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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘Moss:’ of which the naturalists count I can’t tell how many hundred species.–P. W.
[428] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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.
[432]
‘Thrust some mechanic cause into his place, Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space:’
The first of these follies is that of Descartes; the second, of Hobbes; the third, of some succeeding philosophers.–P. W.
[433] ‘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] ‘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] ‘Society adores:’ see the Pantheisticon, with its liturgy and rubrics, composed by Toland.–W.
[436] ‘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] ‘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] ‘Smiled on by a queen:’ i.e. this queen or goddess of Dulness.–P.
[439] ‘Mr Philip Wharton, who died abroad and outlawed in 1791.
[440] ‘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] ‘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] ‘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] ‘_Séve_ and _verdeur_:’ French terms relating to wines, which signify their flavour and poignancy.–P. W.
[444] ‘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] ‘Gregorian, Gormogon:’ a sort of lay-brothers, slips from the root of the freemasons.–P. W.
[446] ‘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] ‘Sergeant call:’ alluding perhaps to that ancient and solemn dance, entitled, A Call of Sergeants.–P. W.
[448] ‘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] ‘Gilbert:’ Archbishop of York, who had attacked Dr King, of Oxford, a friend of Pope’s.
[450] 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] ‘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] 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] Milbourn on Dryden’s Virgil, 8vo, 1698, p. 6.
[454] Ibid. p. 38.
[455] Ibid. p. 192.
[456] Ibid. p. 8.
[457] Whip and Key, 4to, printed for R. Janeway, 1682, preface.
[458] Ibid.
[459] Milbourn, p. 9.
[460] Ibid. p. 176.
[461] Ibid. p. 39.
[462] Whip and Key, preface.
[463] Oldmixon, Essay on Criticism, p. 84.
[464] Milbourn, p. 2.
[465] Ibid. p. 35.
[466] Ibid. pp. 22, 192.
[467] Ibid. p. 72.
[468] Ibid. p. 203.
[469] Ibid, p. 78.
[470] Ibid, p. 206.
[471] Ibid. p. 19.
[472] Ibid. p. 144, 190.
[473] Ibid. p. 67.
[474] Milbourn, p. 192.
[475] Ibid. p. 125.
[476] Whip and Key, preface.
[477] Milbourn, p. 105.
[478] Ibid. p. 11.
[479] Ibid. p. 176.
[480] Ibid. p. 57.
[481] Whip and Key, preface.
[482] Milbourn, p. 34.
[483] Ibid. p. 35.
[484] Dennis’s Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, preface, p. xii.
[485] Dunciad Dissected.
[486] Preface to Gulliveriana.
[487] Dennis, Character of Mr P.
[488] Theobald, Letter in Mist’s Journal, June 22, 1728.
[489] 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] Dennis’s Remarks on Homer, p. 27.
[491] Preface to Gulliveriana, p. 11.
[492] Dedication to the Collection of Verses, Letters, &c., p. 9.
[493] Mist’s Journal of June 8, 1728.
[494] Character of Mr P. and Dennis on Homer.
[495] Dennis’s Remarks on Pope’s Homer, p. 12.
[496] Ibid. p. 14.
[497] Character of Mr P., p. 17, and Remarks on Homer, p. 91.
[498] Dennis’s Remarks on Homer, p. 12.
[499] Daily Journal, April 23, 1728.
[500] Supplement to the Profund, preface.
[501] Oldmixon, Essay on Criticism, p. 66.
[502] Dennis’s Remarks, p. 28.
[503] Homerides, p. 1, &c.
[504] British Journal, Nov. 25, 1727.
[505] Dennis, Daily Journal, May 11, 1728.
[506] Dennis, Remarks on Homer, Preface.
[507] Dennis’s Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, preface, p. 9.
[508] Character of Mr P., p. 3.
[509] Ibid.
[510] Dennis, Remarks on Homer, p. 37.
[511] Ibid, p. 8.
END OF POPE’S WORKS.