P. W.]
385 ([return])
[ 'Division reign:' alluding to the false taste of playing tricks in music with numberless divisions, to the neglect of that harmony which conforms to the sense, and applies to the passions. Mr Handel had introduced a great number of hands, and more variety of instruments into the orchestra, and employed even drums and cannon to make a fuller chorus; which proved so much too manly for the fine gentlemen of his age, that he was obliged to remove his music into Ireland. After which they were reduced, for want of composers, to practise the patch-work above mentioned.—P. W.]
386 ([return])
[ 'Chromatic:' that species of the ancient music called the Chromatic was a variation and embellishment, in odd irregularities, of the diatonic kind. They say it was invented about the time of Alexander, and that the Spartans forbad the use of it, as languid and effeminate.—W.]
387 ([return])
[ 'Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage:' i.e. dissipate the devotion of the one by light and wanton airs; and subdue the pathos of the other by recitative and sing-song.—W.]
388 ([return])
[ 'Narcissus:' Lord Hervey.]
389 ([return])
[ 'Bold Benson:' this man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring translations of Milton; and afterwards by as great passion for Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the Psalms, of which he printed many fine editions. See more of him, book iii. v. 325.—P. W.]
390 ([return])
[ 'The decent knight:' Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was about to publish a very pompous edition of a great author, at his own expense.—P. W.]
391 ([return])
[ 'So by each bard an alderman,' &c.: alluding to the monument of Butler erected by Alderman Barber.]
392 ([return])
[ 'The Samian letter:' the letter Y, used by Pythagoras as an emblem of the different roads of Virtue and Vice.]
'Et tibi quae Samios diduxit litera ramos.'—Pers. P. W.]
393 ([return])
[ 'House or Hall:' Westminster Hall and the House of Commons.—W.]
394 ([return])
[ 'Master-piece of man:' viz., an epigram. The famous Dr South declared a perfect epigram to be as difficult a performance as an epic poem. And the critics say, 'An epic poem is the greatest work human nature is capable of.'—P. W.]
395 ([return])
[ 'Gentle James:' Wilson tells us that this king, James I., took upon himself to teach the Latin tongue to Carr, Earl of Somerset; and that Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, would speak false Latin to him, on purpose to give him the pleasure of correcting it, whereby he wrought himself into his good graces.—P. W. See Fortunes of Nigel.]
396 ([return])
[ 'Locke:' in the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the University of Oxford to censure Mr Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, and to forbid the reading it. See his Letters in the last edit.—P. W.]
397 ([return])
[ 'Crousaz:' see Life.]
398 ([return])
[ 'The streams:' the River Cam, running by the walls of these colleges, which are particularly famous for their skill in disputation.—P. W.]
399 ([return])
[ 'Sleeps in port:' viz., 'now retired into harbour, after the tempests that had long agitated his society.' So Scriblerus. But the learned Scipio Maffei understands it of a certain wine called port, from Oporto a city of Portugal, of which this professor invited him to drink abundantly. Scip. Maff., De Compotationibus Academicis.—P. W.]
400 ([return])
[ 'Letter:' alluding to those grammarians, such as Palamedes and Simonides, who invented single letters. But Aristarchus, who had found out a double one, was therefore worthy of double honour.—Scribl. W.]
401 ([return])
[ 'Digamma:' alludes to the boasted restoration of the Aeolic digamma, in his long-projected edition of Homer. He calls it something more than letter, from the enormous figure it would make among the other letters, being one gamma set upon the shoulders of another.—P. W.]
402 ([return])
[ 'Cicero:' grammatical disputes about the manner of pronouncing Cicero's name in Greek.—W.]
403 ([return])
[ 'Freind—Alsop:' Dr Robert Freind, master of Westminster school, and canon of Christ-church—Dr Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the Horatian style.—P. W.]
404 ([return])
[ 'Manilius or Solinus:' some critics having had it in their choice to comment either on Virgil or Manilius, Pliny or Solinus, have chosen the worse author, the more freely to display their critical capacity.—P. W.]
405 ([return])
[ 'Suidas, Gellius, Stobaeus:' the first a dictionary-writer, a collector of impertinent facts and barbarous words; the second a minute critic; the third an author, who gave his common-place book to the public, where we happen to find much mince-meat of old books.—P. W.]
406 ([return])
[ 'Divinity:' a word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature without a [Greek: Nous].—P. W.]
407 ([return])
[ 'Petrify a genius:' those who have no genius, employed in works of imagination; those who have, in abstract sciences.—P. W.]
408 ([return])
[ 'And hew the block off:' a notion of Aristotle, that there was originally in every block of marble a statue, which would appear on the removal of the superfluous parts.—P. W.]
