Ver. 444. Thomists,] From Thomas Aquinas, a truly great genius, who, in those blind ages, was the same in theology, that our Friar Bacon was in natural philosophy; less happy than our countryman in this, that he soon became surrounded with a number of dark glossers, who never left him till they had extinguished the radiance of that light, which had pierced through the thickest night of monkery, the thirteenth century, when the Waldenses were suppressed, and Wickliffe not yet risen.
Ver. 445. Amidst their kindred cobwebs.] Were common sense disposed to credit any of the monkish miracles of the dark and blind ages of the church, it would certainly be one of the seventh century recorded by honest Bale. "In the sixth general council," says he, "holden at Constantinople, Anno Dom 680, contra Monothelitas, where the Latin mass was first approved, and the Latin ministers deprived of their lawful wives, spiders' webs, in wonderfull copye were seen falling down from above, upon the heads of the people, to the marvelous astonishment of many." The justest emblem and prototype of school metaphysics, the divinity of Scotists and Thomists, which afterwards fell, in wonderfull copye on the heads of the people, in support of transubstantiation, to the marvelous astonishment of many, as it continues to do to this day.
Ver. 450. And authors think, &c.] This is an admirable satire on those called authors in fashion, the men who get the laugh on their side. He shows on how pitiful a basis their reputation stands,—the changeling disposition of fools to laugh, who are always carried away with the last joke.
Ver. 463. Milbourn] The Rev. Mr. Luke Milbourn. Dennis served Mr. Pope in the same office. But these men are of all times, and rise up on all occasions. Sir Walter Raleigh had Alexander Ross; Chillingworth had Cheynel; Milton a first Edwards; and Locke a second; neither of them related to the third Edwards of Lincoln's Inn. They were divines of parts and learning: this a critic without one or the other. Yet (as Mr. Pope says of Luke Milbourn) the fairest of all critics; for having written against the editor's remarks on Shakspear, he did him justice in printing, at the same time, some of his own.[300]
Ver. 468. For envied wit, &c.] This similitude implies a fact too often verified; and of which we need not seek abroad for examples. It is this, that frequently those very authors, who have at first done all they could to obscure and depress a rising genius, have at length been reduced to borrow from him, imitate his manner, and reflect what they could of his splendour, merely to keep themselves in some little credit. Nor hath the poet been less artful, to insinuate what is sometimes the cause. A youthful genius, like the sun rising towards the meridian, displays too strong and powerful beams for the dirty temper of inferior writers, which occasions their gathering, condensing, and blackening. But as he descends from the meridian (the time when the sun gives its gilding to the surrounding clouds) his rays grow milder, his heat more benign, and then
ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.
484. So when, &c.] This similitude from painting, in which our author discovers (as he always does on that subject) real science, has still a more peculiar beauty, as at the same time that it confesses the just superiority of ancient writings, it insinuates one advantage the modern have above them, which is this, that in these latter, our more intimate acquaintance with the occasion of writing, and with the manners described, lets us into those living and striking graces which may be well compared to that perfection of imitation given only by the pencil, while the ravages of time, amongst the monuments of former ages, have left us but the gross substance of ancient wit,—so much only of the form and fashion of bodies as may be expressed in brass or marble.
Ver. 507.—by knaves undone!] By which the poet would insinuate a common but shameful truth, that men in power, if they got into it by illiberal arts, generally left wit and science to starve.
Ver. 545. Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;] The seeds of this religious evil, as well as of the political good from whence it sprung (for good and evil are incessantly arising out of one another) were sown in the preceding fat age of pleasure. The mischiefs done during Cromwell's usurpation, by fanaticism, inflamed by erroneous and absurd notions of the doctrine of grace and satisfaction, made the loyal latitudinarian divines (as they were called) at the restoration, go so far into the other extreme of resolving all Christianity into morality, as to afford an easy introduction to socinianism, which in that reign (founded on the principles of liberty) men had full opportunity of propagating.
Ver. 561. For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.] The critic acts in two capacities, of assessor and of judge: in the first, science alone is sufficient; but the other requires morals likewise.