epistles, and Moral Essays, were but parts of one stupendous whole. He told Spence in the last years of his life:
“I had once thought of completing my ethic work in four books. — The first, you know, is on the Nature of Man [the Essay on Man]; the second would have been on knowledge and its limits — here would have come in an Essay on Education, part of which I have inserted in the Dunciad [i.e. in the Fourth Book, published in 1742]. The third was to have treated of Government, both ecclesiastical and civil — and this was what chiefly stopped my going on. I could not have said what I would have said without provoking every church on the face of the earth; and I did not care for living always in boiling water. — This part would have come into my Brutus [an epic poem which Pope never completed], which is planned already. The fourth would have been on Morality; in eight or nine of the most concerning branches of it.”
It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Pope with his irregular methods of work and illogical habit of thought had planned so vast and elaborate a system before he began its execution. It is far more likely that he followed his old method of composing on the inspiration of the moment, and produced the works in question with little thought of their relation or interdependence. But in the last years of his life, when he had made the acquaintance of Warburton, and was engaged in reviewing and perfecting the works of this period, he noticed their general similarity in form and spirit, and, possibly under Warburton’s influence, conceived the notion of combining and supplementing them to form that “Greater Essay on Man” of which he spoke to Spence, and of which Warburton himself has given us a detailed account.
Warburton, a wide-read, pompous, and polemical clergyman, had introduced himself to the notice of Pope by a defense of the philosophical and religious principles of the Essay on Man. In spite of the influence of the free-thinking Bolingbroke, Pope still remained a member of the Catholic church and sincerely believed himself to be an orthodox, though liberal, Christian, and he had, in consequence, been greatly disconcerted by a criticism of his poem published in Switzerland and lately translated into English. Its author, Pierre de Crousaz, maintained, and with a considerable degree of truth, that the principles of Pope’s poem if pushed to their logical conclusion were destructive to religion and would rank their author rather among atheists than defenders of the faith. The very word “atheist” was at that day sufficient to put the man to whom it was applied beyond the pale of polite society, and Pope, who quite lacked the ability to refute in logical argument the attack of de Crousaz, was proportionately delighted when Warburton came forward in his defense, and in a series of letters asserted that Pope’s whole intention was to vindicate the ways of God to man, and that de Crousaz had mistaken his purpose and misunderstood his language. Pope’s gratitude to his defender knew no bounds; he declared that Warburton understood the Essay better than he did himself; he pronounced him the greatest critic he ever knew, secured an introduction to him, introduced him to his own rich and influential friends, in short made the man’s fortune for him outright. When the University of Oxford hesitated to give Warburton, who had never attended a university, the degree of D.D., Pope declined to accept the degree of D.C.L. which had been offered him at the same time, and wrote the Fourth Book of the Dunciad to satirize the stupidity of the university authorities. In conjunction with Warburton he proceeded further to revise the whole poem, for which his new friend wrote notes and a ponderous introduction, and made the capital mistake of substituting the frivolous, but clever, Colley Gibber, with whom he had recently become embroiled, for his old enemy, Theobald, as the hero. And the last year of his life was spent in getting out new editions of his poems accompanied by elaborate commentaries from the pen of Warburton.
In the spring of 1744, it was evident that Pope was failing fast. In addition to his other ailments he was now attacked by an asthmatical dropsy, which no efforts of his physicians could remove. Yet he continued to work almost to the last, and distributed copies of his Ethic Epistles to his friends about three weeks before his death, with the smiling remark that like the dying Socrates he was dispensing his morality among his friends. His mind began to wander; he complained that he saw all things as through a curtain, and told Spence once “with a smile of great pleasure and with the greatest softness” that he had seen a vision. His friends were devoted in their attendance. Bolingbroke sat weeping by his chair, and on Spence’s remarking how Pope with every rally was always saying something kindly of his friends, replied:
“I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years; and value myself more for that man’s love than”
— here his head dropped and his voice broke in tears. It was noticed that whenever Patty Blount came into the room, the dying flame of life flashed up in a momentary glow. At the very end a friend reminded Pope that as a professed Catholic he ought to send for a priest. The dying man replied that he did not believe it essential, but thanked him for the suggestion. When the priest appeared, Pope attempted to rise from his bed that he might receive the sacrament kneeling, and the priest came out from the sick room “penetrated to the last degree with the state of mind in which he found his penitent, resigned and wrapt up in the love of God and man.” The hope that sustained Pope to the end was that of immortality.
“I am so certain of the soul’s being immortal,” he whispered, almost with his last breath, “that I seem to feel it within me, as it were by intuition.”
He died on the evening of May 30, so quietly that his friends hardly knew that the end had come. He was buried in Twickenham Church, near the monument he had erected to his parents, and his coffin was carried to the grave by six of the poorest men of the parish.
It is plain even from so slight a sketch as this that the common conception of Pope as “the wicked wasp of Twickenham,” a bitter, jealous, and malignant spirit, is utterly out of accord with the facts of his life. Pope’s faults of character lie on the surface, and the most perceptible is that which has done him most harm in the eyes of English-speaking men. He was by nature, perhaps by training also, untruthful. If he seldom stooped to an outright lie, he never hesitated to equivocate; and students of his life have found that it is seldom possible to take his word on any point where his own works or interests were concerned. I have already attempted to point out the probable cause of this defect; and it is, moreover, worth while to remark that Pope’s manifold intrigues and evasions were mainly of the defensive order. He plotted and quibbled not so much to injure others as to protect himself. To charge Pope with treachery to his friends, as has sometimes been done, is wholly to misunderstand his character.
Another flaw, one can hardly call it a vice, in Pope’s character was his constant practice of considering everything that came in his way as copy. It was this which led him to reclaim his early letters from his friends, to alter, rewrite, and redate them, utterly unconscious of the trouble which he was preparing for his future biographers. The letters, he thought, were good reading but not so good as he could make them, and he set to work to improve them with all an artist’s zeal, and without a trace of a historian’s care for facts. It was this which led him to embody in his description of a rich fool’s splendid house and park certain unmistakable traces of a living nobleman’s estate and to start in genuine amazement and regret when the world insisted on identifying the nobleman and the fool. And when Pope had once done a good piece of work, he had all an artist’s reluctance to destroy it. He kept bits of verse by him for years and inserted them into appropriate places in his poems. This habit it was that brought about perhaps the gravest charge that has ever been made against Pope, that of accepting £1000 to suppress a satiric portrait of the old Duchess of Marlborough, and yet of publishing it in a revision of a poem that he was engaged on just before his death. The truth seems to be that Pope had drawn this portrait in days when he was at bitter enmity with the Duchess, and after the reconcilement that took place, unwilling to suppress it entirely, had worked it over, and added passages out of keeping with the first design, but pointing to another lady with whom he was now at odds. Pope’s behavior, we must admit, was not altogether creditable, but it was that of an artist reluctant to throw away good work, not that of a ruffian who stabs a woman he has taken money to spare.
Finally Pope was throughout his life, and notably in his later years, the victim of an irritable temper and a quick, abusive tongue. His irritability sprang in part, we may believe, from his physical sufferings, even more, however, from the exquisitely sensitive heart which made him feel a coarse insult as others would a blow. And of the coarseness of the insults that were heaped upon Pope no one except the careful student of his life can have any conception. His genius, his morals, his person, his parents, and his religion were overwhelmed in one indiscriminate flood of abuse. Too high spirited to submit tamely to these attacks, too irritable to laugh at them, he struck back, and his weapon was personal satire which cut like a whip and left a brand like a hot iron. And if at times, as in the case of Addison, Pope was mistaken in his object and assaulted one who was in no sense his enemy, the fault lies not so much in his alleged malice as in the unhappy state of warfare in which he lived.
