Epistle

1 John John Searle, Pope's faithful servant.

4 Bedlam a lunatic asylum in London in Pope's day. Notice how Pope mentions, in the same breath, Bedlam and Parnassus, the hill of the Muses which poets might well be supposed to haunt.

8 thickets the groves surrounding Pope's villa.

Grot. see Introduction [grotto]

10 the chariot the coach in which Pope drove.

the barge the boat in which Pope was rowed upon the Thames.

13 the Mint a district in London where debtors were free from arrest. As they could not be arrested anywhere on Sunday, Pope represents them as taking that day to inflict their visits on him.

15 parson probably a certain Eusden, who had some pretensions to letters, but who ruined himself by drink.

17 clerk a law clerk.

18 engross write legal papers.

19-20 An imaginary portrait of a mad poet who keeps on writing verses even in his cell in Bedlam. Pope may have been thinking of Lee, a dramatist of Dryden's day who was confined for a time in this asylum.

23 Arthur Arthur Moore, a member of Parliament for some years and well known in London society. His "giddy son," James Moore, who took the name of Moore Smythe, dabbled in letters and was a bitter enemy of Pope.

25 Cornus Robert Lord Walpole, whose wife deserted him in 1734. Horace Walpole speaks of her as half mad.

31 sped done for.

40 Pope's counsel to delay the publication of the works read to him is borrowed from Horace: "nonumque prematur in annum" '(Ars Poetica, 388).'

41 Drury-land like Grub Street, a haunt of poor authors at this time.

43 before Term ends before the season is over; that is, as soon as the poem is written.

48 a Prologue for a play. Of course a prologue by the famous Mr. Pope would be of great value to a poor and unknown dramatist.

49 Pitholeon the name of a foolish poet mentioned by Horace. Pope uses it here for his enemy Welsted, mentioned in l. 373. — 'his Grace:' the title given a Duke in Great Britain. The Duke here referred to is said to be the Duke of Argyle, one of the most influential of the great Whig lords.

53 Curll a notorious publisher of the day, and an enemy of Pope. The implication is that if Pope will not grant Pitholeon's request, the latter will accept Curll's invitation and concoct a new libel against the poet.

60 Pope was one of the few men of letters of his day who had not written a play, and he was at this time on bad terms with certain actors.

62 Bernard Lintot, the publisher of Pope's translation of Homer.

66 go snacks share the profits. Pope represents the unknown dramatist as trying to bribe him to give a favorable report of the play.

69 Midas an old legend tells us that Midas was presented with a pair of ass's ears by an angry god whose music he had slighted. His barber, or, Chaucer says, his queen, discovered the change which Midas had tried to conceal, and unable to keep the secret whispered it to the reeds in the river, who straightway spread the news abroad.

75 With this line Arbuthnot is supposed to take up the conversation. This is indicated here and elsewhere by the letter A.

79 Dunciad see Introduction

85 Codrus a name borrowed from Juvenal to denote a foolish poet. Pope uses it here for some conceited dramatist who thinks none the less of himself because his tragedy is rejected with shouts of laughter.

96 Explain the exact meaning of this line.

97 Bavius a stock name for a bad poet. See note on Essay on Criticism, l. 34.

98 Philips Ambrose Philips, author among other things of a set of Pastorals that appeared in the same volume with Pope, 1709. Pope and he soon became bitter enemies. He was patronized by a Bishop Boulter.

99 Sappho Here as elsewhere Pope uses the name of the Greek poetess for his enemy, Lady Mary Wortley Montague.

109 Grubstreet a wretched street in London, inhabited in Pope's day by hack writers, most of whom were his enemies.

111 Curll (see note to l. 53) had printed a number of Pope's letters without the poet's consent some years before this poem was written.

