Chapter XXXI: Appendix (7)

Nisus had a purple hair on which depended the safety of himself and his kingdom. When the Cretans made war upon him, his daughter Scylla fell in love with their leader Minos, whom she saw from a high tower. Hurried away by her passion, she plucked out her father's hair as he slept, and carried it to Minos, who was victorious in consequence, and Scylla was turned for her crime into a bird. The line of Pope is made up from a passage in Dryden's translation of the first Georgic, where, having applied the epithet "injured" to Nisus, he adds,

And thus the purple hair is dearly paid.

[444] Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel:

But when to sin our blessed nature leans
The careful devil is still at hand with means.

[445] In the first edition it was thus,

As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.--Ver. 134.

First he expands the glitt'ring forfex wide
T' inclose the lock; then joins it to divide;
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever,
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever.--Ver. 154.

All that is between was added afterwards.--POPE.

[446] This repetition is formed on similar passages in Virgil.--WAKEFIELD.

As, for instance, Dryden's Æn. vi. 950:

Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw;
And thrice the flitting shadow slipped away.

[447] See Milton, lib. vi. 330, of Satan cut asunder by the Angel Michael.--POPE.

But th' ethereal substance closed
Not long divisible.

[448]

Dum juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt. Virg.--POPE.

[449] A famous book written about that time by a woman: full of court and party scandal; and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well-suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar.--WARBURTON.

Mrs. Manley, the author of it, was the daughter of Sir Roger Manley, Governor of Guernsey, and the author of the first volume of the famous Turkish Spy, published from his papers, by Dr. Midgley. She was known and admired by all the wits of the times. She died in the house of Alderman Barber, Swift's friend; and was said to have been the mistress of the alderman.--WARTON.

Her actions were even more infamous than her writings. One Mary Thompson had been kept by a person named Pheasant, and at his death, in 1705, she endeavoured to pass herself off for his wife, that she might have a right of dower out of his estate. According to Mr. Nichols, in a note to Steele's Letters, Mrs. Manley was bribed by the promise of 100_l._ a-year for life, to aid Mrs. Thompson in getting a forged entry of the marriage inserted in a register. The case was heard in Doctors' Commons, and Mrs. Manley's guilt was proved. But neither her profligacy nor her frauds could deprive her of the countenance of political partisans like Swift and Prior, or of good-natured men of pleasure like Steele.

[450] Ladies in those days sometimes received visits in their bed-chambers, when the bed was covered with a richer counterpane, and "graced" by a small pillow with a worked case and lace edging. Of the female fashions which Pope pleasantly assumes will be as lasting as the swimming of fishes or the flight of birds, the greater part have passed away.--CROKER.

[451] Ogilby, Virg. Ecl. v.:

So long thy honoured name and praise shall last.

Dryden, Æn. i. 857:

Your honour, name, and praise shall never die!--WAKEFIELD.

[452] So Juvenal exactly, x. 146:

Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris.--WAKEFIELD.

[453] Addison of Troy in his poem to the king:

And laid the labour of the gods in dust.--WAKEFIELD.

[454] Addison's translation of Horace, Ode iii. 3:

Thrice should my favourite Greeks his works confound,
And hew the shining fabric to the ground.--WAKEFIELD.

[455]

Ille quoque eversus mons est, &c.
Quid faciant crines, cum ferro talia cedant?
Catull. de Com. Berenices.--POPE.

[456]

At regina gravi, &c.--Virg. Æn. iv. 1.--POPE.

But anxious cares already seized the queen;
She fed within her veins a flame unseen.
Dryden's Transl.--WAKEFIELD.

[457] The thought and turn of these lines is imitated from the Dispensary, Canto iii.:

Not beauties fret so much if freckles come,
Or nose should redden in the drawing-room.

[458] All the lines from hence to the 94th verse, that describe the house of Spleen, are not in the first edition; instead of them followed only these:

While her racked soul repose and peace requires,
The fierce Thalestris fans the rising fires.

And continued at the 94th verse of this Canto.--POPE.

[459] Garth in the Dispensary, canto iv.:

The bat with sooty wings flits through the grove.

[460] Spleen was thought to be engendered by the east wind. Cowper, in the Task, Bk. iv. ver. 363, speaks of

the unhealthful east
That breathes the spleen.

[461] In this description our poet seems to have had before him the Cave of Envy in Ovid, Met. ii. 760:

Protinus Invidiæ nigro squallentia tabo
Tecta petit. Domus est imis in vallibus antri
Abdita, sole carens, non ulli pervia vento.

Shut from the winds and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies;
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.
Addison's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.

[462] For "Megrim," the first edition has "Languor."

[463] "Wait" for "wait on" or "by" is a very harsh ellipse, though it has the sanction of Dryden.

[464] Hypochondriacal disorders, under the name of vapours or spleen, were then the fashionable complaint, and as they often presented no definite bodily symptoms they could be readily feigned. The "gown" and "night-dress" of Pope are the "dressing-gown" of our day.

[465] Oldham had expressed the same idea in The Dream:

Not dying saints enjoy such ecstacies
When they in visions antedate their bliss.

The ancients believed the spleen to be the seat of mirth, and hence a disordered spleen was supposed to produce melancholy and moroseness. The second sense, in modern usage, has driven out the first, and spleen has become synonymous with surliness and gloom, but Pope in prose as well as verse gave it a wider range, and appears to ascribe to it those creations of the imagination which are mistaken for realities. "Methinks," he writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "I am imitating in my ravings the _dreams of splenetic_ enthusiasts and solitaires, who fall in love with saints and fancy themselves in favour of angels and spirits."