Over against the faults of Pope we may set more than one noble characteristic. The sensitive heart and impulsive temper that led him so often into bitter warfare, made him also most susceptible to kindness and quick to pity suffering. He was essentially of a tender and loving nature, a devoted son, and a loyal friend, unwearied in acts of kindness and generosity. His ruling passion, to use his own phrase, was a devotion to letters, and he determined as early and worked as diligently to make himself a poet as ever Milton did. His wretched body was dominated by a high and eager mind, and he combined in an unparalleled degree the fiery energy of the born poet with the tireless patience of the trained artist.
But perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of Pope is his manly independence. In an age when almost without exception his fellow-writers stooped to accept a great man’s patronage or sold their talents into the slavery of politics, Pope stood aloof from patron and from party. He repeatedly declined offers of money that were made him, even when no condition was attached. He refused to change his religion, though he was far from being a devout Catholic, in order to secure a comfortable place. He relied upon his genius alone for his support, and his genius gave him all that he asked, a modest competency. His relations with his rich and powerful friends were marked by the same independent spirit. He never cringed or flattered, but met them on even terms, and raised himself by merit alone from his position as the unknown son of an humble shopkeeper to be the friend and associate of the greatest fortunes and most powerful minds in England. It is not too much to say that the career of a man of letters as we know it to-day, a career at once honorable and independent, takes its rise from the life and work of Alexander Pope.
The long controversies that have raged about Pope’s rank as a poet seem at last to be drawing to a close; and it has become possible to strike a balance between the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries and the reckless depreciation of romantic critics. That he is not a poet of the first order is plain, if for no other reason than that he never produced a work in any of the greatest forms of poetry. The drama, the epic, the lyric, were all outside his range. On the other hand, unless a definition of poetry be framed — and Dr. Johnson has well remarked that “to circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer” — which shall exclude all gnomic and satiric verse, and so debar the claims of Hesiod, Juvenal, and Boileau, it is impossible to deny that Pope is a true poet. Certain qualities of the highest poet Pope no doubt lacked, lofty imagination, intense passion, wide human sympathy. But within the narrow field which he marked out for his own he approaches perfection as nearly as any English poet, and Pope’s merit consists not merely in the smoothness of his verse or the polish of separate epigrams, as is so often stated, but quite as much in the vigor of his conceptions and the unity and careful proportion of each poem as a whole. It is not too much to say that The Rape of the Lock is one of the best-planned poems in any language. It is as symmetrical and exquisitely finished as a Grecian temple.
Historically Pope represents the fullest embodiment of that spirit which began to appear in English literature about the middle of the seventeenth century, and which we are accustomed to call the “classical” spirit. In essence this movement was a protest against the irregularity and individual license of earlier poets. Instead of far-fetched wit and fanciful diction, the classical school erected the standards of common sense in conception and directness in expression. And in so doing they restored poetry which had become the diversion of the few to the possession of the many. Pope, for example, is preeminently the poet of his time. He dealt with topics that were of general interest to the society in which he lived; he pictured life as he saw it about him. And this accounts for his prompt and general acceptance by the world of his day.
For the student of English literature Pope’s work has a threefold value. It represents the highest achievement of one of the great movements in the developments of English verse. It reflects with unerring accuracy the life and thought of his time — not merely the outward life of beau and belle in the days of Queen Anne, but the ideals of the age in art, philosophy, and politics. And finally it teaches as hardly any other body of English verse can be said to do, the perennial value of conscious and controlling art. Pope’s work lives and will live while English poetry is read, not because of its inspiration, imagination, or depth of thought, but by its unity of design, vigor of expression, and perfection of finish — by those qualities, in short, which show the poet as an artist in verse.
Chief Dates In Pope’s Life
| 1688 | Born, May 21 |
| 1700 | Moves to Binfield |
| 1709 | Pastorals |
| 1711 | Essay on Criticism |
| 1711-12 | Contributes to Spectator |
| 1712 | Rape of the Lock, first form |
| 1713 | Windsor Forest |
| 1713 | Issues proposals for translation of Homer |
| 1714 | Rape of the Lock, second form |
| 1715 | First volume of the Iliad |
| 1715 | Temple of Fame |
| 1717 | Pope’s father dies |
| 1717 | Works, including some new poems |
| 1719 | Settles at Twickenham |
| 1720 | Sixth and last volume of the Iliad |
| 1722 | Begins translation of Odyssey |
| 1725 | Edits Shakespeare |
| 1726 | Finishes translation of Odyssey |
| 1727-8 | Miscellanies by Pope and Swift |
| 1728-9 | Dunciad |
| 1731-2 | Moral Essays: Of Taste, Of the Use of Riches |
| 1733-4 | Essay on Man |
| 1733-8 | Satires and Epistles |
| 1735 | Works |
| 1735 | Letters published by Curll |
| 1741 | Works in Prose; vol. II. includes the correspondence with Swift |
| 1742 | Fourth book of Dunciad |
| 1742 | Revised Dunciad |
| 1744 | Died, May 30 |
| 1751 | First collected edition, published by Warburton, 9 vols. |
The Rape of the Lock
An heroi-comical poem
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.Mart, [Epigr, XII. 84.]
To Mrs. Arabella Fermor
Madam,
It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to You. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex’s little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the air of a Secret, it soon found its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offer’d to a Bookseller, you had the good-nature for my sake to consent to the publication of one more correct: This I was forc’d to, before I had executed half my design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to compleat it.
The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a Poem: For the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These Machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits.
I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a Lady; but’t is so much the concern of a Poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms.
The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book call’d Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its title and size is so like a Novel, that many of the Fair Sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these Gentlemen, the four Elements are inhabited by Spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The Gnomes or Dæmons of Earth delight in mischief; but the Sylphs whose habitation is in the Air, are the best-condition’d creatures imaginable. For they say, any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a condition very easy to all true Adepts, an inviolate preservation of Chastity.
As to the following Canto’s, all the passages of them are as fabulous, as the Vision at the beginning, or the Transformation at the end; (except the loss of your Hair, which I always mention with reverence). The Human persons are as fictitious as the airy ones; and the character of Belinda, as it is now manag’d, resembles you in nothing but in Beauty.