409 ([return])
[ 'Ajax' spectre:' see Homer Odyss. xi., where the ghost of Ajax turns sullenly from Ulysses the traveller, who had succeeded against him in the dispute for the arms of Achilles.—Scribl. W.]
410 ([return])
[ 'The first came forwards:' this forwardness or pertness is the certain consequence, when the children of Dulness are spoiled by too great fondness of their parent.—W.]
411 ([return])
[ 'As if he saw St James's:' reflecting on the disrespectful and indecent behaviour of several forward young persons in the presence, so offensive to all serious men, and to none more than the good Scriblerus.—P. W.]
412 ([return])
[ 'Lily-silver'd vales:' Tube roses.—P.]
413 ([return])
[ 'Lion of the deeps:' the winged Lion, the arms of Venice.—P. W.]
414 ([return])
[ 'Greatly-daring dined:' it being, indeed, no small risk to eat through those extraordinary compositions, whose disguised ingredients are generally unknown to the guests, and highly inflammatory and unwholesome.—P. W.]
415 ([return])
[ 'Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber:' three very eminent persons, all managers of plays; who, though not governors by profession, had, each in his way, concerned themselves in the education of youth, and regulated their wits, their morals, or their finances, at that period of their age which is the most important—their entrance into the polite world.—P. W.]
416 ([return])
[ 'Paridel:' the poet seems to speak of this young gentleman with great affection. The name is taken from Spenser, who gives it to a wandering courtly squire, that travelled about for the same reason for which many young squires are now fond of travelling, and especially to Paris.—P. W.]
417 ([return])
[ 'Annius:' the name taken from Annius the Monk of Viterbo, famous for many impositions and forgeries of ancient manuscripts and inscriptions, which he was prompted to by mere vanity, but our Annius had a more substantial motive. Annius, Sir Andrew Fontaine.—P. W.]
418 ([return])
[ 'Still to cheat:' some read skill, but that is frivolous, for Annius hath that skill already; or if he had not, skill were not wanting to cheat such persons.—Bentl. P. W.]
419 ([return])
[ 'Hunt the Athenian fowl:' the owl stamped on the reverse on the ancient money of Athens.—P. W.]
420 ([return])
[ 'Attys and Cecrops:' the first king of Athens, of whom it is hard to suppose any coins are extant; but not so improbable as what follows, that there should be any of Mahomet, who forbad all images, and the story of whose pigeon was a monkish fable. Nevertheless, one of these Annius's made a counterfeit medal of that impostor, now in the collection of a learned nobleman.—P. W.]
421 ([return])
[ 'Mummius:' this name is not merely an allusion to the mummies he was so fond of, but probably referred to the Roman General of that name, who burned Corinth, and committed the curious statues to the captain of a ship, assuring him, 'that if any were lost or broken, he should procure others to be made in their stead,' by which it should seem (whatever may be pretended) that Mummius was no virtuoso.-P. W.]
422 ([return])
[ 'Cheops:' a king of Egypt, whose body was certainly to be known, as being buried alone in his pyramid, and is therefore more genuine than any of the Cleopatras. This royal mummy, being stolen by a wild Arab, was purchased by the consul of Alexandria, and transmitted to the Museum of Mummius; for proof of which he brings a passage in Sandys's Travels, where that accurate and learned voyager assures us that he saw the sepulchre empty, which agrees exactly (saith he) with the time of the theft above mentioned. But he omits to observe that Herodotus tells the same thing of it in his time.—P. W.]
423 ([return])
[ 'Speak'st thou of Syrian princes:' the strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the History of the Syrian Kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon, he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend, the famous physician and antiquary Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour first asked him whether the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing such a treasure—he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense.—P. W.]
424 ([return])
[ 'Witness, great Ammon:' Jupiter Ammon is called to witness, as the father of Alexander, to whom those kings succeeded in the division of the Macedonian Empire, and whose horns they wore on their medals.—P. W.]
425 ([return])
[ 'Douglas:' a physician of great learning and no less taste; above all, curious in what related to Horace, of whom he collected every edition, translation, and comment, to the number of several hundred volumes.—P. W.]
426 ([return])
[ 'And named it Caroline:' it is a compliment which the florists usually pay to princes and great persons, to give their names to the most curious flowers of their raising. Some have been very jealous of vindicating this honour, but none more than that ambitions gardener, at Hammersmith, who caused his favourite to be painted on his sign, with this inscription—'This is my Queen Caroline.'—P. W.]
427 ([return])
[ 'Moss:' of which the naturalists count I can't tell how many hundred species.—P. W.]
428 ([return])
[ 'Wilkins' wings:' one of the first projectors of the Royal Society, who, among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the moon; which has put some volatile geniuses upon making wings for that purpose.—P. W.]
