Van Swieten, in his Commentaries on Boerhaave, relates that he knew a
man who had studied till he fancied his legs to be of glass. His maid
bringing wood to his fire threw it carelessly down. Our sage was
terrified for his legs of glass. The girl, out of patience with his
megrims, gave him a blow with a log on the parts affected. He started up
in a rage, and from that moment recovered the use of his glass
legs.--WARTON.
[470] Alludes to a real fact; a lady of distinction imagined herself in
this condition.--POPE.
[471] The fanciful person, here alluded to, was Dr. Edward Pelling,
chaplain to several successive monarchs. Having studied himself into
hypochondriasis between the age of forty and fifty, he imagined himself
to be pregnant, and forbore all manner of exercise lest motion should
prove injurious to his ideal burden.--STEEVENS.
[472] This is adopted from the Loyal Subject of Beaumont and
Fletcher.--STEEVENS.
[473] In imitation of the golden branch which Æneas carried as a
passport when he visited the infernal regions. Spleenwort is a species
of fern. "Its virtues," says Cowley, "are told in its name." He makes it
compare itself with "painted flowers," and exclaim,
They're fair, 'tis true, they're cheerful, and they're green,
But I, though sad, procure a gladsome mien.
The plant has lost the little credit it once possessed as a remedy for
hypochondriacal affections.
[474] Bishop Lowth notices Pope's frequent violation of grammar in
joining a pronoun in the singular to a verb in the plural. Thus when he
says in the Messiah,
O thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire,
either "thou" should be "you," or else "touched" should be "touchedst,
didst touch." Pope has committed the same error in this speech to the
Queen of Spleen; for that "thou," and not "you," is, or ought to be, the
pronoun understood follows from the expression "_thy_ power" at ver. 65.
Hence "who rule" should be "who rulest," or "who dost rule," and so with
the other verbs in the second person.
[475] The disease was probably named from the atmospheric vapours which
were reputed to be a principal cause of English melancholy. Cowper says
of England in his Task, Bk. v. ver. 462,
Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine.
[476] Citron-water was a cordial distilled from a mixture of spirit of
wine with the rind of citrons and lemons. There are numerous allusions
in the literature of Pope's day to the fondness of women of fashion for
this drink, as in Swift's Journal of a Modern Lady, where he says that
"to cool her heated brains" when she wakes at noon she
Takes a large dram of citron-water.
[477] The curl papers of ladies' hair used to be fastened with strips of
pliant lead.--CROKER.
[478] That is, at whose shrine all our sex resign ease, pleasure, and
virtue. "Honour" means female reputation.
[479] A parody of Virgil, Ecl. i. 60.--WAKEFIELD.
Garth, Dispensary, Canto iii.:
The tow'ring Alps shall sooner sink to vales,
And leeches in our glasses swell to whales;
Or Norwich trade in instruments of steel,
And Bromingham in stuffs and druggets deal.
[480] Sir George Brown. He was angry that the poet should make him talk
nothing but nonsense: and in truth one could not well blame
him.--WARBURTON.
This is one instance out of many in which Pope took unwarrantable
liberties with private character. Spence had been told that the
description "was the very picture of the man."
[481] A cane diversified with darker spots.--WAKEFIELD.
The "nice conduct" of canes is ridiculed by Addison in No. 103 of the
Tatler. A man of fashion, with "a cane very curiously clouded, and a
blue ribbon to hang it on his wrist," protests that the "knocking it
upon his shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it on his
mouth are such great reliefs to him in conversation that he does not
know how to be good company without it." A second beau is warned that
his cane must be forfeited if "he walks with it under his arm,
brandishes it in the air, or hangs it on a button."
[482] In allusion to Achilles's oath in Homer, Il. i.--POPE.
But by this scepter solemnly I swear
Which never more green leaf or growing branch shall bear.
Dryden's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.
[483] Dryden's Æn. i. 770:
If yet he lives and draws this vital air.
[484] Borrowed from Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Granville:
The long contended honours of the field.--HOLT WHITE.
[485] These two lines are additional; and assign the cause of the
different operation on the passions of the two ladies. The poem went on
before without that distinction, as without any machinery, to the end of
the Canto.--POPE.
At ver. 91, Umbriel empties the bag which contains the angry passions
over the heads of Thalestris and Belinda. At ver. 142 he breaks the
phial of sorrow over Belinda alone, whence Belinda's anger is turned to
grief, and Thalestris remains indignant.
[486] A parody of Virg. Æn. iv. 657:
Felix heu nimium felix! si litora tantum
Nunquam Dardaniæ tetigissent nostra carinæ.--WAKEFIELD.
[487] Pope originally wrote:
'Twas this the morning omens did foretell.
He altered the verse, together with one or two others of the same kind,
to get rid of the "did".
[488] Butler, the poet, says that the object of black patches was to
make the complexion look fairer by the contrast. Dryden has a similar
idea in Palamon and Arcite:
Some sprinkled freckles on his face were seen
Whose dusk set off the whiteness of his skin.
[489] Prior's Henry and Emma:
No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck.--WAKEFIELD.
[490] Sir William Bowles on the Death of Charles II.:
And in their rulers fate bewail their own.
[491] Translated from Virgil, Æn. iv. 440:
Fata obstant, placidasque viri deus obstruit aures.
Fate and great Jove had stopped his gentle tears.--Waller.--WAKEFIELD.
[492] The entreaties to stay which Dido's sister, Anna, addressed to
Æneas.--CROKER.
Virgil says that the pathetic entreaties to stay sent a thrill of grief
through the mighty breast of Æneas, but that his resolution was
unshaken. Pope's couplet supposes that he inwardly wavered.
[493] A new character introduced in the subsequent editions, to open
more clearly the moral of the poem, in a parody of the speech of
Sarpedon to Glaucus in Homer.--POPE.
The parody first appeared when the Rape of the Lock was inserted in the
quarto of 1717. In the previous enlarged editions, which contained the
machinery, the sixth verse was followed by what is now verse
thirty-seven:
To arms, to arms! the bold Thalestris cries.
[494] Homer.
Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,
Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain;
Our num'rous herds that range each fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield;
Our foaming bowls with gen'rous nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound;
Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed;
Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous pow'rs above?
'Tis ours, the dignity they give, to grace;
The first in valour, as the first in place:
That while with wond'ring eyes our martial bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sov'reign state,
Whom those that envy, dare not imitate.
Could all our care elude the greedy grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.--WARBURTON.
The passage quoted by Warburton is from Pope's own translation of the
Episode of Sarpedon, which appeared in Dryden's Miscellany, in 1710.
[495] Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel:
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream.--WAKEFIELD.
[496] Denham, in his version of the speech of Homer parodied by our
poet:
Why all the tributes land and sea affords?--
As gods behold us, and as gods adore.--WAKEFIELD.
[497] Gay, in the Toilette:
Nor shall side-boxes watch my restless eyes,
And, as they catch the glance in rows arise
With humble bows; nor white-gloved beaux approach
In crowds behind to guard me to my coach.--WAKEFIELD.
[498] The ladies at this time always sat in the front, the gentlemen in
the side-boxes.--NICHOLS.
In Steele's Theatre, No. 3, January 9, 1720, his "representatives of a
British audience" are "three of the fair sex for the front boxes, two
gentlemen of wit and pleasure for the side-boxes, and three substantial
citizens for the pit." "The virgin ladies," he said, in the Guardian,
No. 29, April 14, 1713, "usually dispose themselves in the front of the
boxes, the young married women compose the second row, while the rear is
generally made up of mothers of long standing, undesigning maids, and
contented widows."--CUNNINGHAM.
[499] It is a verse frequently repeated in Homer after any speech,
----So spoke--and all the heroes applauded.--POPE.
[500] From hence the first edition goes on to the conclusion, except a
very few short insertions added to keep the machinery in view to the end
of the poem.--POPE.
[501] Æneid. v. 140:
----ferit æthera clamor.
Their shouting strikes the skies.--WAKEFIELD.
[502] Homer, Il. xx.--POPE.
[503] This verse is an improvement on the original, Æneid. viii. 246:
----trebidentque immisse lumine manes.
And the ghosts tremble at intruding light.--WAKEFIELD.
The concluding line of the paragraph is from Addison's translation of a
passage in Silius Italicus:
Who pale with fear the rending earth survey
And startle at the sudden flash of day.
There is more of bathos than of humour from ver. 43 to ver. 52. The
exaggeration is carried so far that even the similitude of caricature is
lost.
[504] These four lines added, for the reason before mentioned.--POPE.
[505] Minerva in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with the
suitors in the Odyssey, perches on a beam of the roof to behold
it.--POPE.
[506] Like the heroes in Homer when they are spectators of a
combat.--WARTON.
[507] This idea is borrowed from a couplet in the Duke of Buckingham's
Essay on Poetry where he ridicules the poetical dialogues of the
_dramatis personæ_ in the reign of Charles II.
Or else like bells, eternally they chime
They sigh in simile, and die in rhyme.
[508] Wakefield quotes passages from Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond, and
Milton, in which the phrase "living death" occurs.
[509] The words of a song in the Opera of Camilla.--POPE.
"Here," said Dennis, speaking of the death of the beau and witling, "we
have a real combat, and a metaphorical dying," and he did the lines no
injustice when he added that they were but a "miserable pleasantry."
[510]
Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis,
Ad vada Mæandri concinit albus olor.
Ov. Ep.--POPE.
[511] Vid. Homer, Il. viii. and Virg. Æn. xii.--POPE.