[466] Snakes erect on the "rolling spires," or coils of their bodies, as Milton says that the neck of the serpent was "erect amidst his circling spires."

[467] In the last century the word "machine" was currently employed to designate the supernatural agents in a fiction, and their proceedings when acting in human affairs. Thus, by the expression "angels in machines" is meant angels interposing on behalf of mankind.

[468] Ovid, Met. i. 1:

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
Corpora.

Of bodies changed to various forms I sing.
--Dryden's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.

[469] See Hom. Iliad, xviii., of Vulcan's walking tripods.--POPE.

Van Swieten, in his Commentaries on Boerhaave, relates that he knew a man who had studied till he fancied his legs to be of glass. His maid bringing wood to his fire threw it carelessly down. Our sage was terrified for his legs of glass. The girl, out of patience with his megrims, gave him a blow with a log on the parts affected. He started up in a rage, and from that moment recovered the use of his glass legs.--WARTON.

[470] Alludes to a real fact; a lady of distinction imagined herself in this condition.--POPE.

[471] The fanciful person, here alluded to, was Dr. Edward Pelling, chaplain to several successive monarchs. Having studied himself into hypochondriasis between the age of forty and fifty, he imagined himself to be pregnant, and forbore all manner of exercise lest motion should prove injurious to his ideal burden.--STEEVENS.

[472] This is adopted from the Loyal Subject of Beaumont and Fletcher.--STEEVENS.

[473] In imitation of the golden branch which Æneas carried as a passport when he visited the infernal regions. Spleenwort is a species of fern. "Its virtues," says Cowley, "are told in its name." He makes it compare itself with "painted flowers," and exclaim,

They're fair, 'tis true, they're cheerful, and they're green,
But I, though sad, procure a gladsome mien.

The plant has lost the little credit it once possessed as a remedy for hypochondriacal affections.

[474] Bishop Lowth notices Pope's frequent violation of grammar in joining a pronoun in the singular to a verb in the plural. Thus when he says in the Messiah,

O thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire,

either "thou" should be "you," or else "touched" should be "touchedst, didst touch." Pope has committed the same error in this speech to the Queen of Spleen; for that "thou," and not "you," is, or ought to be, the pronoun understood follows from the expression "_thy_ power" at ver. 65. Hence "who rule" should be "who rulest," or "who dost rule," and so with the other verbs in the second person.

[475] The disease was probably named from the atmospheric vapours which were reputed to be a principal cause of English melancholy. Cowper says of England in his Task, Bk. v. ver. 462,

Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine.

[476] Citron-water was a cordial distilled from a mixture of spirit of wine with the rind of citrons and lemons. There are numerous allusions in the literature of Pope's day to the fondness of women of fashion for this drink, as in Swift's Journal of a Modern Lady, where he says that "to cool her heated brains" when she wakes at noon she

Takes a large dram of citron-water.

[477] The curl papers of ladies' hair used to be fastened with strips of pliant lead.--CROKER.

[478] That is, at whose shrine all our sex resign ease, pleasure, and virtue. "Honour" means female reputation.

[479] A parody of Virgil, Ecl. i. 60.--WAKEFIELD.

Garth, Dispensary, Canto iii.:

The tow'ring Alps shall sooner sink to vales,
And leeches in our glasses swell to whales;
Or Norwich trade in instruments of steel,
And Bromingham in stuffs and druggets deal.

[480] Sir George Brown. He was angry that the poet should make him talk nothing but nonsense: and in truth one could not well blame him.--WARBURTON.

This is one instance out of many in which Pope took unwarrantable liberties with private character. Spence had been told that the description "was the very picture of the man."

[481] A cane diversified with darker spots.--WAKEFIELD.

The "nice conduct" of canes is ridiculed by Addison in No. 103 of the Tatler. A man of fashion, with "a cane very curiously clouded, and a blue ribbon to hang it on his wrist," protests that the "knocking it upon his shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it on his mouth are such great reliefs to him in conversation that he does not know how to be good company without it." A second beau is warned that his cane must be forfeited if "he walks with it under his arm, brandishes it in the air, or hangs it on a button."

[482] In allusion to Achilles's oath in Homer, Il. i.--POPE.

But by this scepter solemnly I swear
Which never more green leaf or growing branch shall bear.
Dryden's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.

[483] Dryden's Æn. i. 770:

If yet he lives and draws this vital air.

[484] Borrowed from Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Granville:

The long contended honours of the field.--HOLT WHITE.

[485] These two lines are additional; and assign the cause of the different operation on the passions of the two ladies. The poem went on before without that distinction, as without any machinery, to the end of the Canto.--POPE.

At ver. 91, Umbriel empties the bag which contains the angry passions over the heads of Thalestris and Belinda. At ver. 142 he breaks the phial of sorrow over Belinda alone, whence Belinda's anger is turned to grief, and Thalestris remains indignant.

[486] A parody of Virg. Æn. iv. 657:

Felix heu nimium felix! si litora tantum
Nunquam Dardaniæ tetigissent nostra carinæ.--WAKEFIELD.

[487] Pope originally wrote:

'Twas this the morning omens did foretell.

