* a ?
Amsterdam.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
_Verses in Pope_--_"Bug" or "Bee."_--Pope, in the _Dunciad_, speaking of
the purloining propensities of Bays, has the lines:
"Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,
In pleasing memory of all he stole;
How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,
And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious bug."
In reading these lines, some time ago, I was forcibly struck with the
incongruity of the terms "sipp'd" and "industrious" as applied to "bug;"
and it occurred to me that Pope may have originally written the passage
with the words "free" and "bee," as the rhymes of the two last lines. My
reasons for this conjecture are these: 1st. Because Pope is known to have
been very fastidious on the score of coarse or vulgar expressions; and his
better judgment would have recoiled from the use of so offensive a word as
"bug." 2ndly. Because, as already stated, the terms "sipp'd" and
"industrious" are inapplicable to a bug. Of the bug it may be said, that it
"sucks" and "plunders;" but it cannot, with any propriety, be predicated of
it, as of the bee, that it "sips" and is "industrious." My impression is,
that when Pope found he was doing too much honour to Tibbald by comparing
him to a bee, he substituted the word "bug" and its corresponding rhyme,
without reflecting that some of the epithets, already applied to the one,
are wholly inapplicable to the other.