113-32 Pope here describes the flatterers who were foolish enough to pay him personal compliments. They compare him to Horace who was short like Pope, though fat, and who seems to have suffered from colds; also to Alexander, one of whose shoulders was higher than the other, and to Ovid, whose other name, Naso, might indicate that long noses were a characteristic feature of his family. Pope really had large and beautiful eyes. Maro, l. 122, is Virgil.

123 With this line Pope begins an account of his life as a poet. For his precocity, see Introduction.

129 ease amuse, entertain.

'friend, not Wife:' the reference is, perhaps, to Martha Blount, Pope's friend, and may have been meant as a contradiction of his reported secret marriage to her.

132 to bear to endure the pains and troubles of an invalid's life.

133 Granville George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, a poet and patron of letters to whom Pope had dedicated his Windsor Forest.

134 Walsh see note on Essay on Criticism, l. 729.

135 Garth Sir Samuel Garth, like Arbuthnot, a doctor, a man of letters, and an early friend of Pope.

137 Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury; John, Lord Somers; and John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham; all leading statesmen and patrons of literature in Queen Anne's day.

138 Rochester Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, an intimate friend of Pope.

139 St. John Bolingbroke. For Pope's relations with him, see introduction to the Essay on Man, p. 116.

143 Gilbert Burnet and John Oldmixon had written historical works from the Whig point of view. Roger Cooke, a now forgotten writer, had published a Detection of the Court and State of England. Pope in a note on this line calls them all three authors of secret and scandalous history.

146 The reference is to Pope's early descriptive poems, the Pastorals and Windsor Forest.

147 gentle Fanny's a sneer at Lord Hervey's verses. See the introduction to this poem.

149 Gildon a critic of the time who had repeatedly attacked Pope. The poet told Spence that he had heard Addison gave Gildon ten pounds to slander him.

151 Dennis see note on Essay on Criticism. l. 270.

156 kiss'd the rod Pope was sensible enough to profit by the criticisms even of his enemies. He corrected several passages in the Essay on Criticism which Dennis had properly found fault with.

162 Bentley the most famous scholar of Pope's day. Pope disliked him because of his criticism of the poet's translation of the Iliad, "good verses, but not Homer." The epithet "slashing" refers to Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost in which he altered and corrected the poet's text to suit his own ideas.

Tibbalds Lewis Theobald (pronounced Tibbald), a scholar who had attacked Pope's edition of Shakespeare. Pope calls him "piddling" because of his scrupulous attention to details.

177 the Bard Philips, see note on l. 98. Pope claimed that Philips's Pastorals were plagiarized from Spenser, and other poets. Philips, also, translated some Persian Tales for the low figure of half a crown apiece.

187 bade translate suggested that they translate other men's work, since they could write nothing valuable of their own.

188 Tate a poetaster of the generation before Pope. He is remembered as the part author of a doggerel version of the Psalms.

191-212 For a discussion of this famous passage, see introduction to the Epistle.

196 the Turk it was formerly the practice for a Turkish monarch when succeeding to the throne to have all his brothers murdered so as to do away with possible rivals.

199 faint praise Addison was hearty enough when he cared to praise his friends. Pope is thinking of the coldness with which Addison treated his Pastorals as compared to those of Philips.

206 oblig'd note the old-fashioned pronunciation to rhyme with "besieged."

207 Cato an unmistakable allusion to Addison's tragedy in which the famous Roman appears laying down the law to the remnants of the Senate.

209 Templars students of law at the "Temple" in London who prided themselves on their good taste in literature. A body of them came on purpose to applaud 'Cato' on the first night.

raise exalt, praise.

211-2 laugh ... weep explain the reason for these actions.

Atticus Addison's name was given in the first version of this passage. Then it was changed to "A — -n." Addison had been mentioned in the Spectator (No. 150) under the name of Atticus as "in every way one of the greatest geniuses the age has produced."

213 rubric on the walls Lintot, Pope's old publisher, used to stick up the titles of new books in red letters on the walls of his shop.

214 with claps with clap-bills, posters.

215 smoking hot from the press.