He altered the verse, together with one or two others of the same kind, to get rid of the "did".

[488] Butler, the poet, says that the object of black patches was to make the complexion look fairer by the contrast. Dryden has a similar idea in Palamon and Arcite:

Some sprinkled freckles on his face were seen
Whose dusk set off the whiteness of his skin.

[489] Prior's Henry and Emma:

No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck.--WAKEFIELD.

[490] Sir William Bowles on the Death of Charles II.:

And in their rulers fate bewail their own.

[491] Translated from Virgil, Æn. iv. 440:

Fata obstant, placidasque viri deus obstruit aures.
Fate and great Jove had stopped his gentle tears.--Waller.--WAKEFIELD.

[492] The entreaties to stay which Dido's sister, Anna, addressed to Æneas.--CROKER.

Virgil says that the pathetic entreaties to stay sent a thrill of grief through the mighty breast of Æneas, but that his resolution was unshaken. Pope's couplet supposes that he inwardly wavered.

[493] A new character introduced in the subsequent editions, to open more clearly the moral of the poem, in a parody of the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus in Homer.--POPE.

The parody first appeared when the Rape of the Lock was inserted in the quarto of 1717. In the previous enlarged editions, which contained the machinery, the sixth verse was followed by what is now verse thirty-seven:

To arms, to arms! the bold Thalestris cries.

[494] Homer.

Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,
Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain;
Our num'rous herds that range each fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield;
Our foaming bowls with gen'rous nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound;
Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed;
Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous pow'rs above?
'Tis ours, the dignity they give, to grace;
The first in valour, as the first in place:
That while with wond'ring eyes our martial bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sov'reign state,
Whom those that envy, dare not imitate.
Could all our care elude the greedy grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.--WARBURTON.

The passage quoted by Warburton is from Pope's own translation of the Episode of Sarpedon, which appeared in Dryden's Miscellany, in 1710.

[495] Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel:

The young men's vision, and the old men's dream.--WAKEFIELD.

[496] Denham, in his version of the speech of Homer parodied by our poet:

Why all the tributes land and sea affords?--
As gods behold us, and as gods adore.--WAKEFIELD.

[497] Gay, in the Toilette:

Nor shall side-boxes watch my restless eyes,
And, as they catch the glance in rows arise
With humble bows; nor white-gloved beaux approach
In crowds behind to guard me to my coach.--WAKEFIELD.

[498] The ladies at this time always sat in the front, the gentlemen in the side-boxes.--NICHOLS.

In Steele's Theatre, No. 3, January 9, 1720, his "representatives of a British audience" are "three of the fair sex for the front boxes, two gentlemen of wit and pleasure for the side-boxes, and three substantial citizens for the pit." "The virgin ladies," he said, in the Guardian, No. 29, April 14, 1713, "usually dispose themselves in the front of the boxes, the young married women compose the second row, while the rear is generally made up of mothers of long standing, undesigning maids, and contented widows."--CUNNINGHAM.

[499] It is a verse frequently repeated in Homer after any speech,

----So spoke--and all the heroes applauded.--POPE.

[500] From hence the first edition goes on to the conclusion, except a very few short insertions added to keep the machinery in view to the end of the poem.--POPE.

[501] Æneid. v. 140:

----ferit æthera clamor.
Their shouting strikes the skies.--WAKEFIELD.

[502] Homer, Il. xx.--POPE.

[503] This verse is an improvement on the original, Æneid. viii. 246:

----trebidentque immisse lumine manes.
And the ghosts tremble at intruding light.--WAKEFIELD.

The concluding line of the paragraph is from Addison's translation of a passage in Silius Italicus:

Who pale with fear the rending earth survey
And startle at the sudden flash of day.

There is more of bathos than of humour from ver. 43 to ver. 52. The exaggeration is carried so far that even the similitude of caricature is lost.

[504] These four lines added, for the reason before mentioned.--POPE.

[505] Minerva in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with the suitors in the Odyssey, perches on a beam of the roof to behold it.--POPE.

[506] Like the heroes in Homer when they are spectators of a combat.--WARTON.

[507] This idea is borrowed from a couplet in the Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Poetry where he ridicules the poetical dialogues of the _dramatis personæ_ in the reign of Charles II.

Or else like bells, eternally they chime
They sigh in simile, and die in rhyme.

[508] Wakefield quotes passages from Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond, and Milton, in which the phrase "living death" occurs.

[509] The words of a song in the Opera of Camilla.--POPE.

"Here," said Dennis, speaking of the death of the beau and witling, "we have a real combat, and a metaphorical dying," and he did the lines no injustice when he added that they were but a "miserable pleasantry."

[510]

Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis,
Ad vada Mæandri concinit albus olor.
Ov. Ep.--POPE.

[511] Vid. Homer, Il. viii. and Virg. Æn. xii.--POPE.

The passage in Homer to which the poet refers is where Jupiter, before the conflict between Hector and Achilles, weighs the issue in a pair of scales.

[512] These two lines added for the above reason.--POPE.

[513] In imitation of the progress of Agamemnon's sceptre in Homer, Il. ii.--POPE.

[514] Pins to adorn the hair were then called bodkins, and Sir George Etherege, in Tonson's Second Miscellany, traces the genealogy of some jewels through the successive stages of the ornament of a cap, the handle of a fan, and ear-rings, till they became, like the gold seal rings, in the Rape of the Lock,

A diamond bodkin in each tress,
The badges of her nobleness,
For every stone, as well as she,
Can boast an ancient pedigree.