The passage in Homer to which the poet refers is where Jupiter, before
the conflict between Hector and Achilles, weighs the issue in a pair of
scales.
[512] These two lines added for the above reason.--POPE.
[513] In imitation of the progress of Agamemnon's sceptre in Homer, Il.
ii.--POPE.
[514] Pins to adorn the hair were then called bodkins, and Sir George
Etherege, in Tonson's Second Miscellany, traces the genealogy of some
jewels through the successive stages of the ornament of a cap, the
handle of a fan, and ear-rings, till they became, like the gold seal
rings, in the Rape of the Lock,
A diamond bodkin in each tress,
The badges of her nobleness,
For every stone, as well as she,
Can boast an ancient pedigree.
[515] "Who," asked Dennis, "ever heard of a dead man that burnt in
Cupid's flames?" Pope had originally written,
And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive.
[516] Dryden's Alexander's Feast:
A present deity! they shout around:
A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.--STEEVENS.
[517] Vide Ariosto, Canto xxxiv.--POPE.
From the catalogue which follows it appears that, by "_all_ things lost
on earth," Pope meant only such things as, in his opinion, were
hypocritical, foolish, and frivolous. These mounted to the lunar sphere
when they had finished their course here below,--a career very short in
instances like the "tears of heirs," and, perhaps, very long in
instances like the butterflies preserved in the cabinets of collectors.
[518] Apparently Pope had the erroneous idea that distinguished soldiers
were men of dull and ponderous minds.
[519] The alms would not be "lost on earth," however unprofitable they
might be to the alms-givers, from whom they had been extorted by fear
instead of proceeding from a benevolent disposition.
[520] Dryden's Œdipus, act 2:
The smiles of courtiers, and the harlot's tears,
The tradesman's oaths, and mourning of an heir,
Are truths, to what priests tell.--HOLT WHITE.
[521] Denham, in Cooper's Hill, gave him a hint:
their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.--WAKEFIELD.
[522]
Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem
Stella micat. Ovid.--POPE.
Dryden, Æneis, v. 1092:
Descends, and draws behind a trail of light.--WAKEFIELD.
[523] These two lines added, for the same reason, to keep in view the
machinery of the poem.--POPE.
Dryden's Æneis, v. 691:
And as it flew
A train of following flames ascending drew;
Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way
Across the skies, as falling meteors play.
[524] The promenades in the Mall lasted till the middle of the reign of
George III., and it would appear from this line that they were enlivened
by music.--CROKER.
[525] Rosamond's lake was a small oblong piece of water near the Pimlico
Gate of St. James's Park. When it was done away with, about the middle
of the last century, the public, unwilling to lose the romantic name,
transferred it to the dirty pond in the Green Park, which has, in its
turn, been filled up.--CROKER.
[526] John Partridge was a ridiculous stargazer, who in his almanacks
every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope, and the
King of France, then at war with the English.--POPE.
He had been made the subject of ridicule by Swift, Steele, Addison and
others.--CROKER.
[527] Milton, Par. Lost, v. ver. 261, calls the telescope "the glass of
Galileo," who first employed it to observe the heavens.
[528] Phebe in As You Like It, Act iii. Sc. 5, says to her despised and
despairing lover,
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye.
[529] The compliment was meant to be serious, but is marred by its
extravagance. "Millions" is too hyperbolical.
[530] Spenser in his 75th Sonnet:
Not so, quoth I: let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
And Cowley, in his imitation of Horace, Ode iv. 2:
He bids him live and grow in fame
Among the stars he sticks his name.--WAKEFIELD.
[531] Wakefield says "there is an affectation and ambiguity in this
account which he does not comprehend." The uncertainty with which Pope
speaks, refers to his doubt of the identity of the lady celebrated by
the duke. Enough of "ambiguity and affectation" remains, which would
have been no mystery to Wakefield if he had been aware that Pope's
object was to deceive.
[532] The Memoirs by Ayre appeared in 1745, without the name of the
publisher. In a pamphlet which was printed the same year, under the
title of Remarks on Squire Ayre's Memoirs, it is stated that the work
was put together, and published by Curll, who being notorious for the
manufacture of vapid, lying biographies, suppressed a name which would
have been fatal to the sale of his trash.
[533] Warton's Essay, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 329.
[534] Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i., pp. 144, 158-160, 162.
[535] "Pray in your next," writes Caryll to Pope, July 16, 1717, "tell
me who was the unfortunate lady you address a copy of verses to. I think
you once gave me her history, but it is now quite out of my head." Pope,
in his reply does not allude to the subject, and Caryll says to him on
Aug. 18, "You answer not my question who the unfortunate lady was that
you inscribe a copy of verses to in your book. I long to be re-told her
story, for I believe you already told me formerly; but I shall refer
that, and a thousand other things more, to chat over at our next
meeting, which I hope draws near." This letter was answered by Pope on
Aug. 22, but there is still not a word on the unfortunate lady.
[536] Dr. Morell, in his notes to Seneca's Epistles, says, "I remember
when I was a boy at Eton that an old almswoman, Mrs. Pain, having been
cut down alive, gave this reason for hanging herself, that she was
afraid of dying." To rush into death from the fear of death is not
uncommon, and shows how far suicide is from being an evidence of
superior courage. Acute philosophers have not always reasoned better
than Pope. M. Lerminier, a French writer of repute, eulogises, in his
Philosophie du Droit, the suicide of Cato for "a pure and majestic act."
"In the Memoirs of the Emperor's Valet," he says in the next sentence,
"we learn that Napoleon tried to destroy himself at Fontainebleau in
1814. He took poison; remedies were applied, and he recovered. He was
not to die thus. Would you wish that Napoleon's end should have been
that of an amorous sub-lieutenant, or a ruined banker?" But this was the
veritable end of Cato. He died the death of "amorous sub-lieutenants and
ruined bankers." The question of M. Lerminier revealed his consciousness
that suicide was not heroism, or, in justification of the attempt of the
Emperor, he would have asked, "Would you not have wished that Napoleon's
end should have been the pure and majestic end of Cato?"
[537] Comus, ver. 205.
[538] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. Pasini, 1847, p. 45.
[539] A belief akin to that which grew up in deserts prevailed in
England. Hamlet doubts whether his father's ghost is a "spirit of health
or goblin damned," and Horatio attempts to dissuade Hamlet from
following it lest it should prove to be an impostor. A "goblin damned"
may have put on the "fair and warlike form" of the King of Denmark, may
"tempt" Hamlet to the "dreadful summit of the cliff," may "there assume
some other horrible form which might draw him into madness," and impel
him to commit suicide. The radical idea is the same in Shakespeare and
Marco Polo. Fiends personate the relations or friends of an intended
victim that they may decoy him to his death.
[540]
And beck'ning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me.
[541] Elements of Criticism, 6th ed., vol. i. p. 477.
[542] Ben Jonson's Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester:
What gentle ghost besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?
And beck'ning woos me?--WARTON.
[543] Johnson gives two meanings for "to gore,"--"to stab," "to pierce;"
and "to pierce with a horn." The second, or special signification, has
since superseded the general sense in popular usage, though, as with
many other words, a sense which has become obsolete in conversation is
occasionally revived in books. Formerly, the general sense of "to
pierce," without reference to the mode of piercing, was the predominant
meaning, and Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 386, employed the word to denote the
gaps made in the ranks of a defeated army:
the battle swerved
With many an inroad gored.
[544] The third Elegy of Crashaw:
And I, what is my crime, I cannot tell,
Unless it be a crime t' have loved too well.--STEEVENS.
[545] Shakespeare, Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2:
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.
[546] Dryden, To the Duchess of Ormond:
And where imprisoned in so sweet a cage
A soul might well be pleased to pass an age.
[547] Cowley has a couplet not unlike his, Davideis, i. 80:
Where their vast court the mother-waters keep,
And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep.--WAKEFIELD.
[548] Duke's translation of Juvenal, Sat. iv.:
Without one virtue to redeem his fame.--WAKEFIELD.
[549] Dryden, Ovid's Amor. ii. 19:
But thou dull husband of a wife too fair.--WAKEFIELD.
[550] Lord Kames objects to the false antithesis between cold flesh and
mental warmth.
[551] Milton, Comus, ver. 753:
Love-darting eyes or tresses like the morn.--WAKEFIELD.
[552] Rolling eyes are contrary to the English idea of feminine
refinement. Pope admired them. He had previously said in the Rape of the
Lock, Cant. v. 33,
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll.
[553] Wakefield mentions that the phrase "unknowing how to yield" is
used by Dryden, Æneis, xi. 472, and that the entire couplet is almost
identical with two passages in Pope's own translation of the Iliad. The
first is at Book ix. 749. The second is at Book xxii. 447, and runs
thus:
The furies that relentless breast have steeled
And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.
[554] From a fragment of Sir Edward Hungerford, according to a writer in
the Gentleman's Magazine for 1764:
The soul by pure religion taught to glow
At others' good, or melt at others' woe.--WAKEFIELD.
[555] Dryden, Æneis, ix. 647, where the mother of Euryalus laments her
son, whose body remains with the enemy:
Nor was I near to close his dying eyes,
To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies.--WAKEFIELD.
The cruelties of the lady's relations, the desolation of the family, the
being deprived of the rights of sepulture, the circumstance of dying in
a country remote from her relations, are all touched with great
tenderness and pathos, particularly the four lines from the 51st, "By
foreign hands," &c.--WARTON.