If this Poem had as many Graces as there are in your Person, or in your Mind, yet I could never hope it should pass thro’ the world half so Uncensur’d as You have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem, Madam,
Your most obedient, Humble Servant,
A. Pope
Canto I
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things,I sing — This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:This, ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,If She inspire, and He approve my lays.Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compelA well-bred Lord t’ assault a gentle Belle?O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor’d,Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?In tasks so bold, can little men engage,And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty Rage?Sol thro’ white curtains shot a tim’rous ray,And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day:Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake:Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock’d the ground,And the press’d watch return’d a silver sound.Belinda still her downy pillow prest,Her guardian Sylph prolong’d the balmy rest:‘Twas He had summon’d to her silent bedThe morning-dream that hover’d o’er her head;A Youth more glitt’ring than a Birth-night Beau,(That ev’n in slumber caus’d her cheek to glow)Seem’d to her ear his winning lips to lay,And thus in whispers said, or seem’d to say.Fairest of mortals, thou distinguish’d careOf thousand bright Inhabitants of Air!If e’er one vision touch.’d thy infant thought,Of all the Nurse and all the Priest have taught;Of airy Elves by moonlight shadows seen,The silver token, and the circled green,Or virgins visited by Angel-pow’rs,With golden crowns and wreaths of heav’nly flow’rs;Hear and believe! thy own importance know,Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.Some secret truths, from learned pride conceal’d,To Maids alone and Children are reveal’d:What tho’ no credit doubting Wits may give?The Fair and Innocent shall still believe.Know, then, unnumber’d Spirits round thee fly,The light Militia of the lower sky:These, tho’ unseen, are ever on the wing,Hang o’er the Box, and hover round the Ring.Think what an equipage thou hast in Air,And view with scorn two Pages and a Chair.As now your own, our beings were of old,And once inclos’d in Woman’s beauteous mould;Thence, by a soft transition, we repairFrom earthly Vehicles to these of air.Think not, when Woman’s transient breath is fledThat all her vanities at once are dead;Succeeding vanities she still regards,And tho’ she plays no more, o’erlooks the cards.Her joy in gilded Chariots, when alive,And love of Ombre, after death survive.For when the Fair in all their pride expire,To their first Elements their Souls retire:The Sprites of fiery Termagants in FlameMount up, and take a Salamander’s name.Soft yielding minds to Water glide away,And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea.The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,In search of mischief still on Earth to roam.The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,And sport and flutter in the fields of Air.” Know further yet; whoever fair and chasteRejects mankind, is by some Sylph embrac’d:For Spirits, freed from mortal laws, with easeAssume what sexes and what shapes they please.What guards the purity of melting Maids,In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,Safe from the treach’rous friend, the daring spark,The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,When kind occasion prompts their warm desires,When music softens, and when dancing fires?‘Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,Tho’ Honour is the word with Men below.Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,For life predestin’d to the Gnomes’ embrace.These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,When offers are disdain’d, and love deny’d:Then gay Ideas crowd the vacant brain,While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train,And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear,And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their ear.‘T is these that early taint the female soul,Instruct the eyes of young Coquettes to roll,Teach Infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,And little hearts to flutter at a Beau.Oft, when the world imagine women stray,The Sylphs thro’ mystic mazes guide their way,Thro’ all the giddy circle they pursue,And old impertinence expel by new.What tender maid but must a victim fallTo one man’s treat, but for another’s ball?When Florio speaks what virgin could withstand,If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?With varying vanities, from ev’ry part,They shift the moving Toyshop of their heart;Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.This erring mortals Levity may call;Oh blind to truth! the Sylphs contrive it all.Of these am I, who thy protection claim,A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.Late, as I rang’d the crystal wilds of air,In the clear Mirror of thy ruling StarI saw, alas! some dread event impend,Ere to the main this morning sun descend,But heav’n reveals not what, or how, or where:Warn’d by the Sylph, oh pious maid, beware!This to disclose is all thy guardian can:Beware of all, but most beware of Man!”He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,Leap’d up, and wak’d his mistress with his tongue.‘T was then, Belinda, if report say true,Thy eyes first open’d on a Billet-doux;Wounds, Charms, and Ardors were no sooner read,But all the Vision vanish’d from thy head.And now, unveil’d, the Toilet stands display’d,Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.First, rob’d in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncover’d, the Cosmetic pow’rs.A heav’nly image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;Th’ inferior Priestess, at her altar’s side,Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.Unnumber’d treasures ope at once, and hereThe various off’rings of the world appear;From each she nicely culls with curious toil,And decks the Goddess with the glitt’ring spoil.This casket India’s glowing gems unlocks,And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms;The fair each moment rises in her charms,Repairs her smiles, awakens ev’ry grace,And calls forth all the wonders of her face;Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,These set the head, and those divide the hair,Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown:And Betty’s prais’d for labours not her own. |
Canto II
Not with more glories, in th’ etherial plain,The Sun first rises o’er the purpled main,Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beamsLaunch’d on the bosom of the silver Thames.Fair Nymphs, and well-drest Youths around her shone.But ev’ry eye was fix’d on her alone.On her white breast a sparkling Cross she wore,Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore.Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,Quick as her eyes, and as unfix’d as those:Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;Oft she rejects, but never once offends.Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,Might hide her faults, if Belles had faults to hide:If to her share some female errors fall,Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.This Nymph, to the destruction of mankind,Nourish’d two Locks, which graceful hung behindIn equal curls, and well conspir’d to deckWith shining ringlets the smooth iv’ry neck.Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.With hairy springes we the birds betray,Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,And beauty draws us with a single hair.Th’ advent’rous Baron the bright locks admir’d; He saw, he wish’d, and to the prize aspir’d.Resolv’d to win, he meditates the way,By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;For when success a Lover’s toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain’d his ends.For this, ere Phœbus rose, he had implor’dPropitious heav’n, and ev’ry pow’r ador’d,But chiefly Love — to Love an Altar built,Of twelve vast French Romances, neatly gilt.There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves;And all the trophies of his former loves;With tender Billet-doux he lights the pyre,And breathes three am’rous sighs to raise the fire.Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyesSoon to obtain, and long possess the prize:The pow’rs gave ear, and granted half his pray’r,The rest, the winds dispers’d in empty air.But now secure the painted vessel glides,The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides:While melting music steals upon the sky,And soften’d sounds along the waters die;Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play,Belinda smil’d, and all the world was gay.All but the Sylph — with careful thoughts opprest,Th’ impending woe sat heavy on his breast.He summons strait his Denizens of air;The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:Soft o’er the shrouds aërial whispers breathe,That seem’d but Zephyrs to the train beneath.Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,Their fluid bodies half dissolv’d in light,Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,Thin glitt’ring textures of the filmy dew,Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,While ev’ry beam new transient colours flings,Colours that change whene’er they wave their wings.Amid the circle, on the gilded mast,Superior by the head, was Ariel plac’d;His purple pinions op’ning to the sun,He rais’d his azure wand, and thus begun.Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear!Fays, Fairies, Genii, Elves, and Dæmons, hear!Ye know the spheres and various tasks assign’dBy laws eternal to th’ aërial kind.Some in the fields of purest Æther play,And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.Some guide the course of wand’ring orbs on high,Or roll the planets thro’ the boundless sky.Some less refin’d, beneath the moon’s pale lightPursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,Or suck the mists in grosser air below,Or dip their pinions in the painted bow,Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,Or o’er the glebe distil the kindly rain.Others on earth o’er human race preside,Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide:Of these the chief the care of Nations own,And guard with Arms divine the British Throne.Our humbler province is to tend the Fair,Not a less pleasing, tho’ less glorious care;To save the powder from too rude a gale,Nor let th’ imprison’d-essences exhale;To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow’rs;To steal from rainbows e’er they drop in show’rsA brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs;Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,To change a Flounce, or add a Furbelow.This day, black Omens threat the brightest Fair,That e’er deserv’d a watchful spirit’s care;Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight;But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,Or some frail China jar receive a flaw;Or stain her honour or her new brocade;Forget her pray’rs, or miss a masquerade;Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball;Or whether Heav’n has doom’d that Shock must fall.Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair:The flutt’ring fan be Zephyretta’s care;The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav’rite Lock;Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note,We trust th’ important charge, the Petticoat:Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,Tho’ stiff with hoops, and arm’d with ribs of whale;Form a strong line about the silver bound,And guard the wide circumference around.Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o’ertake his sins,Be stopp’d in vials, or transfix’d with pins;Or plung’d in lakes of bitter washes lie,Or wedg’d whole ages in a bodkin’s eye:Gums and Pomatums shall his flight restrain,While clogg’d he beats his silken wings in vain;Or Alum styptics with contracting pow’rShrink his thin essence like a rivel’d flow’r:Or, as Ixion fix’d, the wretch shall feelThe giddy motion of the whirling Mill,In fumes of burning Chocolate shall glow,And tremble at the sea that froths below!He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend;Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend;Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair;Some hang upon the pendants of her ear:With beating hearts the dire event they wait,Anxious, and trembling for the birth of Fate. |
Canto III
Close by those meads, for ever crown’d with flow’rs,Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow’rs,There stands a structure of majestic frame,Which from the neighb’ring Hampton takes its name.Here Britain’s statesmen oft the fall foredoomOf foreign Tyrants and of Nymphs at home;Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey.Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes Tea.Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,To taste awhile the pleasures of a Court;In various talk th’ instructive hours they past,Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;One speaks the glory of the British Queen,And one describes a charming Indian screen;A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;At ev’ry word a reputation dies.Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.Mean while, declining from the noon of day,The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;The hungry Judges soon the sentence sign,And wretches hang that jury-men may dine;The merchant from th’ Exchange returns in peace,And the long labours of the Toilet cease.Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites,Burns to encounter two advent’rous Knights,At Ombre singly to decide their doom;And swells her breast with conquests yet to come.Straight the three bands prepare in arms to join,Each band the number of the sacred nine.Soon as she spreads her hand, th’ aërial guardDescend, and sit on each important card:First Ariel perch’d upon a Matadore,Then each, according to the rank they bore;For Sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient race,Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place.Behold, four Kings in majesty rever’d,With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;And four fair Queens whose hands sustain a flow’r,Th’ expressive emblem of their softer pow’r;Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand;And particolour’d troops, a shining train,Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain.The skilful Nymph reviews her force with care:Let Spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.Now move to war her sable Matadores,In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors.Spadillio first, unconquerable Lord!Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board.As many more Manillio forc’d to yield,And march’d a victor from the verdant field.Him Basto follow’d, but his fate more hardGain’d but one trump and one Plebeian card.With his broad sabre next, a chief in years,The hoary Majesty of Spades appears,Puts forth one manly leg, to sight reveal’d,The rest, his many-colour’d robe conceal’d.The rebel Knave, who dares his prince engage,Proves the just victim of his royal rage.Ev’n mighty Pam, that Kings and Queens o’erthrewAnd mow’d down armies in the fights of Lu,Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,Falls undistinguish’d by the victor spade!Thus far both armies to Belinda yield;Now to the Baron fate inclines the field.His warlike Amazon her host invades,Th’ imperial consort of the crown of Spades.The Club’s black Tyrant first her victim dy’d,Spite of his haughty mien, and barb’rous pride:What boots the regal circle on his head,His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread;That long behind he trails his pompous robe,And, of all monarchs, only grasps the globe?The Baron now his Diamonds pours apace;Th’ embroider’d King who shows but half his face,And his refulgent Queen, with pow’rs combin’dOf broken troops an easy conquest find.Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen,With throngs promiscuous strow the level green.Thus when dispers’d a routed army runs,Of Asia’s troops, and Afric’s sable sons,With like confusion different nations fly,Of various habit, and of various dye,The pierc’d battalions dis-united fall,In heaps on heaps; one fate o’erwhelms them all.The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts,And wins (oh shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts.At this, the blood the virgin’s cheek forsook,A livid paleness spreads o’er all her look;She sees, and trembles at th’ approaching ill,Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille.And now (as oft in some distemper’d State)On one nice Trick depends the gen’ral fate.An Ace of Hearts steps forth: The King unseenLurk’d in her hand, and mourn’d his captive Queen:He springs to Vengeance with an eager pace,And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace.The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky;The walls, the woods, and long canals reply.Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,Too soon dejected, and too soon elate.Sudden, these honours shall be snatch’d away,And curs’d for ever this victorious day.For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown’d,The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;On shining Altars of Japan they raiseThe silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,While China’s earth receives the smoking tide:At once they gratify their scent and taste,And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.Straight hover round the Fair her airy band;Some, as she sipp’d, the fuming liquor fann’d,Some o’er her lap their careful plumes display’d,Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.Coffee, (which makes the politician wise,And see thro’ all things with his half-shut eyes)Sent up in vapours to the Baron’s brainNew Stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere’t is too late,Fear the just Gods, and think of Scylla’s Fate!Chang’d to a bird, and sent to flit in air,She dearly pays for Nisus’ injur’d hair!But when to mischief mortals bend their will,How soon they find fit instruments of ill!Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting graceA two-edg’d weapon from her shining case:So Ladies in Romance assist their Knight,Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.He takes the gift with rev’rence, and extendsThe little engine on his fingers’ ends;This just behind Belinda’s neck he spread,As o’er the fragrant steams she bends her head.Swift to the Lock a thousand Sprites repair,A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair;And thrice they twitch’d the diamond in her ear;Thrice she look’d back, and thrice the foe drew near.Just in that instant, anxious Ariel soughtThe close recesses of the Virgin’s thought;As on the nosegay in her breast reclin’d,He watch’d th’ Ideas rising in her mind,Sudden he view’d, in spite of all her art,An earthly Lover lurking at her heart.Amaz’d, confus’d, he found his pow’r expir’d,Resign’d to fate, and with a sigh retir’d.The Peer now spreads the glitt’ring Forfex wide,T’ inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.Ev’n then, before the fatal engine clos’d,A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos’d;Fate urg’d the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain,(But airy substance soon unites again)The meeting points the sacred hair disseverFrom the fair head, for ever, and for ever!Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.Not louder shrieks to pitying heav’n are cast,When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last;Or when rich China vessels fall’n from high,In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine(The victor cry’d) the glorious Prize is mine!While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,Or in a coach and six the British Fair,As long as Atalantis shall be read,Or the small pillow grace a Lady’s bed,While visits shall be paid on solemn days,When num’rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!What Time would spare, from Steel receives its date,And monuments, like men, submit to fate!Steel could the labour of the Gods destroy,And strike to dust th’ imperial tow’rs of Troy;Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,And hew triumphal arches to the ground.What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel,The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel? |