[515] "Who," asked Dennis, "ever heard of a dead man that burnt in Cupid's flames?" Pope had originally written,

And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive.

[516] Dryden's Alexander's Feast:

A present deity! they shout around:
A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.--STEEVENS.

[517] Vide Ariosto, Canto xxxiv.--POPE.

From the catalogue which follows it appears that, by "_all_ things lost on earth," Pope meant only such things as, in his opinion, were hypocritical, foolish, and frivolous. These mounted to the lunar sphere when they had finished their course here below,--a career very short in instances like the "tears of heirs," and, perhaps, very long in instances like the butterflies preserved in the cabinets of collectors.

[518] Apparently Pope had the erroneous idea that distinguished soldiers were men of dull and ponderous minds.

[519] The alms would not be "lost on earth," however unprofitable they might be to the alms-givers, from whom they had been extorted by fear instead of proceeding from a benevolent disposition.

[520] Dryden's Œdipus, act 2:

The smiles of courtiers, and the harlot's tears,
The tradesman's oaths, and mourning of an heir,
Are truths, to what priests tell.--HOLT WHITE.

[521] Denham, in Cooper's Hill, gave him a hint:

their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.--WAKEFIELD.

[522]

Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem
Stella micat. Ovid.--POPE.

Dryden, Æneis, v. 1092:

Descends, and draws behind a trail of light.--WAKEFIELD.

[523] These two lines added, for the same reason, to keep in view the machinery of the poem.--POPE.

Dryden's Æneis, v. 691:

And as it flew
A train of following flames ascending drew;
Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way
Across the skies, as falling meteors play.

[524] The promenades in the Mall lasted till the middle of the reign of George III., and it would appear from this line that they were enlivened by music.--CROKER.

[525] Rosamond's lake was a small oblong piece of water near the Pimlico Gate of St. James's Park. When it was done away with, about the middle of the last century, the public, unwilling to lose the romantic name, transferred it to the dirty pond in the Green Park, which has, in its turn, been filled up.--CROKER.

[526] John Partridge was a ridiculous stargazer, who in his almanacks every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope, and the King of France, then at war with the English.--POPE.

He had been made the subject of ridicule by Swift, Steele, Addison and others.--CROKER.

[527] Milton, Par. Lost, v. ver. 261, calls the telescope "the glass of Galileo," who first employed it to observe the heavens.

[528] Phebe in As You Like It, Act iii. Sc. 5, says to her despised and despairing lover,

Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye.

[529] The compliment was meant to be serious, but is marred by its extravagance. "Millions" is too hyperbolical.

[530] Spenser in his 75th Sonnet:

Not so, quoth I: let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.

And Cowley, in his imitation of Horace, Ode iv. 2:

He bids him live and grow in fame
Among the stars he sticks his name.--WAKEFIELD.

[531] Wakefield says "there is an affectation and ambiguity in this account which he does not comprehend." The uncertainty with which Pope speaks, refers to his doubt of the identity of the lady celebrated by the duke. Enough of "ambiguity and affectation" remains, which would have been no mystery to Wakefield if he had been aware that Pope's object was to deceive.

[532] The Memoirs by Ayre appeared in 1745, without the name of the publisher. In a pamphlet which was printed the same year, under the title of Remarks on Squire Ayre's Memoirs, it is stated that the work was put together, and published by Curll, who being notorious for the manufacture of vapid, lying biographies, suppressed a name which would have been fatal to the sale of his trash.

[533] Warton's Essay, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 329.

[534] Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i., pp. 144, 158-160, 162.

[535] "Pray in your next," writes Caryll to Pope, July 16, 1717, "tell me who was the unfortunate lady you address a copy of verses to. I think you once gave me her history, but it is now quite out of my head." Pope, in his reply does not allude to the subject, and Caryll says to him on Aug. 18, "You answer not my question who the unfortunate lady was that you inscribe a copy of verses to in your book. I long to be re-told her story, for I believe you already told me formerly; but I shall refer that, and a thousand other things more, to chat over at our next meeting, which I hope draws near." This letter was answered by Pope on Aug. 22, but there is still not a word on the unfortunate lady.

[536] Dr. Morell, in his notes to Seneca's Epistles, says, "I remember when I was a boy at Eton that an old almswoman, Mrs. Pain, having been cut down alive, gave this reason for hanging herself, that she was afraid of dying." To rush into death from the fear of death is not uncommon, and shows how far suicide is from being an evidence of superior courage. Acute philosophers have not always reasoned better than Pope. M. Lerminier, a French writer of repute, eulogises, in his Philosophie du Droit, the suicide of Cato for "a pure and majestic act." "In the Memoirs of the Emperor's Valet," he says in the next sentence, "we learn that Napoleon tried to destroy himself at Fontainebleau in 1814. He took poison; remedies were applied, and he recovered. He was not to die thus. Would you wish that Napoleon's end should have been that of an amorous sub-lieutenant, or a ruined banker?" But this was the veritable end of Cato. He died the death of "amorous sub-lieutenants and ruined bankers." The question of M. Lerminier revealed his consciousness that suicide was not heroism, or, in justification of the attempt of the Emperor, he would have asked, "Would you not have wished that Napoleon's end should have been the pure and majestic end of Cato?"