[556] The anonymous translator of Ariadne to Theseus:
Poor Ariadne! thou must perish here,
Breathe out thy soul in strange and hated air,
Nor see thy pitying mother shed one tear;
Want a kind hand, which thy fixed eyes may close,
And thy stiff limbs may decently compose.
So Gay in his Dione, Act ii. Sc. 1:
What pious care my ghastful lid shall close?
What decent hand my frozen limbs compose.--WAKEFIELD.
De Quincey assumes that the term "decent limbs" refers to the lady's
shape, and he remarks that the language "does not imply much enthusiasm
of praise." Pope had perhaps the same idea in his mind as the translator
he imitated, and "thy decent limbs were composed" may be put
inaccurately for "thy limbs were composed decently."
[557] The poet in the previous couplet has employed the word "mourn" to
signify genuine regret. In this verse it is put for the act of wearing
mourning,--the appearing in the "sable weeds," which are, "the mockery
of woe" when the sorrow is not real.
[558] Dryden, Virg. Ecl. x. 51:
How light would lie the turf upon my breast.
A. Philips in his third Pastoral:
The flow'ry turf lie light upon thy breast.
This thought was common with the ancients.--WAKEFIELD.
[559] Tasso's description of an angel in the translation of Fairfax, i.
14:
Of silver wings he took a shining pair
Fringed with gold.--WAKEFIELD.
[560] The expression has reference to ver. 61. "No sacred earth allowed
her room," but her remains have "made sacred" the common earth in which
she was buried.
[561] Such a poem as Pope's Elegy, deeply serious and pathetic, rejects
with disdain all fiction. Upon that account the passage from ver. 59 to
ver. 68 deserves no quarter; for it is not the language of the heart,
but of the imagination indulging its flights at ease, and by that means
is eminently discordant with the subject. It would be a still more
severe censure if it should be ascribed to imitation, copying
indiscreetly what has been said by others.--LORD KAMES.
The ghost of the injured person appears to excite the poet to revenge
her wrongs. He describes her character, execrates the author of her
misfortunes, expatiates on the severity of her fate, the rites of
sepulture denied her in a foreign land. Then follows, "What though no
weeping," &c. Can anything be more naturally pathetic? Yet the critic
tells us he can give no quarter to this part of the poem. Well might our
poet's last wish be to commit his writings to the candour of a sensible
and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted
and malevolent critic.--WARBURTON.
[562] When Pope describes the retribution which is to fall upon the
imperious relatives of the unfortunate lady, he says,
Thus unlamented pass the proud away;
and it is to these same relations, whose pride was their vice, that he
reverts in the line,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
The persecutors who have hunted you into the grave, shall one day share
your fate.
[563] R. Herrick, in a Meditation for his Mistress:
You are the queen all flow'rs among,
But die you must, fair maid, ere long,
As he, the maker of this song.--WAKEFIELD.
[564] Dean Milman, in his History of Latin Christianity, says that
Heloisa "was distinguished for her surpassing beauty." There is no
authority for this assertion, which is one of the embellishments of
later romancers.
[565] "She knew Latin," says M. Rémusat, "and wrote it with facility and
talent. As to Greek and Hebrew I can hardly believe that she was
acquainted with more than the alphabet, and a few words which were
quoted habitually in theology or in philosophy." The treatises of
Abelard prove that he could read neither Greek nor Hebrew, and it is not
likely that Heloisa was more learned than her master. Latin was the
literary language of the day.
[566] The sentiments which Warton imagined to be borrowed from Madame
Guion and Fenelon were taken from the English translation of the Letters
of Heloisa and Abelard. Kindred thoughts may be found in the works of
almost any devotional writer.
[567] M. Rémusat, who accepts the letters without misgiving,
acknowledges that the form of the _Historia Calamitatum_ "appears to be
an artificial frame to the picture." He assumes that the avowed purpose
is a pretext, and that the repentant philosopher commences his narrative
with a misstatement. The fiction which M. Rémusat is obliged to admit,
does not ward off the strongest objection to the genuineness of the
letters, and is the hypothesis least favourable to the reputation of
Abelard; for his treachery to Heloisa is immensely aggravated by the
admission that his narrative was meant for the public, and not for the
eye alone of a friend.
[568] Essai Historique sur Abailard et Heloise, ed. 1861, p. xxvi.
[569] Essai Historique, p. lxiii.
[570] As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 3.
[571] History of Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 363.
[572] Philosophie du Moyen Age, ed. 1856, p. 3.
[573] Vie d'Abelard, Tome 1. p. 262.
[574] Hist. de France, tom. iii. 317.
[575] Horne's Works, vol. i. p. 248.
[576] Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 33.
Fox, the statesman, was one of those who thought "Eloisa much greater in
her letters than Pope had made her."
[577] Mason's Life of Whitehead, p. 35.
[578] The letter which Abelard addressed to his friend, and which had
fallen into the hands of Eloisa.
[579] Dryden's Don Sebastian:
And when I say Sebastian, dear Sebastian!
I kiss the name I speak.--STEEVENS.
[580] That is, a lively representation of his person was retained in her
mind. So Drayton where he speaks of his departed love:
Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore
My soul-shrined saint, my fair idea lies.--WAKEFIELD.
[581] Claudian, De Nupt. Honor. et Mar. ver. 9:
Nomenque beatum
Injussæ scripsere manus.--WAKEFIELD.
[582] Drayton's Heroical Epistle of Rosamond to Henry:
My hapless name with Henry's name I found--
Then do I strive to wash it out with tears,
But then the same more evident appears.--HOLT WHITE.
[583] Some of these circumstances have perhaps a little impropriety when
introduced into a place so lately founded as was the Paraclete; but are
so well imagined and so highly painted, that they demand
excuse.--WARTON.
[584] This is borrowed from Milton's Comus, ver. 428:
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades.--WAKEFIELD.
[585] A suspected poem of the Duke of Wharton on the Fear of Death:
Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray
And statues pity feign;
Where pale-eyed griefs their wasting vigils keep.--WAKEFIELD.
[586] A puerile conceit from the dew which runs down stone and metals in
damp weather.--WAKEFIELD.
A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1836, quotes a
parallel couplet from a poem by the Duke of Wharton:
Where kneeling statues constant vigils keep,
And round the tombs the marble cherubs weep.
[587] He followed Milton in the Penseroso:
Forget thyself to marble.--WAKEFIELD.
Heloisa to Abelard: "O vows! O convent! I have not lost my humanity
under your inexorable discipline. You have not made me marble by
changing my habit." With the exception of a passage or two quoted by
Wakefield, all the extracts in the notes are from Pope's chief
text-book, the English work of Hughes, which is very unfaithful to the
Latin original.
[588] In every edition till that of Warburton the reading was,
Heav'n claims me all in vain while he has part.
[589] Heloisa to Abelard: "By that melancholy relation to your friend
you have awakened all my sorrows."
[590] Dryden's Æneis, v. 64:
A day for ever sad, for ever dear.--WAKEFIELD.
[591] Heloisa to Abelard: "Shall my Abelard be never mentioned without
tears? Shall the dear name be never spoken but with sighs?"
[592] Heloisa to Abelard: "I met with my name a hundred times. I never
saw it without fear; some heavy calamity always followed it. I saw yours
too equally unhappy."
[593] Pomfret in his Vision:
For sure that flame is kindled from below
Which breeds such sad variety of woe.--WAKEFIELD.
Steevens quotes from Dryden's State of Innocence the expression "sad
variety of hell," and the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes from
Yalden's Force of Jealousy the expression "a large variety of woe."
[594] Dryden, Palamon and Arcite:
Now warm in love, now with'ring in the grave.--WAKEFIELD.
[595] Fame is not a passion.--WARTON.
Ambition is the passion, and fame is the object of the passion.
[596] Heloisa to Abelard: "Let me have a faithful account of all that
concerns you. I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate.
Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sorrows less."
[597] Heloisa to Abelard: "We may write to each other. Let us not lose
through negligence the only happiness which is left us, and the only one
perhaps which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us."
[598] Heloisa to Abelard: "Tell me not by way of excuse you will spare
our tears; the tears of women shut up in a melancholy place, and devoted
to penitence, are not to be spared."
[599] Denham of Prudence:
To live and die is all we have to do.--WAKEFIELD.
Prior's Celia to Damon:
And these poor eyes
No longer shall their little lustre keep,
And only be of use to read and weep.
[600] Heloisa to Abelard: "Be not then unkind, nor deny me that little
relief. All sorrows divided are made lighter."
[601] Heloisa to Abelard: "Letters were first invented for comforting
such solitary wretches as myself."
[602] Heloisa to Abelard: "What cannot letters inspire? They have souls;
they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the
transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions; they
can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they
have all the softness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes a boldness
of expression even beyond it."
[603] Otway's translation of Phædra to Hippolytus:
Thus secrets safe to farthest shores may move:
By letters foes converse, and learn to love.--WAKEFIELD.
[604] This is the most exquisite description of the first commencement
of passion that our language, or perhaps any other, affords.--BOWLES.
[605] Prior's Celia to Damon:
In vain I strove to check my growing flame,
Or shelter passion under friendship's name.
[606] The Divinity himself. Dryden, in his 12th Elegy:
So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the soul.--WAKEFIELD.
[607] Heloisa to Abelard: "That life in your eyes which so admirably
expressed the vivacity of your mind; your conversation, which gave
everything you spoke such an agreeable and insinuating turn; in short,
everything spoke for you."
[608] She says herself, "You had, I confess, two qualities in great
perfection with which you could instantly captivate the heart of any
woman,--a graceful manner of reading and singing." She mentions in
another place also the excellence of his singing.--WAKEFIELD.