220 George George II, king of England at this time. His indifference to literature was notorious.

228 Bufo the picture of a proud but grudging patron of letters which follows was first meant for Bubb Doddington, a courtier and patron of letters at the time the poem was written. In order to connect it more closely with the time of which he was writing, Pope added ll. 243-246, which pointed to Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax. Halifax was himself a poet and affected to be a great patron of poetry, but his enemies accused him of only giving his clients "good words and good dinners." Pope tells an amusing story of Montague's comments on his translation of the Iliad (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 134). But Halifax subscribed for ten copies of the translation, so that Pope, at least, could not complain of his lack of generosity.

Castalian state the kingdom of poets

232 His name was coupled with that of Horace as a poet and critic.

234 Pindar without a head some headless statue which Bufo insisted was a genuine classic figure of Pindar, the famous Greek lyric poet.

237 his seat his country seat.

242 paid in kind What does this phrase mean?

243 Dryden died in 1700. He had been poor and obliged to work hard for a living in his last years, but hardly had to starve. Halifax offered to pay the expenses of his funeral and contribute five hundred pounds for a monument, and Pope not unreasonably suggests that some of this bounty might have been bestowed on Dryden in his lifetime.

249 When a politician wants a writer to put in a day's work in defending him. Walpole, for example, who cared nothing for poetry, spent large sums in retaining writers to defend him in the journals and pamphlets of the day.

254 John Gay, the author of some very entertaining verses, was an intimate friend of Pope. On account of some supposed satirical allusions his opera Polly was refused a license, and when his friends, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry (see l. 260) solicited subscriptions for it in the palace, they were driven from the court. Gay died in 1732, and Pope wrote an epitaph for his tomb in Westminster Abbey. It is to this that he alludes in l. 258.

274 Balbus Balbus is said to mean the Earl of Kinnoul, at one time an acquaintance of Pope and Swift.

278 Sir William Yonge, a Whig politician whom Pope disliked. He seems to have written occasional verses. Bubo is Bubo Doddington (see note on l 230).

297-8 In the Fourth Moral Essay, published in 1731 as an Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, Pope had given a satirical description of a nobleman's house and grounds, adorned and laid out at vast expense, but in bad taste. Certain features of this description were taken from Canons, the splendid country place of the Duke of Chandos, and the duke was at once identified by a scandal-loving public with the Timon of the poem. In the description Pope speaks of the silver bell which calls worshipers to Timon's chapel, and of the soft Dean preaching there "who never mentions Hell to ears polite." In this passage of the Epistle to Arbuthnot he is protesting against the people who swore that they could identify the bell and the Dean as belonging to the chapel at Canons.

303 Sporus a favorite of Nero, used here for Lord Hervey. See introduction to this poem.

304 ass's milk Hervey was obliged by bad health to keep a strict diet, and a cup of ass's milk was his daily drink.

308 painted child Hervey was accustomed to paint his face like a woman.

317-9 Pope is thinking of Milton's striking description of Satan "squat like a toad" by the ear of the sleeping Eve (Paradise Lost, IV, 800). In this passage "Eve" refers to Queen Caroline with whom Hervey was on intimate terms. It is said that he used to have a seat in the queen's hunting chaise "where he sat close behind her perched at her ear".

322 now master up, now miss Pope borrowed this telling phrase from a pamphlet against Hervey written by Pulteney, a political opponent, in which the former is called "a pretty little master-miss."

326 the board the Council board where Hervey sat as member of the Privy Council.

328-9 An allusion to the old pictures of the serpent in Eden with a snake's body and a woman's, or angel's, face.

330 parts talents, natural gifts.

338-9 An allusion to Pope's abandoning the imaginative topics to his early poems, as the Pastorals and The Rape of the Lock, and turning to didactic verse as in the Essay on Man, and the Moral Epistles.