[537] Comus, ver. 205.

[538] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. Pasini, 1847, p. 45.

[539] A belief akin to that which grew up in deserts prevailed in England. Hamlet doubts whether his father's ghost is a "spirit of health or goblin damned," and Horatio attempts to dissuade Hamlet from following it lest it should prove to be an impostor. A "goblin damned" may have put on the "fair and warlike form" of the King of Denmark, may "tempt" Hamlet to the "dreadful summit of the cliff," may "there assume some other horrible form which might draw him into madness," and impel him to commit suicide. The radical idea is the same in Shakespeare and Marco Polo. Fiends personate the relations or friends of an intended victim that they may decoy him to his death.

[540]

And beck'ning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me.

[541] Elements of Criticism, 6th ed., vol. i. p. 477.

[542] Ben Jonson's Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester:

What gentle ghost besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?
And beck'ning woos me?--WARTON.

[543] Johnson gives two meanings for "to gore,"--"to stab," "to pierce;" and "to pierce with a horn." The second, or special signification, has since superseded the general sense in popular usage, though, as with many other words, a sense which has become obsolete in conversation is occasionally revived in books. Formerly, the general sense of "to pierce," without reference to the mode of piercing, was the predominant meaning, and Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 386, employed the word to denote the gaps made in the ranks of a defeated army:

the battle swerved
With many an inroad gored.

[544] The third Elegy of Crashaw:

And I, what is my crime, I cannot tell,
Unless it be a crime t' have loved too well.--STEEVENS.

[545] Shakespeare, Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2:

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.

[546] Dryden, To the Duchess of Ormond:

And where imprisoned in so sweet a cage
A soul might well be pleased to pass an age.

[547] Cowley has a couplet not unlike his, Davideis, i. 80:

Where their vast court the mother-waters keep,
And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep.--WAKEFIELD.

[548] Duke's translation of Juvenal, Sat. iv.:

Without one virtue to redeem his fame.--WAKEFIELD.

[549] Dryden, Ovid's Amor. ii. 19:

But thou dull husband of a wife too fair.--WAKEFIELD.

[550] Lord Kames objects to the false antithesis between cold flesh and mental warmth.

[551] Milton, Comus, ver. 753:

Love-darting eyes or tresses like the morn.--WAKEFIELD.

[552] Rolling eyes are contrary to the English idea of feminine refinement. Pope admired them. He had previously said in the Rape of the Lock, Cant. v. 33,

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll.

[553] Wakefield mentions that the phrase "unknowing how to yield" is used by Dryden, Æneis, xi. 472, and that the entire couplet is almost identical with two passages in Pope's own translation of the Iliad. The first is at Book ix. 749. The second is at Book xxii. 447, and runs thus:

The furies that relentless breast have steeled
And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.

[554] From a fragment of Sir Edward Hungerford, according to a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1764:

The soul by pure religion taught to glow
At others' good, or melt at others' woe.--WAKEFIELD.

[555] Dryden, Æneis, ix. 647, where the mother of Euryalus laments her son, whose body remains with the enemy:

Nor was I near to close his dying eyes,
To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies.--WAKEFIELD.

The cruelties of the lady's relations, the desolation of the family, the being deprived of the rights of sepulture, the circumstance of dying in a country remote from her relations, are all touched with great tenderness and pathos, particularly the four lines from the 51st, "By foreign hands," &c.--WARTON.

[556] The anonymous translator of Ariadne to Theseus:

Poor Ariadne! thou must perish here,
Breathe out thy soul in strange and hated air,
Nor see thy pitying mother shed one tear;
Want a kind hand, which thy fixed eyes may close,
And thy stiff limbs may decently compose.

So Gay in his Dione, Act ii. Sc. 1:

What pious care my ghastful lid shall close?
What decent hand my frozen limbs compose.--WAKEFIELD.

De Quincey assumes that the term "decent limbs" refers to the lady's shape, and he remarks that the language "does not imply much enthusiasm of praise." Pope had perhaps the same idea in his mind as the translator he imitated, and "thy decent limbs were composed" may be put inaccurately for "thy limbs were composed decently."

[557] The poet in the previous couplet has employed the word "mourn" to signify genuine regret. In this verse it is put for the act of wearing mourning,--the appearing in the "sable weeds," which are, "the mockery of woe" when the sorrow is not real.

[558] Dryden, Virg. Ecl. x. 51:

How light would lie the turf upon my breast.

A. Philips in his third Pastoral:

The flow'ry turf lie light upon thy breast.

This thought was common with the ancients.--WAKEFIELD.

[559] Tasso's description of an angel in the translation of Fairfax, i. 14:

Of silver wings he took a shining pair
Fringed with gold.--WAKEFIELD.

[560] The expression has reference to ver. 61. "No sacred earth allowed her room," but her remains have "made sacred" the common earth in which she was buried.

[561] Such a poem as Pope's Elegy, deeply serious and pathetic, rejects with disdain all fiction. Upon that account the passage from ver. 59 to ver. 68 deserves no quarter; for it is not the language of the heart, but of the imagination indulging its flights at ease, and by that means is eminently discordant with the subject. It would be a still more severe censure if it should be ascribed to imitation, copying indiscreetly what has been said by others.--LORD KAMES.