[609] He was her preceptor in philosophy and divinity.--POPE.
Dryden, Epistle, 14:
The fair themselves go mended from thy hand.--WAKEFIELD.
[610] Dryden's Œdipus, end of Act iii.:
And backward trod the paths I sought to shun.
[611] Thy holy precepts and the sanctity of thy character had made me
conceive of thee as of a being more venerable than man, and approaching
the nature of superior existences. But thy personal allurements soon
inspired those tender feelings which gradually conducted me from a
veneration of the angel to a less pure and dignified sensation--love for
the man.--WAKEFIELD.
[612] Dryden, Ovid's Met. x.:
And own no laws but those which love ordains.--WAKEFIELD.
Heloisa to Abelard: "The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still
bear with them a necessary engagement, and I was very unwilling to be
necessitated to love always a man who perhaps would not always love me."
[613]
Love will not be confined by maisterie:
When maisterie comes, the lord of Love anon
Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he gone.
Chaucer.--POPE.
Hudibras, Part iii. Cant. i. 553:
Love that's too generous to abide
To be against its nature tied,
Disdains against its will to stay,
But struggles out and flies away.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's Aurengezebe:
'Tis true of marriage bands I'm weary grown,
Love scorns all ties but those that are his own.--STEEVENS.
The passage cited by Pope from Chaucer is in the Franklin's Tale.
Spenser copied and altered the lines, which led Wakefield to imagine
that Pope had committed the double error of falsely imputing them to
Chaucer, and quoting them incorrectly.
[614] Heloisa to Abelard: "It is not love but the desire of riches and
honour which makes women run into the embraces of an indolent husband:
ambition, not affection, forms such marriages. I believe indeed they may
be followed with some honours and advantages, but I can never think that
this is the way to enjoy the pleasures of an affectionate union."
[615] Heloisa to Abelard: "This restless tormenting
passion"--ambition--"punishes them for aiming at other advantages by
love than love itself."
[616] Heloisa to Abelard: "How often I have made protestations that it
was infinitely preferable to me to live with Abelard as his mistress
than with any other as empress of the world, and that I was more happy
in obeying you than I should have been in lawfully captivating the lord
of the universe."
[617] Heloisa to Abelard: "Though I knew that the name of wife was
honourable in the world, and holy in religion, yet the name of your
mistress had greater charms because it was more free. I despised the
name of wife that I might live happy with that of mistress."
[618] Heloisa to Abelard: "We are called your sisters, and if it were
possible to think of any expressions which would signify a dearer
relation we would use them."
[619] Denham, Cooper's Hill:
Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty, and subjects love.--CUNNINGHAM.
[620] Heloisa to Abelard: "If there is anything which may properly be
called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is in the union of two
persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a
secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merit. Their hearts
are full, and leave no vacancy for any other passion."
[621] Heloisa to Abelard: "If I could believe you as truly persuaded of
my merit as I am of yours, I might say there has been a time when we
were such a pair."
[622] Mrs. Rowe in her Elegy:
A dying lover pale and gasping lies.--WAKEFIELD.
[623] Heloisa to Abelard: "Where was I? where was your Heloise then?
What joy should I have had in defending my lover. I would have guarded
you from violence, though at the expense of my life; my cries and
shrieks alone would have stopped the hand."
[624] For "stroke" Pope, in all editions till that of 1736, read "hand,"
the word in the translation. He had used "hand" in the rhyme of the
previous couplet, and it was probably to avoid the repetition that he
made the alteration.
[625] Careless readers may misapprehend the sense. "Pain" here means
punishment, _pœna_.--HOLT WHITE.
Like a verse of Drummond's:
The grief was common, common were the cries.--WAKEFIELD.
Heloisa to Abelard: "You alone expiated the crime common to us both. You
only were punished though both of us were guilty."
[626] Heloisa to Abelard: "Oh whither does the excess of passion hurry
me! Here love is shocked, and modesty joined with despair deprive me of
speech."
[627] A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Settle's Empress of
Morocco:
_Muly Hamet._--Speak.
_Empress._--Let my tears and blushes speak the rest.
[628] The altar of Paraclete, says Mr. Berrington, did not then exist.
They were not professed at the same time or place; one was at
Argenteuil, the other at St. Denys.---WARTON.
[629] Abelard to Heloisa: "I accompanied you with terror to the foot of
the altar, and while you stretched out your hand to touch the sacred
cloth, I heard you pronounce distinctly those fatal words which for ever
separated you from all men."
[630] Her kissing the veil with "cold lips" strongly marks her want of
that fervent zeal and devotion which should influence those votaries who
renounce the world. The presages, likewise, which attended the rites are
finely imagined,--the trembling of the shrines, and the pallid hue of
the lamps as if they were conscious of the reluctant sacrifice she was
making.--RUFFHEAD.
[631] Prior, in Henry and Emma, has a verse of similar pauses, and
similar phraseology:
Thy lips all trembling, and thy cheeks all pale.--WAKEFIELD.
[632] Abelard to Heloisa: "I saw your eyes when you spoke your last
farewell fixed upon the cross." Heloisa to Abelard: "It was your command
only, and not a sincere vocation, as is imagined, that shut me up in
these cloisters." The two passages combined suggested the line in the
text.
[633] Heloisa to Abelard: "You may see me, hear my sighs, and be a
witness of all my sorrows, without incurring any danger, since you can
only relieve me with tears and words."
[634] Roscoe remarks that the lines which follow cannot be justified by
anything in the letters of Eloisa. Sentiments equally gross are however
expressed both in the original Latin and in the adulterated translation
which was Pope's authority.
[635] Concannen's Match at Football, Canto iii.:
And drank in poison from her lovely eye.
Creech, at the beginning of his Lucretius:
Where on thy bosom he supinely lies,
And greedily drinks love at both his eyes.--WAKEFIELD.
Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Act i.:
Drank gorging in the dear delicious poison.--STEEVENS.
[636] "If thou canst forget me, think at least upon thy flock," says
Wakefield, in explanation of the train of thought; and he adds a passage
from a letter of Eloisa in which she terms the monastery Abelard's "new
plantation," and assures him that frequent watering is essential to the
tender plants.
[637] Heloisa to Abelard: "The innocent sheep, tender as they are, would
yet follow you through deserts and mountains."
[638] He founded the monastery.--POPE.
Heloisa to Abelard: "You only are the founder of this house. You by
inhabiting here have given fame and sanctity to a place known before
only for robbers and murderers."
[639] So Dryden says of Absalom,
And Paradise was opened in his face.
The original of the image in the text is in Isaiah li. 3:
He will make her wilderness like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of Jehovah.
Whence Milton derived it, Par. Reg. i. 7:
And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.--WAKEFIELD.
[640] The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Boileau, Le Moine:
Là les salons sont peints, les meubles sont dorés
Des larmes et du sang des pauvres devorés.
[641] Heloisa to Abelard: "These cloisters owe nothing to public
charities; our walls were not raised by the usury of publicans, nor
their foundations laid on base extortion. The God whom we serve sees
nothing but innocent riches, and harmless votaries whom you have placed
here."
[642] There were no benefactors whose praises were celebrated in the
services, but the building was vocal only with the praise of the Deity.
[643] Our author imitates Milton:
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light.--WAKEFIELD.
[644] Dryden had said of his Good Parson:
His eyes diffused a venerable grace.--WAKEFIELD.
[645] Mrs. Rowe on the Creation:
And kindling glories brighten all the skies.--WAKEFIELD.
[646] By pretending that she desires Abelard to visit the Paraclete in
obedience to the call of her sister nuns.
[647] Heloisa to Abelard: "But why should I entreat you in the name of
your children? Is it possible I should fear obtaining anything of you
when I ask in my own name? And must I use any other prayers than my own
to prevail upon you?"
[648] From the superscription of Heloisa's letter to Abelard: "To her
lord, her father, her husband, her brother; his servant, his child, his
wife, his sister, and to express all that is humble, respectful, and
loving to her Abelard, Heloisa writes this."
[649] Our poet is indebted to a translation of the Virgilian cento of
Ausonius in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 143:
My love, my life,
And every tender name in one, my wife.--WAKEFIELD.
[650] Mr. Mills, a clergyman, who visited the Paraclete about the year
1765, says, "Mr. Pope's description is ideal. I saw neither rocks, nor
pines, nor was it a kind of ground which ever seemed to encourage such
objects."
[651] Addison's translation of book iii, of the Æneis:
The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow.
[652] The little river Ardusson glittered along the valley of the
Paraclete.--MILLS.
[653] Philips, in his fourth Pastoral:
Nor dropping waters which from rocks distil,
And welly grots with tinkling echoes fill.--WAKEFIELD.
[654] Milton's Penseroso:
When the gust hath blown his fill
Ending on the rustling leaves.--WAKEFIELD.
[655] Dryden, Virg. Geo. iv. 432:
When western winds on curling waters play.
[656] Dryden, Virg. Æn. iii. 575:
Most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid.--WAKEFIELD.
[657] Milton's Penseroso:
To arched walks of twilight groves.--WAKEFIELD.
[658] Waller's version of Æneid iv.:
A death-like quiet, and deep silence fell.
Dryden's Astræa Redux:
A dreadful quiet felt.--WAKEFIELD.
Charles Bainbrigg on the death of Edward King:
Abyssum
Terribilis requies et vasta silentia cingant.--STEEVENS.
