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An Essay on Criticism
by
[Line 459: Parsons.–This is an allusion to Jeremy Collier, the author of A Short View etc, of the English Stage. Critics, beaux.–This to the Duke of Buckingham, the author of The Rehearsal.]
[Line 463: Blackmore, Sir Richard (1652-1729), one of the court physicians and the writer of a great deal of worthless poetry. He attacked the dramatists of the time generally and Dryden individually, and is the Quack Maurus of Dryden’s prologue to The Secular Masque. Millbourn, Rev. Luke, who criticised Dryden; which criticism, although sneered at by Pope, is allowed to have been judicious and decisive.]
[Line 465: Zoilus. See note on line 183.]
[Line 479: Patriarch wits–Perhaps an allusion to the great age to which the antediluvian patriarchs of the Bible lived.]
[Line 536: An easy monarch.–Charles II.]
[Line 541: At that time ladies went to the theater in masks.]
[Line 544: A foreign reign.–The reign of the foreigner, William III.]
[Line 545: Socinus.–The reaction from the fanaticism of the Puritans, who held extreme notions of free grace and satisfaction, by resolving all Christianity into morality, led the way to the introduction of Socinianism, the most prominent feature of which is the denial of the existence of the Trinity.]
[Line 552: Wit’s Titans.–The Titans, in Greek mythology, were the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (earth), and of gigantic size. They engaged in a conflict with Zeus, the king of heaven, which lasted ten years. They were completely defeated, and hurled down into a dungeon below Tartarus. Very often they are confounded with the Giants, as has apparently been done here by Pope. These were a later progeny of the same parents, and in revenge for what had been done to the Titans, conspired to dethrone Zeus. In order to scale heaven, they piled Mount Ossa upon Pelion, and would have succeeded in their attempt if Zeus had not called in the assistance of his son Hercules.]
[Line 585: Appius.–He refers to Dennis (see note to verse 270) who had published a tragedy called Appius and Virginia. He retaliated for these remarks by coarse personalities upon Pope, in his criticism of this poem.]
[Line 617: Durfey’s Tales.–Thomas D’Urfey, the author (in the reign of Charles II.) of a sequel in five acts of The Rehearsal, a series of sonnets entitled Pills to Purge Melancholy, the Tales here alluded to, etc. He was a very inferior poet, although Addison pleaded for him.]
[Line 619: Garth, Dr., afterwards Sir Samuel (born 1660) an eminent physician and a poet of considerable reputation He is best known as the author of The Dispensary, a poetical satire on the apothecaries and physicians who opposed the project of giving medicine gratuitously to the sick poor. The poet alludes to a slander current at the time with regard to the authorship of the poem.]
[Line 623: St Paul’s Churchyard, before the fire of London, was the headquarters of the booksellers.]
[Lines 645, 646: See note on line 138.]
[Line 648: The Maeonian star.–Homer, supposed by some to have been born in Maeonia, a part of Lydia in Asia Minor, and whose poems were the chief subject of Aristotle’s criticism.]
[Line 652: Who conquered nature–He wrote, besides his other works, treatises on Astronomy, Mechanics, Physics, and Natural History.]
[Line 665: Dionysius, born at Halicarnassus about 50 B.C., was a learned critic, historian, and rhetorician at Rome in the Augustan age.]
[Line 667: Petronius.–A Roman voluptuary at the court of Nero whose ambition was to shine as a court exquisite. He is generally supposed to be the author of certain fragments of a comic romance called Petronii Arbitri Satyricon.]
[Line 669: Quintilian, born in Spain 40 A.D. was a celebrated teacher of rhetoric and oratory at Rome. His greatwork is De Institutione Oratorica, a complete system of rhetoric, which is here referred to.]
[Line 675: Longinus, a Platonic philosopher and famous rhetorician, born either in Syria or at Athens about 213 A.D., was probably the best critic of antiquity. From his immense knowledge, he was called “a living library” and “walking museum,” hence the poet speaks of him as inspired by all the Nine–Muses that is. These were Clio, the muse of History, Euterpe, of Music, Thaleia, of Pastoral and Comic Poetry and Festivals, Melpomene, of Tragedy, Terpsichore, of Dancing, Erato, of Lyric and Amorous Poetry, Polyhymnia, of Rhetoric and Singing, Urania, of Astronomy, Calliope, of Eloquence and Heroic Poetry.]