Canto IV
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress’d,And secret passions labour’d in her breast.Not youthful kings in battle seiz’d alive,Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,Not ardent lovers robb’d of all their bliss,Not ancient ladies when refus’d a kiss,Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,Not Cynthia when her manteau’s pinn’d awry,E’er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,As thou, sad Virgin! for thy ravish’d Hair.For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrewAnd Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,As ever sully’d the fair face of light,Down to the central earth, his proper scene,Repair’d to search the gloomy Cave of Spleen.Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome,And in a vapour reach’d the dismal dome.No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,The dreaded East is all the wind that blows.Here in a grotto, shelter’d close from air,And screen’d in shades from day’s detested glare,She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,But diff’ring far in figure and in face.Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid,Her wrinkled form in black and white array’d;With store of pray’rs, for mornings, nights, and noons,Her hand is fill’d; her bosom with lampoons.There Affectation, with a sickly mien,Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,Practis’d to lisp, and hang the head aside.Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show.The fair ones feel such maladies as these,When each new night-dress gives a new disease.A constant Vapour o’er the palace flies;Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise;Dreadful, as hermit’s dreams in haunted shades,Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires:Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,And crystal domes, and angels in machines.Unnumber’d throngs on every side are seen,Of bodies chang’d to various forms by Spleen.Here living Tea-pots stand, one arm held out,One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:A Pipkin there, like Homer’s Tripod walks;Here sighs a Jar, and there a Goose-pie talks;Men prove with child, as pow’rful fancy works,And maids turn’d bottles, call aloud for corks.Safe past the Gnome thro’ this fantastic band,A branch of healing Spleenwort in his hand.Then thus address’d the pow’r: “Hail, wayward Queen!Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:Parent of vapours and of female wit,Who give th’ hysteric, or poetic fit,On various tempers act by various ways,Make some take physic, others scribble plays;Who cause the proud their visits to delay,And send the godly in a pet to pray.A nymph there is, that all thy pow’r disdains,And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.But oh! if e’er thy Gnome could spoil a grace,Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,Like Citron-waters matrons cheeks inflame,Or change complexions at a losing game;If e’er with airy horns I planted heads,Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,Or caus’d suspicion when no soul was rude,Or discompos’d the head-dress of a Prude,Or e’er to costive lap-dog gave disease,Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin,That single act gives half the world the spleen.”The Goddess with a discontented airSeems to reject him, tho’ she grants his pray’r.A wond’rous Bag with both her hands she binds,Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;There she collects the force of female lungs,Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.A Vial next she fills with fainting fears,Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.The Gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.Sunk in Thalestris’ arms the nymph he found,Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound.Full o’er their heads the swelling bag he rent,And all the Furies issu’d at the vent.Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.“O wretched maid!” she spread her hands, and cry’d,(While Hampton’s echoes, “Wretched maid!” reply’d)“Was it for this you took such constant careThe bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?For this your locks in paper durance bound,For this with tort’ring irons wreath’d around?For this with fillets strain’d your tender head,And bravely bore the double loads of lead?Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,While the Fops envy, and the Ladies stare!Honour forbid! at whose unrivall’d shrineEase, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign.Methinks already I your tears survey,Already hear the horrid things they say,Already see you a degraded toast,And all your honour in a whisper lost!How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?‘T will then be infamy to seem your friend!And shall this prize, th’ inestimable prize,Expos’d thro’ crystal to the gazing eyes,And heighten’d by the diamond’s circling rays,On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?Sooner shall grass in Hyde-park Circus grow,And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;Sooner let earth, air, sea, to Chaos fall,Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!”She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,And bids her Beau demand the precious hairs;(Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain,And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,He first the snuff-box open’d, then the case,And thus broke out — “My Lord, why, what the devil?“Z — ds! damn the lock! ‘fore Gad, you must be civil!Plague on’t!’t is past a jest — nay prithee, pox!Give her the hair” — he spoke, and rapp’d his box.”It grieves me much” (reply’d the Peer again)“Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.But by this Lock, this sacred Lock I swear,(Which never more shall join its parted hair;Which never more its honours shall renew,Clipp’d from the lovely head where late it grew)That while my nostrils draw the vital air,This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear.”He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spreadThe long-contended honours of her head.But Umbriel, hateful Gnome! forbears not so;He breaks the Vial whence the sorrows flow.Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears,Her eyes half-languishing, half-drown’d in tears;On her heav’d bosom hung her drooping head,Which, with a sigh, she rais’d; and thus she said.“For ever curs’d be this detested day,Which snatch’d my best, my fav’rite curl away!Happy! ah ten times happy had I been,If Hampton-Court these eyes had never seen!Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,By love of Courts to num’rous ills betray’d.Oh had I rather un-admir’d remain’dIn some lone isle, or distant Northern land;Where the gilt Chariot never marks the way,Where none learn Ombre, none e’er taste Bohea!There kept my charms conceal’d from mortal eye,Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.What mov’d my mind with youthful Lords to roam?Oh had I stay’d, and said my pray’rs at home!‘T was this, the morning omens seem’d to tell,Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;The tott’ring China shook without a wind.Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!A Sylph too warn’d me of the threats of fate,In mystic visions, now believ’d too late!See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!My hands shall rend what ev’n thy rapine spares:These in two sable ringlets taught to break,Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck;The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,And in its fellow’s fate foresees its own;Uncurl’d it hangs, the fatal shears demands,And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seizeHairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!” |
Canto V
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears.But Fate and Jove had stopp’d the Baron’s ears.In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,For who can move when fair Belinda fails? Not half so fix’d the Trojan could remain, While Anna begg’d and Dido rag’d in vain.Then grave Clarissa graceful wav’d her fan;Silence ensu’d, and thus the nymph began.“Say why are Beauties prais’d and honour’d most,The wise man’s passion, and the vain man’s toast?Why deck’d with all that land and sea afford,Why Angels call’d, and Angel-like ador’d?Why round our coaches crowd the white-glov’d Beaux,Why bows the side-box from its inmost rows;How vain are all these glories, all our pains,Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:That men may say, when we the front-box grace:‘Behold the first in virtue as in face!‘Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,Charm’d the small-pox, or chas’d old-age away;Who would not scorn what housewife’s cares produce,Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?To patch, nay ogle, might become a Saint,Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey;Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;What then remains but well our pow’r to use,And keep good-humour still whate’er we lose?And trust me, dear! good-humour can prevail,When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.“So spoke the Dame, but no applause ensu’d;Belinda frown’d, Thalestris call’d her Prude.“To arms, to arms!” the fierce Virago cries,And swift as lightning to the combat flies.All side in parties, and begin th’ attack;Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;Heroes’ and Heroines’ shouts confus’dly rise,And bass, and treble voices strike the skies.No common weapons in their hands are found,Like Gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.So when bold Homer makes the Gods engage,And heav’nly breasts with human passions rage;‘Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;And all Olympus rings with loud alarms:Jove’s thunder roars, heav’n trembles all around,Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:Earth shakes her nodding tow’rs, the ground gives way.And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce’s heightClapp’d his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:Propp’d on the bodkin spears, the Sprites surveyThe growing combat, or assist the fray.While thro’ the press enrag’d Thalestris flies,And scatters death around from both her eyes,A Beau and Witling perish’d in the throng,One died in metaphor, and one in song.