[659] Fenton in his version of Sappho to Phaon:
With him the caves were cool, the grove was green,
But now his absence withers all the scene.--WAKEFIELD.
[660] Dryden's Theodore and Honoria:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread.--STEEVENS.
Dryden, Æn. vii. 40:
The Trojan from the main beheld a wood,
Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood.--WAKEFIELD.
[661] In allusion to this sacrifice of herself at his will she says in
her first letter: "You are of all mankind most abundantly indebted to
me; and particularly for that proof of absolute submission to your
commands in thus destroying myself at your injunction."--WAKEFIELD.
[662] Heloisa to Abelard: "Death only can make me leave the place where
you have fixed me, and then too my ashes shall rest there, and wait for
yours."
[663] Abelard to Heloisa: "I hope you will be contented when you have
finished this mortal life to be buried near me. Your cold ashes need
then fear nothing."
[664] Heloisa to Abelard: "Among those who are wedded to God I serve a
man. What a prodigy am I! Enlighten me, O Lord! Does thy grace or my
despair draw these words from me?"
[665] Heloisa to Abelard: "I am sensible I am in the temple of chastity
only with the ashes of that fire which has consumed us."
[666] This couplet, and its wretched rhymes, seem derived from an elegy
of Walsh in Dryden's Miscellanies:
I know I ought to hate you for the fault;
But oh! I cannot do the thing I ought.--WAKEFIELD.
[667] Heloisa to Abelard: "I am here a sinner, but one, who far from
weeping for her sins, weeps only for her lover; far from abhorring her
crimes endeavours only to add to them, and then who pleases herself
continually with the remembrance of past actions when it is impossible
to renew them." And again: "I, who have experienced so many pleasures in
loving you feel, in spite of myself, that I cannot repent of them, nor
forbear enjoying them over again as much as is possible by recollecting
them in my memory." Abelard, in the translation of the letters,
expresses the same sentiment: "Love still preserves its dominion in my
fancy, and entertains itself with past pleasures."
[668] Abelard to Heloisa: "To forget in the case of love is the most
necessary penitence, and the most difficult."
[669] Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia:
Then impotent of mind, with altered sense
She hugged th' offender, and forgave th' offence.--WAKEFIELD.
[670] Abelard to Heloisa: "How can I separate from the person I love the
passion I must detest? Will the tears I shed be sufficient to render it
odious to me? It is difficult in our sorrow to distinguish penitence
from love."
[671] Heloisa to Abelard: "A heart which has been so sensibly affected
as mine cannot soon be indifferent. We fluctuate long between love and
hatred before we can arrive at a happy tranquillity." Abelard to
Heloisa: "In such different disquietudes I contradict myself; I hate
you; I love you."
[672] Heloisa to Abelard: "God has a peculiar right over the hearts of
great men. When he pleases to touch them he ravishes them, and lets them
not speak nor breathe but for his glory."
[673] Heloisa to Abelard: "Yes, Abelard, I conjure you teach me the
maxims of divine love. Oh! for pity's sake help a wretch to renounce her
desires, herself, and, if it be possible, even to renounce you."
[674] Heloisa to Abelard: "When I shall have told you what rival hath
ravished my heart from you, you will praise my inconstancy, and will
pray this rival to fix it. By this you may judge that it is God alone
that takes Heloise from you. What other rival could take me from you?
Could you think me guilty of sacrificing the virtuous and learned
Abelard to any other but God?"
[675] Horace, Epist. Lib. i. xi. 9:
Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.
My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot.--WAKEFIELD.
[676] Taken from Crashaw.--POPE.
Wakefield gives the complete couplet from Crashaw's Description of a
religious House:
A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.
[677] The idea of the "wings of seraphs shedding perfumes" is from
Milton, Par. Lost, v. 286, where Raphael "shakes heavenly fragrance"
from "his plumes," and Dryden in his Tyrannic Love, Act v., mentions the
perfumes, the spousals, and the celestial music as accompaniments of the
death of St. Catherine:
Æthereal music did her death prepare,
Like joyful sounds of spousals in the air;
A radiant light did her crowned temple gild,
And all the place with fragrant scents was filled;
Of charming notes we heard the last rebounds,
And music dying in remoter sounds.
[678] Adapted from Dryden's Britannia Redivivus:
As star-light is dissolved away
And melts into the brightness of the day.
[679] Dryden's Cinyras and Myrrha, translated from Ovid:
For guilty pleasure gives a double gust.
[680] Heloisa to Abelard: "I will own to you what makes the greatest
pleasure I have in my retirement. After having passed the day in
thinking of you, full of the dear idea I give myself up at night to
sleep. Then it is that Heloise, who dares not without trembling think of
you by day, resigns herself entirely to the pleasure of hearing you, and
speaking to you. I see you Abelard, and glut my eyes with the sight.
Sometimes forgetting the perpetual obstacles to our desires, you press
me to make you happy, and I easily yield to your transports. Sleep gives
me what your enemies' rage has deprived you of, and our souls, animated
with the same passion, are sensible of the same pleasure. But, oh, you
delightful illusions, soft errors, how soon do you vanish away! At my
awaking I open my eyes, and see no Abelard; I stretch out my arms to
take hold of him, but he is not there; I call upon him, he hears me
not."
[681] Dryden, Æneis, iv. 677, supplied the idea:
She seems, alone,
To wander in her sleep through ways unknown,
Guideless and dark; or in a desert plain
To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain.
[682] The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes the same expression
from Steele's Miscellanies:
No more severely kind affect to put
That lovely anger on.
[683] Heloisa to Abelard: "You are happy, Abelard, and your misfortunes
have been the occasion of your finding rest. The punishment of your body
has cured the deadly wounds of your soul. I am a thousand times more to
be lamented than you; I must resist those fires which love kindles in a
young heart."
[684] Dryden's Ovid, Met. i.:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.--WAKEFIELD.
[685] Sir William Davenant's Address to the Queen:
Smooth as the face of waters first appeared,
Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard;
Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far
Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are.--WAKEFIELD.
[686] Heloisa to Abelard: "When we love pleasures we love the living and
not the dead." In all editions till that of 1736 this couplet followed:
Cut from the root my perished joys I see,
And love's warm tide for ever stopped in thee.
[687] Hudibras, Part ii. Canto i. 309:
Love in your heart as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns
To warm the dead, and vainly light
Those only that see nothing by 't.--WAKEFIELD.
[688] Heloisa to Abelard: "Whatever endeavours I use, on whatever side I
turn me, the sweet idea still pursues me, and every object brings to my
mind what I ought to forget. Even into holy places before the altar, I
carry with me the memory of our guilty loves. They are my whole
business."
[689] Abelard to Heloisa: "In spite of severe fasts your image appears
to me, and confounds all my resolutions."
[690] Sedley's verses on Don Alonzo:
The gentle nymph,
Drops tears with every bead.--WAKEFIELD.
The force of the line is, however, in the phrase "too soft" which Pope
has added. "With every bead I drop a tear of tender love instead of a
tear of bitter repentance."
[691] Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Act i.:
All the idle pomp,
Priests, altars, victims swam before my sight.--STEEVENS.
[692] How finely does this glowing imagery introduce the transition,
While prostrate here, &c.--BOWLES.
[693] The whole of this paragraph is from Abelard's letter to Heloisa:
"I am a miserable sinner prostrate before my judge, and with my face
pressed to the earth I mix my tears and sighs in the dust when the beams
of grace and reason enlighten me. Come, see me in this posture and
solicit me to love you! Come, if you think fit, and in your holy habit
thrust yourself between God and me, and be a wall of separation! Come
and force from me those sighs, thoughts, and vows which I owe to him
only! Assist the evil spirits and be the instrument of their malice! But
rather withdraw yourself and contribute to my salvation."
[694] Abelard to Heloisa: "Let me remove far from you, and obey the
apostle who hath said, fly."
[695] Wakefield quotes the lines of Hopkins to a lady, where, speaking
of her beauties, he entreats that she will
Drive 'em somewhere, as far as pole from pole;
Let winds between us rage, and waters roll.
[696] Abelard to Heloisa: "It will always be the highest love to show
none: I here release you of all your oaths and engagements to me."
[697] The combination "heavenly-fair" is also found in Sandys, Congreve,
and Tickell.--WAKEFIELD.
[698] "Low-thoughted care" is from Milton's Comus.--WARTON.
[699] This resembles a passage in Crashaw:
Fair hope! our earlier heaven.--WAKEFIELD.
[700] "It should," says Mr. Mills, "be _near_ her cell. The doors of all
cells open into the common cloister. In that cloister are often tombs."
Steevens adds the frivolous objection that the "Paraclete had been too
recently founded for monuments of the dead to be expected there."
Heloisa had been five years abbess when she wrote her first letter to
Abelard, and it is certainly not an extravagant supposition that a death
might have occurred among the nuns in that space of time.
[701] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
And issuing sighs that smoked along the wall.--WAKEFIELD.
Addison's translation of a passage from Claudian:
Oft in the winds is heard a plaintive sound
Of melancholy ghosts that hover round.
[702] Fenton's translation of Sappho to Phaon:
Here, while by sorrow lulled to sleep I lay,
Thus said the guardian nymph, or seemed to say.--WAKEFIELD.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act iv. Sc. 4:
Hark! you are called: some say, the Genius so
Cries, "Come!" to him that instantly must die.
[703] Pope owes much throughout this poem to the character of Dido as
drawn by Virgil, and this passage seems directly formed upon one in
Dryden, Æn. iv. 667:
Oft when she visited this lonely dome
Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb:
She thought she heard him summon her away,
Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay.
