FullReads

[Line 308: On content.–On trust, a common use of the word in Pope’s time.]

[Lines 311, 312: Prismatic glass.–A glass prism by which light is refracted, and the component rays, which are of different colors being refracted at different angles show what is called a spectrum or series of colored bars, in the order violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.]

[Line 328: Fungoso–One of the characters in Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humor who assumed the dress and tried to pass himself off for another.]

[Line 356: Alexandrine–A line of twelve syllables, so called from a French poem on the Life of Alexander the Great, written in that meter. The poet gives a remarkable example in the next line.]

[Line 361: Sir John Denham, a poet of the time of Charles I. (1615-1668). His verse is characterized by considerable smoothness and ingenuity of rhythm, with here and there a passage of some force–Edmund Waller (1606-1687) is celebrated as one of the refiners of English poetry. His rank among English poets, however, is very subordinate.]

[Line 366: Zephyr.–Zephyrus, the west wind personified by the poets and made the most mild and gentle of the sylvan deities.]

[Lines 366-373: In this passage the poet obviously intended to make “the sound seem an echo to the sense”. The success of the attempt has not been very complete except in the second two lines, expressing the dash and roar of the waves, and in the last two, expressing the skimming, continuous motion of Camilla. What he refers to is the onomatopoeia of Homer and Virgil in the passages alluded to. Ajax, the son of Telamon, was, next to Achilles, the bravest of all the Greeks in the Trojan war. When the Greeks were challenged by Hector he was chosen their champion and it was in their encounter that he seized a huge stone and hurled it at Hector.

Thus rendered by Pope himself:

“Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock
Applied each nerve, and swinging round on high,
With force tempestuous let the ruin fly
The huge stone thundering through his buckler broke.”

Camilla, queen of the Volsci, was brought up in the woods, and, according to Virgil, was swifter than the winds. She led an army to assist Turnus against Aeneas.

“Dura pan, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos.
Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
Gramina nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas;
Vel mare per medium fluctu suspensa tumenti,
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret aequore plantas.”
Aen. vii 807-811.

Thus rendered by Dryden.

“Outstripped the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flew o’er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain;
She swept the seas, and as she skimmed along,
Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung”]

[Lines 374-381: This passage refers to Dryden’s ode, Alexander’s Feast, or The Power of Music. Timotheus, mentioned in it, was a musician of Boeotia, a favorite of Alexander’s, not the great musician Timotheus, who died before Alexander was born, unless, indeed, Dryden have confused the two.]

[Line 376: The son of Libyan Jove.–A title arrogated to himself by Alexander.]

[Line 393: Dullness here ‘seems to be incorrectly used. Ignorance is apt to magnify, but dullness reposes in stolid indifference.’]

[Line 441: Sentences–Passages from the Fathers of the Church who were regarded as decisive authorities on all disputed points of doctrine.]

[Line 444: Scotists–The disciples of Duns Scotus, one of the most famous and influential of the scholastics of the fourteenth century, who was opposed to Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), another famous scholastic, regarding the doctrines of grace and the freedom of the will, but especially the immaculate conception of the Virgin. The followers of the latter were called Thomists, between whom and the Scotists bitter controversies were carried on.]

[Line 445: Duck Lane.–A place near Smithfield where old books were sold. The cobwebs were kindred to the works of these controversialists, because their arguments were intricate and obscure. Scotus is said to have demolished two hundred objections to the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and established it by a cloud of proofs.]