[!--Line Note 463--] [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 Note 465--] [Line 465: Zoilus. See note on line 183.]
[!--Line Note 479--] [Line 479: Patriarch wits—Perhaps an allusion to the great age to which the antediluvian patriarchs of the Bible lived.]
[!--Line Note 536--] [Line 536: An easy monarch.—Charles II.]
[!--Line Note 541--] [Line 541: At that time ladies went to the theater in masks.]
[!--Line Note 544--] [Line 544: A foreign reign.—The reign of the foreigner, William III.]
[!--Line Note 545--] [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 Note 552--] [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 Note 585--] [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 Note 617--] [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.]