The imitation of the passage in Ovid, Epist. vii. 101, similar to this
from Virgil, is still more palpable:
Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari:
Ipse sono tenui dixit, "Elissa, veni!"
Nulla mora est; venio; venio, tibi debita conjux.--WAKEFIELD.
[704] It is well contrived that this invisible speaker should be a
person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with
Eloisa.--WARTON.
[705] Dryden's version of the latter part of the third book of
Lucretius:
But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.--WAKEFIELD.
[706] In the first edition:
I come ye ghosts.--WAKEFIELD.
[707] Ogilby, Virg. Æn. xi.:
And to the dead our last sad duties pay.
Dryden, Æn. xi. 322:
Perform the last sad office to the slain.--WAKEFIELD.
[708] Dryden's Aurengezebe at the commencement of Act iv.:
I thought before you drew your latest breath,
To sooth your passage, and to soften death.
[709] Oldham's translation of Bion on the death of Adonis:
Kiss, while I watch thy swimming eye-balls roll,
Watch thy last gasp, and catch thy springing soul.
Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 984:
While I in death
Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath.
And in his Cleomenes, the end of Act iv.:
----sucking in each other's latest breath.--WAKEFIELD.
[710] Rowe's ode to Delia:
When e'er it comes, may'st thou be by,
Support my sinking frame, and teach me how to die.--WAKEFIELD.
[711] Dryden Æn., xi. 1194:
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies.
[712] Abelard to Heloisa: "You shall see me to strengthen your piety by
the horror of this carcase, and my death, then more eloquent than I can
be, will tell you what you love when you love a man."
[713] Spenser, Faerie Queen, i. 4, 45:
Cause of my new grief, cause of new joy.--WAKEFIELD.
[714] Abelard and Eloisa were interred in the same grave, or in
monuments adjoining, in the monastery of the Paraclete. He died in the
year 1142, she in 1163 [4].--POPE.
Abelard and Heloisa are said to have been both sixty-three when they
died. They were buried in the same crypt, but it was not till 1630, or
near five hundred years after the death of Heloisa, that their remains
were consigned to the same grave. Then their bones are reported to have
been put into a double coffin, divided by a partition of lead. They
subsequently underwent various disinterments and removals, till in 1817
the alleged relics were transferred to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, at
Paris, and have not since been disturbed.
[715] Dryden, in his translation of Canace to Macareus:
I restrained my cries
And drunk the tears that trickled from my eyes.--WAKEFIELD.
[716] Milton, Il Penseroso:
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below.
[717] "Dreadful sacrifice" is the ritual term. So in the History of
Loretto, 1608, ch. 20, p. 278, "The priest, as the use is, assisted the
cardinal in the time of the dreadful sacrifice."--STEEVENS.
[718] Warton says that the eight concluding lines of the Epistle "are
rather flat and languid." It is indeed an absurd supposition that a
woman who had been speaking the fervid language of christianity should
imagine that her state in the world beyond the grave would be that of a
"pensive ghost," and that her consolation would consist in having her
woes "well-sung" on earth. And it is in the tremendous conflict between
piety and passion, while divine and human love are contending fiercely
for the mastery, that she finds relief in this unsubstantial idea that
some future lover would make her the subject of a poem.
[719] The last line is imitated from Addison's Campaign.
Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely bright--
Raised of themselves their genuine charms they boast,
And those who paint them truest, praise them most.
This Pope had in his thoughts; but not knowing how to use what was not
his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it. Martial
exploits may be painted; perhaps woes may be painted; but they are
surely not painted by being well sung: it is not easy to paint in song,
or to sing in colours.--JOHNSON.
[720] Roscoe supposes Richardson to have asserted that there was an
"entire discrepancy between the Essay on Man as published, and the
original manuscripts," and to have implied that the change was from
"infidelity" to its opposite. This is not the statement of Richardson.
He says, on the contrary, that when the "exceptionable passages" were
pointed out Pope "did not think of altering them," and "never dreamed of
adopting" a more orthodox "scheme" for his Essay till after "its
fatalism and deistical tendency" had excited that "general alarm" which
could not precede the publication of the poem, and which only, in fact,
commenced some three years later. Richardson is enforcing his charge
against Warburton of inventing forced meanings, and the instance would
contradict the accusation if Pope had altered his language from deism to
orthodoxy before he printed the work. The commentary would then have
expressed the natural sense of the text. The change of which Richardson
speaks was not in the Essay itself, but in the interpretation Pope put
upon it. While he was composing the poem he accepted the deistical
construction of the Richardsons; and when he was terrified at the
"general alarm" he endorsed the christian construction of Warburton.
[721] Dr. Desaguliers, the son of a French refugee, was born at Rochelle
in 1683, and died, Feb. 29, 1744, at the Bedford Coffee-house, Covent
Garden. He was a clergyman of the church of England, a great lover of
science, and a friend of Newton. He delivered lectures for many years on
Experimental Philosophy, and published an excellent work on the subject
in 2 vols. 4to. He does not appear to have shown any turn for poetry,
and those who ascribed to him the Essay on Man may have had no better
ground for their opinion than that the poem treated of one kind of
philosophy, and Desaguliers was learned in another.
[722] Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, died
before his father in Jan. 1742. He published in 1734, a poem called An
Essay on Human Life; and in 1737 An Epistle to Mr. Pope, in
Anti-heroics. "The former," says Horace Walpole, "is written in
imitation of Pope's ethic epistles, and has good lines, but not much
poetry."
[723] In the Life of Pope by the pretended Squire Ayre, it is said that
"a certain gentleman," meaning Mallet, was at Pope's house shortly after
the first Epistle was published, and in answer to the question "What new
pieces were brought to light?" replied, "That there was a thing come out
called an Essay on Man, and it was a most abominable piece of stuff;
shocking poetry, insufferable philosophy, no coherence, no connection at
all." Pope confessed he was the author, which, says Ayre, "was like a
clap of thunder to the mistaken bard; with a blush and a bow he took his
leave of Pope, and never ventured to show his unlucky face there again."
The final statement is contradicted by the letters of Pope and Mallet,
which prove that they carried on a cordial intercourse to the last. The
rest of the story is improbable, for it is not likely that Pope, who was
bent at this early period upon keeping the authorship a secret, would
have unmasked himself in a manner to preclude confidence, and provoke
Mallet to divulge the truth to the world. Ayre's authority is good for
nothing, and Ruffhead only copied Ayre, but his repetition of the
anecdote gave it currency, and it has ever since passed unquestioned
from writer to writer.
[724] Warburton. "Your Travels I hear much of," says Pope in the letter
to Swift; "my own I promise you shall never more be in a strange land,
but a diligent, I hope, useful investigation of my own territories. I
mean no more translations, but something domestic, fit for my own
country, and my own time." The allusion is obscure, and it may be
doubted whether Pope referred to his ethical scheme, which he did not
commence till four years later.
[725] Bolingbroke.
[726] The authority was Lord Bathurst. Dr. Hugh Blair dined with him in
1763, and says in a letter to Boswell, that "the conversation turning on
Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us that the Essay on Man was originally
composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more
than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript
in his own handwriting, and remembered well that he was at a loss
whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the
beauty of Mr. Pope's verse." Boswell read the account to Johnson, who
replied, "Depend upon it, sir, this is too strongly stated. Pope may
have had from Bolingbroke the philosophic stamina of his Essay, and
admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify.
But the thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine;
we are sure that the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the
poem, was Pope's own."
[727] The first treatise of Crousaz was translated by Miss Carter, and
published in 1738, under the title of An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay
on Man. The second treatise was translated by Johnson himself, and
published in 1742, with the title, A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles
of Morality.
[728] Theobald's Shakespeare was published in 1733, the same year with
the first three epistles of the Essay on Man.
[729] Warburton's first letter in vindication of Pope appeared in The
Works of the Learned, December 1738. The journal called The Present
State of the Republic of Letters, had come to an end in 1736.
[730] Jacob Robinson, a bookseller in Fleet-street, was the publisher of
The Works of the Learned, to which Warburton sent his five letters in
reply to Crousaz.
[731] This was done in 1740, when the five letters were expanded into
six. A seventh letter was added in a subsequent edition, and the whole
was re-arranged in four letters in the edition of 1742.
[732] Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 219.
[733] Warton states that Dobson relinquished the undertaking from the
impossibility of preserving in Latin verse the conciseness of the
English. He appears to have accomplished half his task; for when
Christopher Smart subsequently volunteered his services, Pope said in
his reply, Nov. 18, 1740, "The two first epistles are already well
done." A specimen from Dobson's translation of each of these epistles
was among the papers of Spence, and is printed in the appendix to Mr.
Singer's edition of the Anecdotes. A version of the Essay in Latin
hexameters appeared at Wirtemberg. This, Pope tells Smart, was "very
faithful but inelegant," and he adds that his reason for desiring a more
adequate rendering was that either the sense or the poetry was lost in
all the foreign translations.
[734] By "his friend," Johnson means Warburton, not Dobson.
[735] This sort of burlesque abstract, which may be so easily but so
unjustly made of any composition whatever, is exactly similar to the
imperfect and unfair representation which the same critic has given of
the beautiful imagery in Il Penseroso of Milton.--WARTON.