429 ([return])
[ 'Moral evidence:' alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions; according to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable that Julius Caesar was in Gaul, or died in the senate-house.—P. W.]
430 ([return])
[ 'The high priori road:' those who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the First Cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him as enables them to see the end of their creation, and the means of their happiness; whereas they who take this high priori road (such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, and some better reasoners) for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in mists, or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all right of their end, and mislead them in the choice of the means.—P. W.]
431 ([return])
[ 'Make Nature still:' this relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere mechanic cause, and yet unwilling to forsake it entirely, have had recourse to a certain plastic nature, elastic fluid, subtile matter, &c.—P. W.]
433 ([return])
[ 'Bright image:' bright image was the title given by the later Platonists to that vision of nature which they had formed out of their own fancy, so bright that they called it [Greek: Autopton Agalma], or the self-seen image, i. e., seen by its own light. This ignis fatuus has in these our times appeared again in the north; and the writings of Hutcheson, Geddes, and their followers, are full of its wonders. For in this lux borealis, this self-seen image, these second-sighted philosophers see everything else.—Scribl. W. Let it be either the Chance god of Epicurus, or the Fate of this goddess.—W.]
434 ([return])
[ 'Theocles:' thus this philosopher calls upon his friend, to partake with him in these visions:
'To-morrow, when the eastern sun
With his first beams adorns the front
Of yonder hill, if you're content
To wander with me in the woods you see,
We will pursue those loves of ours,
By favour of the sylvan nymphs:
and invoking, first, the genius of the place, we'll try to obtain at least some faint and distant view of the sovereign genius and first beauty.' Charact. vol. ii. p. 245.—P. W.]
435 ([return])
[ 'Society adores:' see the Pantheisticon, with its liturgy and rubrics, composed by Toland.—W.]
436 ([return])
[ 'Silenus:' Silenus was an Epicurean philosopher, as appears from Virgil, Eclog. vi., where he sings the principles of that philosophy in his drink. He is meant for one Thomas Gordon.—P. W.]
437 ([return])
[ 'First, slave to words:' a recapitulation of the whole course of modern education described in this book, which confines youth to the study of words only in schools, subjects them to the authority of systems in the universities, and deludes them with the names of party distinctions in the world,—all equally concurring to narrow the understanding, and establish slavery and error in literature, philosophy, and politics. The whole finished in modern free-thinking; the completion of whatever is vain, wrong, and destructive to the happiness of mankind, as it establishes self-love for the sole principle of action.—P. W.]
438 ([return])
[ 'Smiled on by a queen:' i.e. this queen or goddess of Dulness.—P.]
439 ([return])
[ 'Mr Philip Wharton, who died abroad and outlawed in 1791.]
440 ([return])
[ 'Nothing left but homage to a king:' so strange as this must seem to a mere English reader, the famous Mons. de la Bruyère declares it to be the character of every good subject in a monarchy; 'where,' says he, 'there is no such thing as love of our country; the interest, the glory, and service of the prince, supply its place.'—De la République, chap. x.—P.]
441 ([return])
[ 'The balm of Dulness:' the true balm of Dulness, called by the Greek physicians [Greek: Kolakeia], is a sovereign remedy against inanity, and has its poetic name from the goddess herself. Its ancient dispensators were her poets; and for that reason our author, book ii. v. 207, calls it the poet's healing balm; but it is now got into as many hands as Goddard's Drops or Daffy's Elixir.—W.]
442 ([return])
[ 'The board with specious miracles he loads:' these were only the miracles of French cookery, and particularly pigeons en crapeau were a common dish.—P. W.]
443 ([return])
[ 'Séve and verdeur:' French terms relating to wines, which signify their flavour and poignancy.—P. W.]
444 ([return])
[ 'Bladen—Hays:' names of gamesters. Bladen is a black man. Robert Knight, cashier of the South Sea Company, who fled from England in 1720 (afterwards pardoned in 1742). These lived with the utmost magnificence at Paris, and kept open tables frequented by persons of the first quality of England, and even by princes of the blood of France.—P. W. The former note of 'Bladen is a black man,' is very absurd. The manuscript here is partly obliterated, and doubtless could only have been, Wash blackmoors white, alluding to a known proverb.—Scribl. P. W. Bladen was uncle to Collins the poet. See our edition of 'Collins.']
445 ([return])
[ 'Gregorian, Gormogon:' a sort of lay-brothers, slips from the root of the freemasons.—P. W.]
446 ([return])
[ 'Arachne's subtile line:' this is one of the most ingenious employments assigned, and therefore recommended only to peers of learning. Of weaving stockings of the webs of spiders, see the Phil. Trans.—P. W.]
447 ([return])
[ 'Sergeant call:' alluding perhaps to that ancient and solemn dance, entitled, A Call of Sergeants.—P. W.]