“O cruel nymph! a living death I bear,”Cry’d Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,“Those eyes are made so killing” — was his last.Thus on Mæander’s flow’ry margin liesTh’ expiring Swan, and as he sings he dies.When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down, Chloe stepp’d in, and kill’d him with a frown;She smil’d to see the doughty hero slain,But, at her smile, the Beau reviv’d again.Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air, Weighs the Men’s wits against the Lady’s hair;The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.See, fierce Belinda on the Baron flies, With more than usual lightning in her eyes:Nor fear’d the Chief th’ unequal fight to try,Who sought no more than on his foe to die.But this bold Lord with manly strength endu’d,She with one finger and a thumb subdu’d:Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,A charge of Snuff the wily virgin threw;The Gnomes direct, to ev’ry atom just,The pungent grains of titillating dust.Sudden, with starting tears each eye o’erflows,And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d, And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.(The same, his ancient personage to deck,Her great great grandsire wore about his neck,In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,Form’d a vast buckle for his widow’s gown:Her infant grandame’s whistle next it grew,The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;Then in a bodkin grac’d her mother’s hairs,Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)“Boast not my fall” (he cry’d) “insulting foe! Thou by some other shalt be laid as low,Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind:All that I dread is leaving you behind!Rather than so, ah let me still survive,And burn in Cupid’s flames — but burn alive.”“Restore the Lock!” she cries; and all around “Restore the Lock!” the vaulted roofs rebound.Not fierce Othello in so loud a strainRoar’d for the handkerchief that caus’d his pain.But see how oft ambitious aims are cross’d,And chiefs contend ’till all the prize is lost!The Lock, obtain’d with guilt, and kept with pain,In ev’ry place is sought, but sought in vain:With such a prize no mortal must be blest,So heav’n decrees! with heav’n who can contest?Some thought it mounted to the Lunar sphere, Since all things lost on earth are treasur’d there.There Hero’s wits are kept in pond’rous vases,And beau’s in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases.There broken vows and death-bed alms are found,And lovers’ hearts with ends of riband bound,The courtier’s promises, and sick man’s pray’rs,The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,Dry’d butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.But trust the Muse — she saw it upward rise,Tho’ mark’d by none but quick, poetic eyes:(So Rome’s great founder to the heav’ns withdrew,To Proculus alone confess’d in view)A sudden Star, it shot thro’ liquid air,And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.Not Berenice’s Locks first rose so bright,The heav’ns bespangling with dishevell’d light.The Sylphs behold it kindling as it flies,And pleas’d pursue its progress thro’ the skies.This the Beau monde shall from the Mall survey,And hail with music its propitious ray.This the blest Lover shall for Venus take,And send up vows from Rosamonda’s lake.This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,When next he looks thro’ Galileo’s eyes;And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoomThe fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome.Then cease, bright Nymph! to mourn thy ravish’d hair,Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,Shall draw such envy as the Lock you lost.For, after all the murders of your eye,When, after millions slain, yourself shall die:When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,This Lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame,And ‘midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name. |
Contents
line |
reference |
meaning |
|---|---|---|
Dedication |
Mrs. Arabella |
the title of Mrs. was still given in Pope’s time to unmarried ladies as soon as they were old enough to enter society. |
the Rosicrucian doctrine |
the first mention of the Rosicrucians is in a book published in Germany in 1614, inviting all scholars to join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of “Brothers of the Rosy Cross.” They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with superstitions handed down from ancient times. Pope probably knew nothing more of them than what he had read in Le Comte de Gabalis.This was the work of a French abbé, de Montfaucon Villars (1635-1673), who was well known in his day both as a preacher and a man of letters. It is really a satire upon the fashionable mystical studies, but treats in a tone of pretended seriousness of secret sciences, of elemental spirits, and of their intercourse with men. It was translated into English in 1680 and again in 1714. |
|
Canto I |
||
1-2 |
Pope opens his mock-epic with the usual epic formula, the statement of the subject. Compare the first lines of the Iliad, the Æneid, and Paradise Lost. In l. 7 he goes on to call upon the “goddess,” i.e. the muse, to relate the cause of the rape. This, too, is an epic formula. Compare Æneid, I, 8, and Paradise Lost, I, 27-33. |
|
3 |
Caryl |
see Introduction. In accordance with his wish his name was not printed in the editions of the poem that came out in Pope’s lifetime, appearing there only as C — — or C — — l. |
4 |
Belinda |
a name used by Pope to denote Miss Fermor, the heroine of The Rape of the Lock |
12 |
This line is almost a translation of a line in the Æneid (I, 11), where Virgil asks if it be possible that such fierce passions (as Juno’s) should exist in the minds of gods. |
|
13 |
Sol |
a good instance of the fondness which Pope shared with most poets of his time for giving classical names to objects of nature. This trick was supposed to adorn and elevate poetic diction. Try to find other instances of this in The Rape of the Lock. |
Why is the sun’s ray called “tim’rous”? |
||
16 |
It was an old convention that lovers were so troubled by their passion that they could not sleep. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (ll. 97-98), Chaucer says of the young squire:So hote he lovede, that by nightertaleHe sleep namore than dooth a nightingale.Pope, of course, is laughing at the easy-going lovers of his day who in spite of their troubles sleep very comfortably till noon. |
|
17 |
The lady on awaking rang a little hand-bell that stood on a table by her bed to call her maid. Then as the maid did not appear at once she tapped impatiently on the floor with the heel of her slipper. The watch in the next line was a repeater. |
|
19 |
All the rest of this canto was added in the second edition of the poem. See pp. 84-86. Pope did not notice that he describes Belinda as waking in I. 14 and still asleep and dreaming in II. 19-116. |
|
20 |
guardian Sylph |
compare ll. 67-78 |
23 |
a Birth-night Beau |
a fine gentleman in his best clothes, such as he would wear at a ball on the occasion of a royal birthday. |
30 |
The nurse would have told Belinda the old tales of fairies who danced by moonlight on rings in the greensward, and dropped silver coins into the shoes of tidy little maids. The priest, on the other hand, would have repeated to her the legend of St. Cecilia and her guardian angel who once appeared in bodily form to her husband holding two rose garlands gathered in Paradise, or of St. Dorothea, who sent an angel messenger with a basket of heavenly fruits and flowers to convert the pagan Theophilus. |
|
42 |
militia |
used here in the general sense of “soldiery.” |
44 |
the box |
in the theater. |
the ring |
the drive in Hyde Park, where the ladies of society took the air. |
|
46 |
a chair |
a sedan chair in which ladies used to be carried about. Why is Belinda told to scorn it? |
50 |
What is the meaning of “vehicles” in this line? |
|
56 |
Ombre |
the fashionable game of cards in Pope’s day. See his account of a game in Canto III and the notes on that passage. |
57-67 |
See Introduction |
|
69-70 |
Compare Paradise Lost, I, 423-431. |
|
79 |
conscious of their face: proud of their beauty. |
|
81 |
These |
the gnomes who urge the vain beauties to disdain all offers of love and play the part of prudes. |
85 |
garters, stars, and coronets |
the garter is the badge of the Knights of the Garter, an order founded by Edward III, to which only noble princes and noblemen of the highest rank were admitted. “Stars” are the jeweled decorations worn by members of other noble orders. “Coronets” are the inferior crowns worn by princes and nobles, not by sovereigns. |
86 |
“Your Grace” |
the title bestowed in England on a duchess — The idea in this passage, ll. 83-86, is that the gnomes fill the girls’ minds with hopes of a splendid marriage and so induce them to “deny love.” |
94 |
impertinence |
purposeless flirtation. |
97-98 |
Florio … Damon |
poetic names for fine gentlemen; no special individuals are meant. |
100 |
Why is a woman’s heart called a “toy-shop”? |
|
101 |
Sword-knots |
tassels worn at the hilts of swords. In Pope’s day every gentleman carried a sword, and these sword-knots were often very gay. |
105 |
who thy protection claim |
what is the exact meaning of his phrase? |
108 |
thy ruling Star |
the star that controls thy destinies, a reference to the old belief in astrology. |
115 |
Shock |
Belinda’s pet dog. His name would seem to show that he was a rough-haired terrier. |
118 |
Does this line mean that Belinda had never seen a billet-doux before? |
|
119 |
Wounds, Charms, and Ardors |
the usual language of a love-letter at this time. |
124 |
the Cosmetic pow’rs |
the deities that preside over a lady’s toilet. Note the playful satire with which Pope describes Belinda’s toilet as if it were a religious ceremony. Who is “th’ inferior priestess” in l. 127? |
131 |
nicely |
carefully. |
134 |
Arabia |
famous for its perfumes. |
145 |
set the head |
arrange the head-dress. |
147 |
Betty |
Belinda’s maid. |
Canto II |
||
4 |
Launch’d |
embarked |
25 |
springes |
snares |
26 |
the finny prey |