Johnson's criticism of a poem like this, cannot be compared with his
futile declamation against the imagery of the Penseroso. For in speaking
of the Penseroso, Johnson spoke of what I do not hesitate to say he did
not understand. He had no congenial feelings properly to appreciate the
character of such poetry; but the case is different where he brings his
great mind to try, by the test of truth, arguments and doctrines which
appeal to the understanding. Johnson was not an inadequate judge of
Pope's philosophy, though he was certainly so of Milton's poetry. But no
composition could possibly stand before his contemptuous
declamation.--BOWLES.
[736] Bowles himself had a low opinion of the "system of philosophy"
embodied in the Essay on Man. After stating that Pope was the pupil of
Bolingbroke, he adds, "But this poem will continue to charm from the
music of its verse, the splendour of its diction, and the beauty of its
illustrations, when the philosophy that gave rise to it, like the coarse
manure that fed the flowers, is perceived and remembered no more."
[737] Burke's Works, ed. 1808, vol. v. p. 172.
[738] Spence, p. 108, 127.
[739] Essay on Man, Epist. iv. ver. 391. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii.
p. 40. "You have begun at my request the work which I have wished long
that you would undertake."
[740] Spence, p. 238.
[741] Spence, p. 36.
[742] Spence, p. 103.
[743] Pope to Swift, Sept. 15, 1734.
[744] Spence, p. 12.
[745] Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. ii. p. 149.
[746] "It may safely," says Lord Kames, "be pronounced a capital defect
in the composition of a verse, to put a low word, incapable of an
accent, in the place where this accent should be," and he instances the
last syllable of "dependencies," in Pope's Essay on Man, Epist. i. ver.
30:
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, &c.
What appeared a defect to Lord Kames will seem to many persons an
advantage. The want of accent softens the rhyme, and relieves the
monotonous, cloying effect of a full concord of sound. In most of Pope's
imperfect rhymes the similarity of sound is too slight, and the ear is
disappointed.
[747] Letters by Eminent Persons, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 48.
[748] Spence, p. 108.
[749] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
[750] Bolingbroke's Works, Philadelphia, vol. iii. pp. 40, 45; vol. iv.
p. 111.
[751] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.
[752] Grimouard, Essai sur Bolingbroke, quoted by Cooke, Memoirs of
Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 96.
[753] Chesterfield's Works, ed. Mahon, vol. ii. p. 445.
[754] Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 219. The manuscript of this passage
exists in Warburton's handwriting. Ruffhead altered two or three words,
which are here restored from the original.
[755] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 91.
[756] Spence, who wrote down the anecdote from Warburton's conversation,
says that Hooke talked of "Lord Bolingbroke's disbelief of the moral
attributes of God," which agrees substantially with the language in
Ruffhead.
[757] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 320.
[758] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 23, 24; vol. iii. p. 430.
[759] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 111.
[760] Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 1; iv. ver. 398, and the additional
couplet in the note.
[761] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 175, 152.
[762] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
[763] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 88.
[764] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.
[765] Warburton, Note on Epist. ii. ver. 149.
[766] Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.
[767] Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.
[768] Epist. ii. ver. 274; Epist. iii. ver. 286.
[769] Epist. iii. ver. 305.
[770] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
[771] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 436.
[772] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 333, 366. "The imperfection of
the parts," says Leibnitz, Opera, p. 638, "produce a greater perfection
in the whole." According to his custom, Bolingbroke copied Leibnitz
without naming him.
[773] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 41.
[774] Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 339.
[775] Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 339, 345, 346, 348.
[776] Spence, p. 107.
[777] Middleton to Warburton, Jan. 7, 1740.
[778] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 262.
[779] Spence, p. 238.
[780] Watson's Life of Warburton, p. 15.
[781] Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.
[782] Tyers, Historical Rhapsody, p. 78.
[783] For this we have the authority of Dr. Law, the Bishop of Carlisle,
in the preface to his translation of King's Origin of Evil.
[784] Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430. Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xlv.
[785] Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, ed. 1742, p.
182.
[786] Warburton's Pope, Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 31.
[787] Warton's Pope, vol. iii. p. 162.
[788] Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, p. 121.
[789] Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.
[790] Warburton to Dr. Doddridge, Feb. 12, 1739, in Nichols,
Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 816.
[791] Warburton's Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, 1740, p. 83.
[792] Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 113.
[793] Warburton's Pope, Epist. iv. ver. 394.
[794] Warton's Pope, vol. ix. p. 342.
[795] Nichols, Illustrations of Lit. Hist., vol. ii. p. 53.
[796] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. pp. 92, 185.
[797] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 53.
[798] Pope to Warburton, Sept. 20, 1739; Jan. 4, 1740.
[799] Œuvres de Louis Racine, ed. 1808, tom. i. p. 444. "If," said
Voltaire, "Pope wrote this letter to Racine, God must have given him at
the close of his life the gift of tongues." Voltaire repeats three times
over in his works, that he associated with Pope for a twelvemonth, and
knew, what was publicly notorious in England, that he could hardly read
French, and could not speak one word or write one line of the language.
The objection was founded on the mistaken assumption that the French
translation was the original letter. In the later editions of Racine's
poem the letter is printed from Pope's English. Voltaire was annoyed
that Pope should "retract" his deism, and wanted to have it believed
that Ramsay alone was responsible for the sentiments expressed in the
letter to Racine.
[800] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 457.
[801] Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 542. Spence, p. 277.
[802] Œuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 451.
[803] Œuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 442.
[804] Spence, p. 231.
[805] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 62.
[806] Epist. ii. ver. i.
[807] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 52.
[808] Leibnitz, Opera Philosophica, ed. Erdmann, pp. 506, 544.
[809] Hume's Essays, ed. 1809, vol. ii. pp. 146, 147, 152.
[810] Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 153.
[811] John, xv. 2.
[812] Phillimore's Life of Lord Lyttelton, vol. i. p. 304.
[813] Leibnitz, Opera, p. 628.
[814] Epist. i. ver. 159, 151-4.
[815] Epist. i. ver. 141-6.
[816] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 366.
[817] Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 571, 577.
[818] Epist. i. ver. 147, iv. ver. 115.
[819] Epist. iv. ver. 116, note.
[820] Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 312, 431, 507, 603.
[821] Epist. i. ver. 241-258.
[822] Epist. i. ver. 47-8.
[823] Epist. i. ver. 43-50.
[824] Voltaire, Œuvres, tom. xlvii. p. 98.
[825] Jeremiah, ix. 23, 24.
[826] John, xiv. 9.
[827] Epist. ii. ver. 1-2.
[828] Epist. ii. ver. 3-18.
[829] Epist. i. 61-8.
[830] Epist. ii. ver. 53-8.
[831] Warburton's Commentary, Epist. ii. ver. 53.
[832] Epist. ii. ver. 235-8.
[833] Epist. ii. ver. 53.
[834] Epist. i. ver. 131.
[835] Epist. ii. ver. 126.
[836] Madame de Staël, De l'Allemagne, Part iii., Chap. 16.
[837] Butler's Sermons, Oxford, 1835, pp. xx., 8, 161.
[838] A man may eat from principle, which often happens with the sick
when they are wishing to die, and appetite is extinct. For the same
reason they may eat delicacies when the stomach rebels against common
fare. This was the case with Pascal in his illness, and, from a mistaken
asceticism, he endeavoured to swallow the choice food without tasting
it.
[839] Epist. ii. ver. 70, 113, 116, 119-22.
[840] Epist. ii. ver. 131-148, 157.
[841] Epist. ii. ver. 138, 147.
[842] Crousaz's Commentary on Pope's Essay, translated by Johnson, p.
109.
[843] Fable of the Bees, ninth edition, vol. i. p. 137.
[844] Epist. ii. ver. 175, 197.
[845] Epist. ii. ver. 185-194.
[846] Epist. ii. ver. 59, 67.
[847] Epist. ii. ver. 147.
[848] Epist. ii. ver. 201.
[849] Matthew, xii. 33.
[850] Epist. iii. ver. 261.
[851] Epist. ii. ver. 185-194, 196.
[852] Spence, p. 9.
[853] Epist. ii. ver. 216, note.
[854] Epist. ii. ver. 245.
[855] Epist. ii. ver. 285-292.
[856] Epist. ii. ver. 291. Spence, p. 109.
[857] Epist. ii. ver. 238.
[858] Argument of Epist. ii.
[859] Epist. ii. ver. 241-4.
[860] Epist. ii. ver. 272.
[861] Epist. ii. ver. 286-7.
[862] Epist. ii. ver. 288.
[863] Epist. ii. ver. 268.
[864] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 154.
[865] Epist. ii. ver. 273.
[866] Epist. ii. ver. 275-282.
[867] Epist. ii. ver. 293-4.
[868] Epist. iii. ver. 149.
[869] Epist. iii. ver. 209.
[870] Epist. iii. ver. 232-40.
[871] Epist. iii. ver. 201-6.
[872] Epist. iii. ver. 149-168.
[873] Epist. iii. ver. 245.
[874] Epist. iii. ver. 221.
[875] Epist. iii. ver. 154, 217.
[876] Epist. i. ver. 165-170.
[877] Epist. iii. ver. 169-198.
[878] Epist. iii. ver. 179-182.
[879] Epist. iii. ver. 183-188, 210.
[880] Epist. iii. ver. 303.
[881] Epist. iii. ver. 269, 279.
[882] Epist. iii. ver. 305.
[883] Epist. iii. ver. 307-310.
[884] Epist. iv. ver. 331.
[885] Epist. iv. ver. 111-115.
[886] Spence, p. 107.
[887] Spence, p. 206.
[888] Epist. i. ver. 16.
[889] The Design, _post_, p. 343.
[890] Epist. iii. ver. 19.
[891] Epist. i. ver. 73, 93-4.