The ghost of the injured person appears to excite the poet to revenge her wrongs. He describes her character, execrates the author of her misfortunes, expatiates on the severity of her fate, the rites of sepulture denied her in a foreign land. Then follows, "What though no weeping," &c. Can anything be more naturally pathetic? Yet the critic tells us he can give no quarter to this part of the poem. Well might our poet's last wish be to commit his writings to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic.--WARBURTON.

[562] When Pope describes the retribution which is to fall upon the imperious relatives of the unfortunate lady, he says,

Thus unlamented pass the proud away;

and it is to these same relations, whose pride was their vice, that he reverts in the line,

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.

The persecutors who have hunted you into the grave, shall one day share your fate.

[563] R. Herrick, in a Meditation for his Mistress:

You are the queen all flow'rs among,
But die you must, fair maid, ere long,
As he, the maker of this song.--WAKEFIELD.

[564] Dean Milman, in his History of Latin Christianity, says that Heloisa "was distinguished for her surpassing beauty." There is no authority for this assertion, which is one of the embellishments of later romancers.

[565] "She knew Latin," says M. Rémusat, "and wrote it with facility and talent. As to Greek and Hebrew I can hardly believe that she was acquainted with more than the alphabet, and a few words which were quoted habitually in theology or in philosophy." The treatises of Abelard prove that he could read neither Greek nor Hebrew, and it is not likely that Heloisa was more learned than her master. Latin was the literary language of the day.

[566] The sentiments which Warton imagined to be borrowed from Madame Guion and Fenelon were taken from the English translation of the Letters of Heloisa and Abelard. Kindred thoughts may be found in the works of almost any devotional writer.

[567] M. Rémusat, who accepts the letters without misgiving, acknowledges that the form of the _Historia Calamitatum_ "appears to be an artificial frame to the picture." He assumes that the avowed purpose is a pretext, and that the repentant philosopher commences his narrative with a misstatement. The fiction which M. Rémusat is obliged to admit, does not ward off the strongest objection to the genuineness of the letters, and is the hypothesis least favourable to the reputation of Abelard; for his treachery to Heloisa is immensely aggravated by the admission that his narrative was meant for the public, and not for the eye alone of a friend.

[568] Essai Historique sur Abailard et Heloise, ed. 1861, p. xxvi.

[569] Essai Historique, p. lxiii.

[570] As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 3.

[571] History of Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 363.

[572] Philosophie du Moyen Age, ed. 1856, p. 3.

[573] Vie d'Abelard, Tome 1. p. 262.

[574] Hist. de France, tom. iii. 317.

[575] Horne's Works, vol. i. p. 248.

[576] Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 33. Fox, the statesman, was one of those who thought "Eloisa much greater in her letters than Pope had made her."

[577] Mason's Life of Whitehead, p. 35.

[578] The letter which Abelard addressed to his friend, and which had fallen into the hands of Eloisa.

[579] Dryden's Don Sebastian:

And when I say Sebastian, dear Sebastian!
I kiss the name I speak.--STEEVENS.

[580] That is, a lively representation of his person was retained in her mind. So Drayton where he speaks of his departed love:

Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore
My soul-shrined saint, my fair idea lies.--WAKEFIELD.

[581] Claudian, De Nupt. Honor. et Mar. ver. 9:

Nomenque beatum
Injussæ scripsere manus.--WAKEFIELD.

[582] Drayton's Heroical Epistle of Rosamond to Henry:

My hapless name with Henry's name I found--
Then do I strive to wash it out with tears,
But then the same more evident appears.--HOLT WHITE.

[583] Some of these circumstances have perhaps a little impropriety when introduced into a place so lately founded as was the Paraclete; but are so well imagined and so highly painted, that they demand excuse.--WARTON.

[584] This is borrowed from Milton's Comus, ver. 428:

By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades.--WAKEFIELD.

[585] A suspected poem of the Duke of Wharton on the Fear of Death:

Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray
And statues pity feign;
Where pale-eyed griefs their wasting vigils keep.--WAKEFIELD.

[586] A puerile conceit from the dew which runs down stone and metals in damp weather.--WAKEFIELD.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1836, quotes a parallel couplet from a poem by the Duke of Wharton:

Where kneeling statues constant vigils keep,
And round the tombs the marble cherubs weep.

[587] He followed Milton in the Penseroso:

Forget thyself to marble.--WAKEFIELD.

Heloisa to Abelard: "O vows! O convent! I have not lost my humanity under your inexorable discipline. You have not made me marble by changing my habit." With the exception of a passage or two quoted by Wakefield, all the extracts in the notes are from Pope's chief text-book, the English work of Hughes, which is very unfaithful to the Latin original.

[588] In every edition till that of Warburton the reading was,

Heav'n claims me all in vain while he has part.

[589] Heloisa to Abelard: "By that melancholy relation to your friend you have awakened all my sorrows."

[590] Dryden's Æneis, v. 64:

A day for ever sad, for ever dear.--WAKEFIELD.

[591] Heloisa to Abelard: "Shall my Abelard be never mentioned without tears? Shall the dear name be never spoken but with sighs?"

[592] Heloisa to Abelard: "I met with my name a hundred times. I never saw it without fear; some heavy calamity always followed it. I saw yours too equally unhappy."

[593] Pomfret in his Vision:

For sure that flame is kindled from below
Which breeds such sad variety of woe.--WAKEFIELD.

Steevens quotes from Dryden's State of Innocence the expression "sad variety of hell," and the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes from Yalden's Force of Jealousy the expression "a large variety of woe."