a characteristic instance of Pope’s preference or circumlocution to a direct phrase. |
35-36 |
A regular formula in classical epics. In Virgil (XI, 794-795) Phœbus grants part of the prayer of Arruns; the other part he scatters to the light winds. |
|
38 |
vast French Romances |
these romances were the customary reading of society in Pope’s day when there were as yet no English novels. Some of them were of enormous length. Addison found several of them in a typical lady’s library, great folio volumes, finely bound in gilt (Spectator, 37). |
58 |
All but the Sylph |
so in Homer (1-25), while all the rest of the army is sleeping Agamemnon is disturbed by fear of the doom impending over the Greeks at the hands of Hector. |
60 |
Waft |
wave, or flutter. |
70 |
Superior by the head |
so in Homer (Iliad, III, 225-227) Ajax is described as towering over the other Greeks by head and shoulders. |
73 |
sylphids |
a feminine form of “sylphs.” |
74 |
This formal opening of Ariel’s address to his followers is a parody of a passage in Paradise Lost, V, 600-601. |
|
75 |
spheres |
either “worlds” or in a more general sense “regions.” |
79 |
What are the “wandering orbs,” and how do they differ from planets in l. 80? |
|
97 |
a wash |
a lotion for the complexion. |
105 |
Diana, the virgin huntress, was in a peculiar sense the goddess of chastity. |
|
106 |
China jar |
the taste for collecting old china was comparatively new in England at this time. It had been introduced from Holland by Queen Anne’s sister, Queen Mary, and was eagerly caught up by fashionable society. |
113 |
The drops |
the diamond earrings. |
118 |
the Petticoat |
the huge hoop skirt which had recently become fashionable. Addison, in a humorous paper in the Tatler (No. 116), describes one as about twenty-four yards in circumference. |
128 |
bodkin |
a large needle. |
133 |
rivel’d |
an obsolete raiment of “obrivelled.” |
133 |
Ixion |
according to classical mythology Ixion was punished for his sins by being bound forever upon a whirling wheel. |
134 |
Mill |
the mill in which cakes of chocolate were ground up preparatory to making the beverage. |
138 |
orb in orb |
in concentric circles. |
139 |
thrid |
a variant form of “thread.” |
Canto III |
||
3 |
a structure |
Hampton Court, a palace on the Thames, a few miles above London. It was begun by Wolsey, and much enlarged by William III. Queen Anne visited it occasionally, and cabinet meetings were sometimes held there. Pope insinuates (l. 6) that the statesmen who met in these councils were as interested in the conquest of English ladies as of foreign enemies. |
8 |
Tea was still in Queen Anne’s day a luxury confined to the rich. It cost, in 1710, from twelve to twenty-eight shillings per pound. |
|
9 |
The heroes and the nymphs |
the boating party which started for Hampton Court in Canto II. |
17 |
Snuff-taking had just become fashionable at this time. The practice is said to date from 1702, when an English admiral brought back fifty tons of snuff found on board some Spanish ships which he had captured in Vigo Bay.In the Spectator for August 8, 1711, a mock advertisement is inserted professing to teach “the exercise of the snuff-box according to the most fashionable airs and motions,” and in the number for April 4, 1712, Steele protests against “an impertinent custom the fine women have lately fallen into of taking snuff.” |
|
22 |
dine |
the usual dinner hour in Queen Anne’s reign was about 3 P.M. Fashionable people dined at 4, or later. This allowed the fashionable lady who rose at noon time to do a little shopping and perform “the long labours of the toilet.” |
26 |
two … Knights |
one of these was the baron, see l. 66. |
27 |
Ombre |
a game of cards invented in Spain. It takes its name from the Spanish phrase originally used by the player who declared trumps: “Yo soy l’hombre,” i. e. I am the man. It could be played by three, five, or nine players, but the usual number was three as here. Each of these received nine cards, and one of them named the trump and thus became the “ombre,” who played against the two others. If either of the ombre’s opponents took more tricks than the ombre, it was “codille” (l. 92). This meant that the opponent took the stake and the ombre had to replace it for the next hand.A peculiar feature of ombre is the rank, or value, of the cards. The three best cards were called “matadores,” a Spanish word meaning “killers.” The first of these matadores was “Spadillio,” the ace of spades; the third was “Basto,” the ace of clubs. The second, “Manillio,” varied according to the suit. If a black suit were declared, Maniilio was the two of trumps; if a red suit, Manillio was the seven of trumps. It is worth noting also that the red aces were inferior to the face cards of their suits except when a red suit was trump.A brief analysis of the game played on this occasion will clear up the passage and leave the reader free to admire the ingenuity with which Pope has described the contest in terms of epic poetry.Belinda declares spades trumps and so becomes the “ombre.” She leads one after the other the three matadores; and takes three tricks. She then leads the next highest card, the king of spades, and wins a fourth trick. Being out of trumps she now leads the king of clubs; but the baron, who has actually held more spades than Belinda, trumps it with the queen of spades. All the trumps are now exhausted and the baron’s long suit of diamonds is established. He takes the sixth, seventh, and eighth tricks with the king, queen, and knave of diamonds, respectively. Everything now depends on the last trick, since Belinda and the baron each have taken four. The baron leads the ace of hearts and Belinda takes it with the king, thus escaping “codille” and winning the stake. |
30 |
the sacred nine |
the nine Muses. |
41 |
succint |
tucked up. |
54 |
one Plebeian card |
one of Belinda’s opponents is now out of trumps and discards a low card on her lead. |
61 |
Pam |
a term applied to the knave of clubs which was always the highest card in Lu, another popular game of that day. |
74 |
the globe |
the jeweled ball which forms one of the regalia of a monarch. The aspect of playing cards has changed not a little since Pope’s day, but the globe is still to be seen on the king of clubs. |
79 |
Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts |
these are the losing cards played by Belinda and the third player on the baron’s winning diamonds. |
99 |
Pope’s old enemy, Dennis, objected to the impropriety of Belinda’s filling the sky with exulting shouts, and some modern critics have been foolish enough to echo his objection. The whole scene is a masterpiece of the mock-heroic. The game is a battle, the cards are warriors, and Belinda’s exclamations of pleasure at winning are in the same fashion magnified into the cheers of a victorious army. |
|
100 |
long canals |
the canals which run through the splendid gardens of Hampton Court, laid out by William III in the Dutch fashion. |
106 |
The berries crackle |
it would seem from this phrase that coffee was at that time roasted as well as ground in the drawing-room. In a letter written shortly after the date of this poem Pope describes Swift as roasting coffee “with his own hands in an engine made for that purpose.”Coffee had been introduced into England about the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1657 a barber who had opened one of the first coffeehouses in London was indicted for “making and selling a sort of liquor called coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice of the neighborhood.” In Pope’s time there were nearly three thousand coffee-houses in London. |
The mill |
the coffee-mill. |
|
107 |
Altars of Japan |
japanned stands for the lamps. |
117-118 |
The parenthesis in these lines contains a hit at the would-be omniscient politicians who haunted the coffee-houses of Queen Anne’s day, and who professed their ability to see through all problems of state with their eyes half-shut. Pope jestingly attributes their wisdom to the inspiring power of coffee. |
|
122 |
Scylla |
the daughter of King Nisus in Grecian legends. Nisus had a purple hair and so long as it was untouched he was unconquerable. Scylla fell in love with one of his enemies and pulled out the hair while Nisus slept. For this crime she was turned into a bird. The story is told in full in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Bk. VIII. |
127 |
Clarissa |
it does not appear that Pope had any individual lady in mind. We do not know, at least, that any lady instigated or aided Lord Petre to cut off the lock. |
144 |
An earthly Lover |
we know nothing of any love affair of Miss Fermor’s. Pope mentions the “earthly lover” here to account for Ariel’s desertion of Belinda, for he could only protect her so long as she “rejected mankind”; compare Canto I, ll. 67-68. |
147 |
Forfex |
a Latin word meaning scissors. |
152 |
Pope borrowed this idea from Milton, who represents the wound inflicted on Satan, by the Archangel Michael as healing immediately:Th’ ethereal substance closedNot long divisible.Paradise Lost, VI, 330-331. |
|
165 |
Atalantis |
The New Atalantis, a four-volume “cornucopia of scandal” involving almost every public character of the day, was published by a Mrs. Manley in 1709. It was very widely read. The Spectator found it, along with a key which revealed the identities of its characters, in the lady’s library already mentioned (Spectator, No. 37). |
166 |
the small pillow |
a richly decorated pillow which fashionable ladies used to prop them up in bed when they received morning visits from gentlemen. Addison gives an account of such a visit in the Spectator, No. 45. |
167 |
solemn days |
days of marriage or mourning, on which at this time formal calls were paid. |
173 |
the labour of the gods |
the walls of Troy built by Apollo and Neptune for King Laomedon. |
178 |
unresisted |
irresistible. |
Canto IV |
||
8 |
Cynthia |
a fanciful name for any fashionable lady. No individual is meant. |
manteau |
a loose upper garment for women. |
|
16 |
Spleen |
the word is used here as a personification of melancholy, or low spirits. It was not an uncommon affectation in England at this time. A letter to the Spectator, No. 53, calls it “the distemper of the great and the polite.” |