448 ([return])
[ 'Teach kings to fiddle:' an ancient amusement of sovereign princes, viz. Achilles, Alexander, Nero; though despised by Themistocles, who was a republican. 'Make senates dance:' either after their prince, or to Pontoise, or Siberia.—P. W.]
449 ([return])
[ 'Gilbert:' Archbishop of York, who had attacked Dr King, of Oxford, a friend of Pope's.]
450 ([return])
[ Verses 615-618 were written many years ago, and may be found in the state poems of that time. So that Scriblerus is mistaken, or whoever else have imagined this poem of a fresher date.—P. W.]
451 ([return])
[ 'Truth to her old cavern fled:' alluding to the saying of Democritus, that Truth lay at the bottom of a deep well, from whence he had drawn her; though Butler says, he first put her in, before he drew her out.—W.]
452 ([return])
[ Read thus confidently, instead of 'beginning with the word books, and ending with the word flies,' as formerly it stood. Read also, 'containing the entire sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four verses,' instead of 'one thousand and twelve lines;' such being the initial and final words, and such the true and entire contents of this poem. Thou art to know, reader! that the first edition thereof, like that of Milton, was never seen by the author (though living and not blind). The editor himself confessed as much in his preface; and no two poems were ever published in so arbitrary a manner. The editor of this had as boldly suppressed whole passages, yea the entire last book, as the editor of Paradise Lost added and augmented. Milton himself gave but ten books, his editor twelve; this author gave four books, his editor only three. But we have happily done justice to both; and presume we shall live, in this our last labour, as long as in any of our others.—Bentl.]
453 ([return])
[ Milbourn on Dryden's Virgil, 8vo, 1698, p. 6.]
454 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 38.]
455 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 192.]
457 ([return])
[ Whip and Key, 4to, printed for R. Janeway, 1682, preface.]
458 ([return])
[ Ibid.]
459 ([return])
[ Milbourn, p. 9.]
460 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 176.]
461 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 39.]
462 ([return])
[ Whip and Key, preface.]
463 ([return])
[ Oldmixon, Essay on Criticism, p. 84.]
464 ([return])
[ Milbourn, p. 2.]
465 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 35.]
466 ([return])
[ Ibid. pp. 22, 192.]
467 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 72.]
468 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 203.]
469 ([return])
[ Ibid, p. 78.]
470 ([return])
[ Ibid, p. 206.]
471 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 19.]
472 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 144, 190.]
473 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 67.]
474 ([return])
[ Milbourn, p. 192.]
475 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 125.]
476 ([return])
[ Whip and Key, preface.]
477 ([return])
[ Milbourn, p. 105.]
478 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 11.]
479 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 176.]
480 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 57.]
481 ([return])
[ Whip and Key, preface.]
482 ([return])
[ Milbourn, p. 34.]
483 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 35.]
484 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, preface, p. xii.]
485 ([return])
[ Dunciad Dissected.]
486 ([return])
[ Preface to Gulliveriana.]
487 ([return])
[ Dennis, Character of Mr P.]
488 ([return])
[ Theobald, Letter in Mist's Journal, June 22, 1728.]
489 ([return])
[ List at the end of a Collection of Verses, Letters, Advertisements, 8vo, printed for A. Moore, 1728, and the preface to it, p. 6.]
490 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks on Homer, p. 27.]
491 ([return])
[ Preface to Gulliveriana, p. 11.]
492 ([return])
[ Dedication to the Collection of Verses, Letters, &c., p. 9.]
493 ([return])
[ Mist's Journal of June 8, 1728.]
494 ([return])
[ Character of Mr P. and Dennis on Homer.]
495 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks on Pope's Homer, p. 12.]
496 ([return])
[ Ibid. p. 14.]
497 ([return])
[ Character of Mr P., p. 17, and Remarks on Homer, p. 91.]
498 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks on Homer, p. 12.]
499 ([return])
[ Daily Journal, April 23, 1728.]
500 ([return])
[ Supplement to the Profund, preface.]
501 ([return])
[ Oldmixon, Essay on Criticism, p. 66.]
502 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks, p. 28.]
503 ([return])
[ Homerides, p. 1, &c.]
504 ([return])
[ British Journal, Nov. 25, 1727.]
505 ([return])
[ Dennis, Daily Journal, May 11, 1728.]
506 ([return])
[ Dennis, Remarks on Homer, Preface.]
507 ([return])
[ Dennis's Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, preface, p. 9.]
508 ([return])
[ Character of Mr P., p. 3.]
509 ([return])
[ Ibid.]
510 ([return])
[ Dennis, Remarks on Homer, p. 37.]
511 ([return])
[ Ibid, p. 8.]