[594] Dryden, Palamon and Arcite:

Now warm in love, now with'ring in the grave.--WAKEFIELD.

[595] Fame is not a passion.--WARTON.

Ambition is the passion, and fame is the object of the passion.

[596] Heloisa to Abelard: "Let me have a faithful account of all that concerns you. I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate. Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sorrows less."

[597] Heloisa to Abelard: "We may write to each other. Let us not lose through negligence the only happiness which is left us, and the only one perhaps which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us."

[598] Heloisa to Abelard: "Tell me not by way of excuse you will spare our tears; the tears of women shut up in a melancholy place, and devoted to penitence, are not to be spared."

[599] Denham of Prudence:

To live and die is all we have to do.--WAKEFIELD.

Prior's Celia to Damon:

And these poor eyes
No longer shall their little lustre keep,
And only be of use to read and weep.

[600] Heloisa to Abelard: "Be not then unkind, nor deny me that little relief. All sorrows divided are made lighter."

[601] Heloisa to Abelard: "Letters were first invented for comforting such solitary wretches as myself."

[602] Heloisa to Abelard: "What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions; they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the softness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes a boldness of expression even beyond it."

[603] Otway's translation of Phædra to Hippolytus:

Thus secrets safe to farthest shores may move:
By letters foes converse, and learn to love.--WAKEFIELD.

[604] This is the most exquisite description of the first commencement of passion that our language, or perhaps any other, affords.--BOWLES.

[605] Prior's Celia to Damon:

In vain I strove to check my growing flame,
Or shelter passion under friendship's name.

[606] The Divinity himself. Dryden, in his 12th Elegy:

So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the soul.--WAKEFIELD.

[607] Heloisa to Abelard: "That life in your eyes which so admirably expressed the vivacity of your mind; your conversation, which gave everything you spoke such an agreeable and insinuating turn; in short, everything spoke for you."

[608] She says herself, "You had, I confess, two qualities in great perfection with which you could instantly captivate the heart of any woman,--a graceful manner of reading and singing." She mentions in another place also the excellence of his singing.--WAKEFIELD.

[609] He was her preceptor in philosophy and divinity.--POPE.

Dryden, Epistle, 14:

The fair themselves go mended from thy hand.--WAKEFIELD.

[610] Dryden's Œdipus, end of Act iii.:

And backward trod the paths I sought to shun.

[611] Thy holy precepts and the sanctity of thy character had made me conceive of thee as of a being more venerable than man, and approaching the nature of superior existences. But thy personal allurements soon inspired those tender feelings which gradually conducted me from a veneration of the angel to a less pure and dignified sensation--love for the man.--WAKEFIELD.

[612] Dryden, Ovid's Met. x.:

And own no laws but those which love ordains.--WAKEFIELD.

Heloisa to Abelard: "The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still bear with them a necessary engagement, and I was very unwilling to be necessitated to love always a man who perhaps would not always love me."

[613]

Love will not be confined by maisterie:
When maisterie comes, the lord of Love anon
Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he gone.
Chaucer.--POPE.

Hudibras, Part iii. Cant. i. 553:

Love that's too generous to abide
To be against its nature tied,
Disdains against its will to stay,
But struggles out and flies away.--WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's Aurengezebe:

'Tis true of marriage bands I'm weary grown,
Love scorns all ties but those that are his own.--STEEVENS.

The passage cited by Pope from Chaucer is in the Franklin's Tale. Spenser copied and altered the lines, which led Wakefield to imagine that Pope had committed the double error of falsely imputing them to Chaucer, and quoting them incorrectly.

[614] Heloisa to Abelard: "It is not love but the desire of riches and honour which makes women run into the embraces of an indolent husband: ambition, not affection, forms such marriages. I believe indeed they may be followed with some honours and advantages, but I can never think that this is the way to enjoy the pleasures of an affectionate union."

[615] Heloisa to Abelard: "This restless tormenting passion"--ambition--"punishes them for aiming at other advantages by love than love itself."

[616] Heloisa to Abelard: "How often I have made protestations that it was infinitely preferable to me to live with Abelard as his mistress than with any other as empress of the world, and that I was more happy in obeying you than I should have been in lawfully captivating the lord of the universe."

[617] Heloisa to Abelard: "Though I knew that the name of wife was honourable in the world, and holy in religion, yet the name of your mistress had greater charms because it was more free. I despised the name of wife that I might live happy with that of mistress."

[618] Heloisa to Abelard: "We are called your sisters, and if it were possible to think of any expressions which would signify a dearer relation we would use them."

[619] Denham, Cooper's Hill:

Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty, and subjects love.--CUNNINGHAM.

[620] Heloisa to Abelard: "If there is anything which may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is in the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merit. Their hearts are full, and leave no vacancy for any other passion."

[621] Heloisa to Abelard: "If I could believe you as truly persuaded of my merit as I am of yours, I might say there has been a time when we were such a pair."

[622] Mrs. Rowe in her Elegy:

A dying lover pale and gasping lies.--WAKEFIELD.

[623] Heloisa to Abelard: "Where was I? where was your Heloise then? What joy should I have had in defending my lover. I would have guarded you from violence, though at the expense of my life; my cries and shrieks alone would have stopped the hand."

