'8 Cynthia':
a fanciful name for any fashionable lady. No individual is meant.
'manteau':
a loose upper garment for women.
'16 Spleen':
the word is used here as a personification of melancholy, or low
spirits. It was not an uncommon affectation in England at this time. A
letter to the 'Spectator', No. 53, calls it "the distemper of the great
and the polite."
'17 the Gnome':
Umbriel, who in accordance with his nature now proceeds to stir up
trouble. Compare Canto I, ll. 63-64.
'20'
The bitter east wind which put every one into a bad humor was supposed
to be one of the main causes of the spleen.
'23 She':
the goddess of the spleen. Compare l. 79.
'84 Megrim':
headache.
'29 store':
a large supply.
'38 night-dress':
the modern dressing-gown. The line means that whenever a fashionable
beauty bought a new dressing-gown she pretended to be ill in order to
show her new possession to sympathetic friends who called on her.
'40 phantoms':
these are the visions, dreadful or delightful, of the disordered
imagination produced by spleen.
'43 snakes on rolling spires':
like the serpent which Milton describes in 'Paradise Lost', IX, 501-502,
"erect amidst his circling spires."
'46 angels in machines':
angels coming to help their votaries. The word "machine" here has an
old-fashioned technical sense. It was first used to describe the
apparatus by which a god was let down upon the stage of the Greek
theater. Since a god was only introduced at a critical moment to help
the distressed hero, the phrase, "deus ex machina," came to mean a god
who rendered aid. Pope transfers it here to angels.
'47 throngs':
Pope now describes the mad fancies of people so affected by spleen as to
imagine themselves transformed to inanimate objects.
'51 pipkin':
a little jar. Homer ('Iliad', XVIII, 373-377) tells how Vulcan had made
twenty wonderful tripods on living wheels that moved from place to place
of their own accord.
'52'
Pope in a note to this poem says that a lady of his time actually
imagined herself to be a goose-pie.
'56 A branch':
so Æneas bore a magic branch to protect him when he descended to the
infernal regions ('Æneid', VI, 136-143).
'Spleenwort':
a sort of fern which was once supposed to be a remedy against the spleen.
'58 the sex':
women.
'59 vapours':
a form of spleen to which women were supposed to be peculiarly liable,
something like our modern hysteria. It seems to have taken its name from
the fogs of England which were thought to cause it.
'65 a nymph':
Belinda, who had always been so light-hearted that she had never been a
victim of the spleen.
'89 Citron-waters':
a liqueur made by distilling brandy with the rind of citrons. It was a
fashionable drink for ladies at this time.
'71'
Made men suspicious of their wives.
'82 Ulysses':
Homer ('Odyssey', X, 1-25) tells how Æolus, the god of the winds, gave
Ulysses a wallet of oxhide in which all the winds that might oppose his
journey homeward were closely bound up.
'89 Thalestris':
the name of a warlike queen of the Amazons. Pope uses it here for a
friend of Belinda's, who excites her to revenge herself for the rape of
her lock. It is said that this friend was a certain Mrs. Morley.
'102 loads of lead':
curl papers used to be fastened with strips of lead.
'105 Honour':
female reputation.
'109 toast':
a slang term in Pope's day for a reigning beauty whose health was
regularly drunk by her admirers. Steele ('Tatler', No. 24) says that the
term had its rise from an accident that happened at Bath in the reign of
Charles II. A famous beauty was bathing there in public, and one of her
admirers filled a glass with the water in which she stood and drank her
health.
"There was in the place," says Steele "a gay fellow, half-fuddled, who
offered to jump in, and swore though he liked not the liquor, he would
have the Toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave
foundation to the present honor which is done to the lady we mention
in our liquors, who has ever since been called a TOAST."
To understand the point of the story one must know that it was an old
custom to put a bit of toast in hot drinks.
In this line in the poem Thalestris insinuates that if Belinda submits
tamely to the rape of the lock, her position as a toast will be
forfeited.
'113-116'
Thalestris supposes that the baron will have the lock set in a ring
under a bit of crystal. Old-fashioned hair-rings of this kind are still
to be seen.
'117 Hyde-park Circus':
the Ring of Canto I, l. 44. Grass was not likely to grow there so long
as it remained the fashionable place to drive.
'118 in the sound of Bow':
within hearing of the bells of the church of St. Mary le Bow in
Cheapside. So far back as Ben Jonson's time (Eastward Ho, I, ii, 36) it
was the mark of the unfashionable middle-class citizen to live in this
quarter. A "wit" in Queen Anne's day would have scorned to lodge there.
'121 Sir Plume':
this was Sir George Brown, brother of Mrs. Morley (Thalestris). He was
not unnaturally offended at the picture drawn of him in this poem. Pope
told a friend many years later that
"nobody was angry but Sir George Brown, and he was a good deal so, and
for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing
but nonsense."
'124 a clouded cane':
a cane of polished wood with cloudlike markings. In the 'Tatler', Mr.
Bickerstaff sits in judgment on canes, and takes away a cane, "curiously
clouded, with a transparent amber head, and a blue ribband to hang upon
his wrist," from a young gentleman as a piece of idle foppery. There are
some amusing remarks on the "conduct" of canes in the same essay.
'133'
The baron's oath is a parody of the oath of Achilles ('Iliad', I, 234).
'142'
The breaking of the bottle of sorrows, etc., is the cause of Belinda's
change of mood from wrath as in l. 93 to tears, 143-144.
'155 the gilt Chariot':
the painted and gilded coach in which ladies took the air in London.
'156 Bohea:'
tea, the name comes from a range of hills in China where a certain kind
of tea was grown.
'162 the patch-box:'
the box which held the little bits of black sticking-plaster with which
ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison ('Spectator', No.
81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the
face or the other, according to their politics.