17 |
the Gnome |
Umbriel, who in accordance with his nature now proceeds to stir up trouble. Compare Canto I, ll. 63-64. |
20 |
The bitter east wind which put every one into a bad humor was supposed to be one of the main causes of the spleen. |
|
23 |
She |
the goddess of the spleen. Compare l. 79. |
84 |
Megrim |
headache. |
29 |
store |
a large supply. |
38 |
night-dress |
the modern dressing-gown. The line means that whenever a fashionable beauty bought a new dressing-gown she pretended to be ill in order to show her new possession to sympathetic friends who called on her. |
40 |
phantoms |
these are the visions, dreadful or delightful, of the disordered imagination produced by spleen. |
43 |
snakes on rolling spires |
like the serpent which Milton describes in Paradise Lost, IX, 501-502, “erect amidst his circling spires.” |
46 |
angels in machines |
angels coming to help their votaries. The word “machine” here has an old-fashioned technical sense. It was first used to describe the apparatus by which a god was let down upon the stage of the Greek theater. Since a god was only introduced at a critical moment to help the distressed hero, the phrase, “deus ex machina,” came to mean a god who rendered aid. Pope transfers it here to angels. |
47 |
throngs |
Pope now describes the mad fancies of people so affected by spleen as to imagine themselves transformed to inanimate objects. |
51 |
pipkin |
a little jar. Homer (Iliad, XVIII, 373-377) tells how Vulcan had made twenty wonderful tripods on living wheels that moved from place to place of their own accord. |
52 |
Pope in a note to this poem says that a lady of his time actually imagined herself to be a goose-pie. |
|
56 |
A branch |
so Æneas bore a magic branch to protect him when he descended to the infernal regions (Æneid, VI, 136-143). |
Spleenwort |
a sort of fern which was once supposed to be a remedy against the spleen. |
|
58 |
the sex |
women. |
59 |
vapours |
a form of spleen to which women were supposed to be peculiarly liable, something like our modern hysteria. It seems to have taken its name from the fogs of England which were thought to cause it. |
65 |
a nymph |
Belinda, who had always been so light-hearted that she had never been a victim of the spleen. |
89 |
Citron-waters |
a liqueur made by distilling brandy with the rind of citrons. It was a fashionable drink for ladies at this time. |
71 |
Made men suspicious of their wives. |
|
82 |
Ulysses |
Homer (Odyssey, X, 1-25) tells how Æolus, the god of the winds, gave Ulysses a wallet of oxhide in which all the winds that might oppose his journey homeward were closely bound up. |
89 |
Thalestris |
the name of a warlike queen of the Amazons. Pope uses it here for a friend of Belinda’s, who excites her to revenge herself for the rape of her lock. It is said that this friend was a certain Mrs. Morley. |
102 |
loads of lead |
curl papers used to be fastened with strips of lead. |
105 |
Honour |
female reputation. |
109 |
toast |
a slang term in Pope’s day for a reigning beauty whose health was regularly drunk by her admirers. Steele (Tatler, No. 24) says that the term had its rise from an accident that happened at Bath in the reign of Charles II. A famous beauty was bathing there in public, and one of her admirers filled a glass with the water in which she stood and drank her health.”There was in the place,” says Steele “a gay fellow, half-fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore though he liked not the liquor, he would have the Toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honor which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a Toast.”To understand the point of the story one must know that it was an old custom to put a bit of toast in hot drinks.In this line in the poem Thalestris insinuates that if Belinda submits tamely to the rape of the lock, her position as a toast will be forfeited. |
113-116 |
Thalestris supposes that the baron will have the lock set in a ring under a bit of crystal. Old-fashioned hair-rings of this kind are still to be seen. |
|
117 |
Hyde-park Circus |
the Ring of Canto I, l. 44. Grass was not likely to grow there so long as it remained the fashionable place to drive. |
118 |
in the sound of Bow |
within hearing of the bells of the church of St. Mary le Bow in Cheapside. So far back as Ben Jonson’s time (Eastward Ho, I, ii, 36) it was the mark of the unfashionable middle-class citizen to live in this quarter. A “wit” in Queen Anne’s day would have scorned to lodge there. |
121 |
Sir Plume |
this was Sir George Brown, brother of Mrs. Morley (Thalestris). He was not unnaturally offended at the picture drawn of him in this poem. Pope told a friend many years later that”nobody was angry but Sir George Brown, and he was a good deal so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing but nonsense.” |
124 |
a clouded cane |
a cane of polished wood with cloudlike markings. In the Tatler, Mr. Bickerstaff sits in judgment on canes, and takes away a cane, “curiously clouded, with a transparent amber head, and a blue ribband to hang upon his wrist,” from a young gentleman as a piece of idle foppery. There are some amusing remarks on the “conduct” of canes in the same essay. |
133 |
The baron’s oath is a parody of the oath of Achilles (Iliad, I, 234). |
|
142 |
The breaking of the bottle of sorrows, etc., is the cause of Belinda’s change of mood from wrath as in l. 93 to tears, 143-144. |
|
155 |
the gilt Chariot |
the painted and gilded coach in which ladies took the air in London. |
156 |
Bohea |
tea, the name comes from a range of hills in China where a certain kind of tea was grown. |
162 |
the patch-box |
the box which held the little bits of black sticking-plaster with which ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison (Spectator, No. 81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the face or the other, according to their politics. |
Canto V |
||
5 |
the Trojan |
Æneas, who left Carthage in spite of the wrath of Dido and the entreaties of her sister Anna. |
7-36 |
Pope inserted these lines in a late revision in 1717, in order, as he said, to open more clearly the moral of the poem. The speech of Clarissa is a parody of a famous speech by Sarpedon in the Iliad, XII, 310-328. |
|
14 |
At this time the gentlemen always sat in the side boxes of the theater; the ladies in the front boxes. |
|
20 |
As vaccination had not yet been introduced, small-pox was at this time a terribly dreaded scourge. |
|
23 |
In the Spectator, No. 23, there is inserted a mock advertisement, professing to teach the whole art of ogling, the church ogle, the playhouse ogle, a flying ogle fit for the ring, etc. |
|
24 |
Painting the face was a common practice of the belles of this time. The Spectator, No. 41, contains a bitter attack on the painted ladies whom it calls the “Picts.” |
|
37 |
virago |
a fierce, masculine woman, here used for Thalestris. |
45 |
In the Iliad (Bk. XX) the gods are represented as taking sides for the Greeks and Trojans and fighting among themselves. Pallas opposes Ares, or Mars; and Hermes, Latona. |
|
48 |
Olympus |
the hill on whose summit the gods were supposed to dwell, often used for heaven itself. |
50 |
Neptune |
used here for the sea over which Neptune presided. |
53 |
a sconce’s height |
the top of an ornamental bracket for holding candles. |
61 |
Explain the metaphor in this line. |
|
64 |
The quotation is from a song in an opera called Camilla. |
|
65 |
The Mæander is a river in Asia Minor. Ovid (Heroides, VII, 1-2) represents the swan as singing his death-song on its banks. |
|
68 |
Chloe: a fanciful name. No real person is meant. |
|
71 |
The figure of Jove weighing the issue of a battle in his scales is found in the Iliad, VIII, 69-73. Milton imitated it in Paradise Lost, IX, 996-1004. When the men’s wits mounted it showed that they were lighter, less important, than the lady’s hair, and so were destined to lose the battle. |
|
89-96 |
This pedigree of Belinda’s bodkin is a parody of Homer’s account of Agamemnon’s scepter (Iliad, II, 100-108). |
|
105-106 |
In Shakespeare’s play Othello fiercely demands to see a handkerchief which he has given his wife, and takes her inability to show it to him as a proof of her infidelity. |
|
113 |
the lunar sphere: it was an old superstition that everything lost on earth went to the moon. An Italian poet, Ariosto, uses this notion in a poem with which Pope was familiar (Orlando Furioso, Canto XXXIV), and from which he borrowed some of his ideas for the cave of Spleen. |
|
122 |
Why does Pope include “tomes of casuistry” in this collection? |
|
125 |
There was a legend that Romulus never died, but had been caught up to the skies in a storm. Proculus, a Roman senator, said that Romulus had descended from heaven and spoken to him and then ascended again (Livy, I, 16). |
|
129 |
Berenice’s Locks |
: Berenice was an Egyptian queen who dedicated a lock of hair for her husband’s safe return from war. It was said afterward to have become a constellation, and a Greek poet wrote some verses on the marvel. |
132 |
Why were the Sylphs pleased? |
|
133 |
the Mall |
the upper side of St. James’s park in London, a favorite place at this time for promenades. |
136 |
Rosamonda’s lake |
a pond near one of the gates of St. James’s park, a favorite rendezvous for lovers. |
137 |
Partridge |
an almanac maker of Pope’s day who was given to prophesying future events. Shortly before this poem was written Swift had issued a mock almanac foretelling that Partridge would die on a certain day. When that day came Swift got out a pamphlet giving a full account of Partridge’s death. In spite of the poor man’s protests, Swift and his friends kept on insisting that he was dead. He was still living, however, when Pope wrote this poem. Why does Pope call him “th’ egregious wizard”? |
138 |
Galileo’s eyes |
the telescope, first used by the Italian astronomer Galileo. |
140 |
Louis XIV of France, the great enemy of England at this time. |
|
Rome |
here used to denote the Roman Catholic Church. |
|
143 |
the shining sphere |
an allusion to the old notion that all the stars were set in one sphere in the sky. Belinda’s lost lock, now a star, is said to add a new light to this sphere. |
147 |
What are the “fair suns”? |