[892] Epist. iv. ver. 310. Argument to Epist. iv.
[893] Epist. iv. ver. 66.
[894] Epist. iv. ver. 167-172.
[895] Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, ed. 1851, p. 13.
[896] Epist. iv. ver. 57.
[897] Epist. iv. ver. 69-72.
[898] Recollections by Samuel Rogers, pp. 31, 35.
[899] Argument to Epist. iv.
[900] Epist. iv. ver. 77-80.
[901] Bolingbroke's Works, Vol. iv., p. 378.
[902] Epist. iv. ver. 149.
[903] Epist. iv. ver. 87.
[904] Epist. iv. ver. 89.
[905] Epist. iv. ver. 98.
[906] Epist. iv. ver. 99-102.
[907] Epist. iv. ver. 98, 121-130.
[908] Matt. x. 29-31.
[909] Wollaston, Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed., p. 192.
[910] Epist. iv. ver. 105.
[911] Epist. iv. ver. 149-155.
[912] Epist. iv. ver. 156.
[913] Philipp. iv. 11.
[914] Heb. xii. 11.
[915] Epist. iv. ver. 157-166.
[916] Epist. iv. ver. 189-192.
[917] Epist. iv. ver. 193-204.
[918] Epist. iv. ver. 205-258.
[919] Epist. iv. ver. 259-268.
[920] Henry V., Act iv., Sc. 1.
[921] Epist. ii. ver. 85.
[922] Epist. iv. ver. 19.
[923] Epist. iv. ver. 23, 28.
[924] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 286.
[925] Epist. iv. ver. 29.
[926] Epist. ii. ver. 35-42.
[927] Epist. iv. ver. 29-34.
[928] Rasselas, chap. xxii.
[929] Butler, Sermons, Preface, pp. vii., xi.
[930] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 430.
[931] The Design. See _post_, p. 344.
[932] De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863, vol. viii. pp. 21, 51; xii. pp, 25,
33.
[933] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 44.
[934] Johnson, Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 105.
[935] De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. p. 32.
[936] Voltaire, Œuvres, tom. xii. p. 156; xxxvii. p. 260.
[937] Marmontel, Éléments de Littérature, Art. Épitre.
[938] Dugald Stewart, Works, ed. Hamilton, vol. vii. p. 133.
[939] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, ed. 1841, p. 147.
[940] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 42.
[941] Life of Byron by Moore, 1 vol. ed. p. 696.
[942] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 375, 377-8.
[943] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 374.
[944] De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. pp. 21, 22.
[945] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. pp. 45-50; xii. 297-303.
[946] Marmontel, Éléments de Littérature, Art. Didactique.
[947] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iii. p. 44.
[948] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. ii. p. 220; iii. p. 128.
[949] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 50.
[950] Milton, Comus, ver. 476.
[951] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 378.
[952] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 51.
[953] Taine, Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, 2nd ed. tom. iii. p.
91; iv. pp. 172-176, 203.
[954] Taine, tom. iv. p. 175.
[955] This prefatory notice only appeared in the first edition of the
first epistle.
[956] "Whose" is by some authors made the possessive case of "which,"
and applied to things as well as persons.--LOWTH.
[957] Two "Epistles to Mr. Pope concerning the Authors of the Age," by
the poet Young. They were published in 1730.
[958] The second Epistle of the Essay on Man had the brief preface which
follows: "The author has been induced to publish these Epistles
separately for two reasons, the one that he might not impose upon the
public too much at once of what he thinks incorrect; the other, that by
this method he might profit of its judgment on the parts, in order to
make the whole less unworthy of it."
[959] "The Design" was prefixed in 1735, when Pope inserted the four
Epistles of the Essay on Man in his works.
[960] The early editions have "forming out of all."
[961] For "St. John" the manuscript has "Memmius," and the first edition
"Lælius." Memmius was an author and orator of no great distinction to
whom Lucretius dedicated his De Rerum Natura. Lælius was celebrated for
his statesmanship, his philosophical pursuits, and his friendship, and
is described by Horace as delighting, on his retirement from public
affairs, in the society of the poet Lucilius. Thus the name was fitted
to the functions of Bolingbroke, and the relation in which he stood to
Pope.
[962] Pope's manuscript supplies various readings of this line:
puzzled to flattered
puzzling to blustering
grovelling low-thoughted
To working statesmen and ambitious kings.
In a letter to Swift, Dec. 19, 1734, Pope says that the couplet was a
monitory, and ineffectual hint to Bolingbroke, to give up politics for
philosophy. If the censure was directed against the party vices of the
man the reproof is inconsistent with the eulogy on his patriotism,
Epist. iv. ver. 265, and if against his pursuit in the abstract, it is
folly to say that statesmanship is one of the "meaner things" which
should be left to "low ambition," and empty "pride."
[963] MS.:
Since life, my friend, can, etc.
[964] Denham, of Prudence:
Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too:
To live and die is all we have to do:
the latter of which verses our poet has inserted without alteration in
his Prologue to the Satires, ver. 262.--WAKEFIELD.
[965] This exordium relates to the whole work, first in general, then in
particular. The 6th, 7th, and 8th lines allude to the subjects of this
book,--the general order and design of Providence; the constitution of
the human mind, whose passions cultivated are virtues, neglected vices;
the temptations of misapplied self-love, and wrong pursuits of power,
pleasure, and false happiness.--POPE.
"The whole work" was to have been in four books, and the phrase "this
book" means the four published Epistles of the Essay on Man, which were
to form the first book of the full design.
[966] In the first edition,
A mighty maze of walks without a plan.
This Pope altered because, says Johnson, "if there was no plan it was
vain to describe or to trace the maze."
[967] The 6th verse alludes to the subject of this first Epistle--the
state of man here and hereafter, disposed by Providence, though to him
unknown.--POPE.
[968] Alludes to the subject of the second Epistle,--the passions, their
good or evil.--POPE.
[969] Alludes to the subject of the fourth Epistle,--of man's various
pursuits of happiness or pleasure.--POPE.
[970] The 10th, 13th, and 14th verses allude to the subject of the
second Epistle of the second book,--the characters of men and
manners.--POPE.
The four published Moral Essays were a portion of the projected second
book.
[971] The 11th and 12th verses allude to the subject of the first
Epistle of the second book,--the limits of reason, learning, and
ignorance.--POPE.
This Epistle was never written, but some part of the matter was
incorporated into the fourth Book of the Dunciad.
[972] MS.:
Of all that blindly creep the tracts explore,
And all the dazzled race that blindly soar.
Those who "blindly creep" are the ignorant and indifferent; those who
"sightless soar" are the presumptuous, who endeavour to transcend the
bounds prescribed to the intellect of man.
[973] Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part ii.:
while he with watchful eye
Observes, and shoots their treasons as they fly.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden, Aurengzebe, Act iii.:
Youth should watch joys and shoot 'em as they fly.
[974] These metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and
shooting, seem much below the dignity of the subject, and an unnatural
mixture of the ludicrous and serious.--WARTON.
They are the more so as Pope is not content with barely touching the
metaphor of shooting _en passant_, but pursues it with so much
minuteness. Let us "_beat_ this ample field,"--"_try_ what the _covert_
yields,"--"_eye_ nature's walks,"--"_shoot_ folly." An illustration, if
not at all dignified, or in correspondence with the theme, should not be
pursued so minutely that the mind must perforce observe its
meanness.--BOWLES.
[975] "Candid" here bears the unusual sense of "lenient and favourable
in our judgment."
[976] Alludes to the subject which runs through the whole design,--the
justification of the methods of Providence.--POPE.
Milton, Par. Lost, i. 26:
And justify the ways of God to men.--WARTON.
[977] The last part of the verse is barbarously elliptical. The meaning
is that all our reasonings respecting the end of man must be drawn from
his station here, and to this station we must refer all that we learn
respecting him. Since we can know nothing but what relates to our
present condition, the doctrine of a future life is excluded.
[978] MS.:
Through endless worlds His endless works are known,
But ours, etc.
[979] MS.:
He who can all the flaming limits pierce,
Of worlds on worlds that form one universe.
[980] "And what" was the reading of all editions till that of 1743.
Wollaston's Religion of Nature, ed. 1750, p. 143: "The fixed stars are
so many other suns with their several sets of planets about them."
[981] MS.:
What other habitants in ev'ry star.
[982] This was the reading of the first edition which Pope ultimately
restored, but in the edition of 1735 the line stands thus:
May tell why heav'n made all things as they are.
Pope's assertion in the text that it is impossible for us to "tell why
heaven has made us as we are," unless we had a complete insight into the
plan of universal creation, contradicts ver. 48, where he says that "it
is plain there must be somewhere such a rank as man."
[983] First edition: "And centres."
[984] Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "As distant as are the various systems,
and systems of systems that compose the universe, and different as we
may imagine them to be, they are all tied together by relations and
connections, by gradations and dependencies."--WAKEFIELD.
[985] Pascal's Thoughts, translated by Dr. Kennet, 2nd ed., 1727, p.
288: "If a man did but begin with the study of himself he would soon
find how incapable he was of proceeding further. For what possibility is
there that the part should contain the whole?"
[986] I should have pointed out the expression and great effect of this
line as illustrating the subject it describes; but Ruffhead says "it is
the most heavy, languid, and unpoetical of all Pope ever wrote, and that
the expletive 'to' before the verb is unpardonable."--BOWLES.
[987] An allusion to the golden chain of Homer, which the poet
represents as sustained by Jove, with the whole creation appended to
it.--WAKEFIELD.