347 An allusion to a story circulated, in an abusive pamphlet called A Pop upon Pope, that the poet had been whipped for his satire and that he had cried like a child.

349 Dull and scandalous poems printed under Pope's name, or attributed to him by his enemies.

351 the pictur'd shape Pope was especially hurt by the caricatures which exaggerated his personal deformity.

353 a friend is exile probably Bishop Atterbury, then in exile for his Jacobite opinions.

354-5 Another reference to Hervey who was suspected of poisoning the mind of the King against Pope.

361 Japhet Japhet Crooke, a notorious forger of the time. He died in prison in 1734, after having had his nose slit and ears cropped for his crimes; see below, l. 365.

363 Knight of the post a slang term for a professional witness ready to, swear to anything for money. A knight of the shire, on the other hand, is the representative of a county in the House of Commons.

367 bit tricked, taken in, a piece of Queen Anne slang. The allusion is probably to the way in which Lady Mary Wortley Montague allowed Pope to make love to her and then laughed at him.

369 friend to his distress in 1733, when old Dennis was in great poverty, a play was performed for his benefit, for which Pope obligingly wrote a prologue.

371 Colley Gibber, actor and poet laureate. Pope speaks as if it were an act of condescension for him to have drunk with Gibber.''

Moore James Moore Smythe (see note on l. 23), whom Pope used to meet at the house of the Blounts. He wrote a comedy, The Rival Modes, in which he introduced six lines that Pope had written. Pope apparently had given him leave to do so, and then retracted his permission. But Moore used them without the permission and an undignified quarrel arose as to the true authorship of the passage.

373 Welsted a hack writer of the day, had falsely charged Pope with being responsible for the death of the lady who is celebrated in Pope's Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

374-5 There is an allusion here that has never been fully explained. Possibly the passage refers to Teresa Blount whom Pope suspected of having circulated slanderous reports concerning his relations with her sister.

376-7 Suffered Budgell to attribute to his (Pope's) pen the slanderous gossip of the Grub Street Journal, — a paper to which Pope did, as a matter of fact, contribute — and let him (Budgell) write anything he pleased except his (Pope's) will. Budgell, a distant cousin of Addison's, fell into bad habits after his friend's death. He was strongly suspected of having forged a will by which Dr. Tindal of Oxford left him a considerable sum of money. He finally drowned himself in the Thames.

378 the two Curlls Curll, the bookseller, and Lord Hervey whom Pope here couples with him because of Hervey's vulgar abuse of Pope's personal deformities and obscure parentage.

380 yet why Why should they abuse Pope's inoffensive parents? Compare the following lines.

383 Moore's own mother was suspected of loose conduct.

386-8 Of gentle blood ... each parent Pope asserted, perhaps incorrectly, that his father belonged to a gentleman's family, the head of which was the Earl of Downe. His mother was the daughter of a Yorkshire gentleman, who lost two sons in the service of Charles I (cf. l. 386).

389 Bestia probably the elder Horace Walpole, who was in receipt of a handsome pension.

391 An allusion to Addison's unhappy marriage with the Countess of Warwick.

393 the good man Pope's father, who as a devout Roman Catholic refused to take the oath of allegiance (cf. l. 395), or risk the equivocations sanctioned by the "schoolmen," i.e. the Catholic casuists of the day (l. 398).

404 friend Arbuthnot, to whom the epistle is addressed.

405-11 The first draft of these appeared in a letter to Aaron Hill, September 3, 1731, where Pope speaks of having sent them "the other day to a particular friend," perhaps the poet Thomson. Mrs. Pope, who was very old and feeble, was of course alive when they were first written, but died more than a year before the passage appeared in its revised form in this Epistle.

412 An allusion to the promise contained in the fifth commandment.

415 served a Queen Arbuthnot had been Queen Anne's doctor, but was driven out of his rooms in the palace after her death.

416 that blessing long life for Arbuthnot. It was, in fact, denied, for he died a month or so after the appearance of the Epistle.

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