[624] For "stroke" Pope, in all editions till that of 1736, read "hand," the word in the translation. He had used "hand" in the rhyme of the previous couplet, and it was probably to avoid the repetition that he made the alteration.

[625] Careless readers may misapprehend the sense. "Pain" here means punishment, _pœna_.--HOLT WHITE.

Like a verse of Drummond's:

The grief was common, common were the cries.--WAKEFIELD.

Heloisa to Abelard: "You alone expiated the crime common to us both. You only were punished though both of us were guilty."

[626] Heloisa to Abelard: "Oh whither does the excess of passion hurry me! Here love is shocked, and modesty joined with despair deprive me of speech."

[627] A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Settle's Empress of Morocco:

_Muly Hamet._--Speak.
_Empress._--Let my tears and blushes speak the rest.

[628] The altar of Paraclete, says Mr. Berrington, did not then exist. They were not professed at the same time or place; one was at Argenteuil, the other at St. Denys.---WARTON.

[629] Abelard to Heloisa: "I accompanied you with terror to the foot of the altar, and while you stretched out your hand to touch the sacred cloth, I heard you pronounce distinctly those fatal words which for ever separated you from all men."

[630] Her kissing the veil with "cold lips" strongly marks her want of that fervent zeal and devotion which should influence those votaries who renounce the world. The presages, likewise, which attended the rites are finely imagined,--the trembling of the shrines, and the pallid hue of the lamps as if they were conscious of the reluctant sacrifice she was making.--RUFFHEAD.

[631] Prior, in Henry and Emma, has a verse of similar pauses, and similar phraseology:

Thy lips all trembling, and thy cheeks all pale.--WAKEFIELD.

[632] Abelard to Heloisa: "I saw your eyes when you spoke your last farewell fixed upon the cross." Heloisa to Abelard: "It was your command only, and not a sincere vocation, as is imagined, that shut me up in these cloisters." The two passages combined suggested the line in the text.

[633] Heloisa to Abelard: "You may see me, hear my sighs, and be a witness of all my sorrows, without incurring any danger, since you can only relieve me with tears and words."

[634] Roscoe remarks that the lines which follow cannot be justified by anything in the letters of Eloisa. Sentiments equally gross are however expressed both in the original Latin and in the adulterated translation which was Pope's authority.

[635] Concannen's Match at Football, Canto iii.:

And drank in poison from her lovely eye.

Creech, at the beginning of his Lucretius:

Where on thy bosom he supinely lies,
And greedily drinks love at both his eyes.--WAKEFIELD.

Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Act i.:

Drank gorging in the dear delicious poison.--STEEVENS.

[636] "If thou canst forget me, think at least upon thy flock," says Wakefield, in explanation of the train of thought; and he adds a passage from a letter of Eloisa in which she terms the monastery Abelard's "new plantation," and assures him that frequent watering is essential to the tender plants.

[637] Heloisa to Abelard: "The innocent sheep, tender as they are, would yet follow you through deserts and mountains."

[638] He founded the monastery.--POPE.

Heloisa to Abelard: "You only are the founder of this house. You by inhabiting here have given fame and sanctity to a place known before only for robbers and murderers."

[639] So Dryden says of Absalom,

And Paradise was opened in his face.

The original of the image in the text is in Isaiah li. 3:

He will make her wilderness like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of Jehovah.

Whence Milton derived it, Par. Reg. i. 7:

And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.--WAKEFIELD.

[640] The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Boileau, Le Moine:

Là les salons sont peints, les meubles sont dorés
Des larmes et du sang des pauvres devorés.

[641] Heloisa to Abelard: "These cloisters owe nothing to public charities; our walls were not raised by the usury of publicans, nor their foundations laid on base extortion. The God whom we serve sees nothing but innocent riches, and harmless votaries whom you have placed here."

[642] There were no benefactors whose praises were celebrated in the services, but the building was vocal only with the praise of the Deity.

[643] Our author imitates Milton:

And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light.--WAKEFIELD.

[644] Dryden had said of his Good Parson:

His eyes diffused a venerable grace.--WAKEFIELD.

[645] Mrs. Rowe on the Creation:

And kindling glories brighten all the skies.--WAKEFIELD.

[646] By pretending that she desires Abelard to visit the Paraclete in obedience to the call of her sister nuns.

[647] Heloisa to Abelard: "But why should I entreat you in the name of your children? Is it possible I should fear obtaining anything of you when I ask in my own name? And must I use any other prayers than my own to prevail upon you?"

[648] From the superscription of Heloisa's letter to Abelard: "To her lord, her father, her husband, her brother; his servant, his child, his wife, his sister, and to express all that is humble, respectful, and loving to her Abelard, Heloisa writes this."

[649] Our poet is indebted to a translation of the Virgilian cento of Ausonius in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 143:

My love, my life,
And every tender name in one, my wife.--WAKEFIELD.

[650] Mr. Mills, a clergyman, who visited the Paraclete about the year 1765, says, "Mr. Pope's description is ideal. I saw neither rocks, nor pines, nor was it a kind of ground which ever seemed to encourage such objects."

[651] Addison's translation of book iii, of the Æneis:

The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow.

[652] The little river Ardusson glittered along the valley of the Paraclete.--MILLS.

[653] Philips, in his fourth Pastoral:

Nor dropping waters which from rocks distil,
And welly grots with tinkling echoes fill.--WAKEFIELD.

[654] Milton's Penseroso:

When the gust hath blown his fill
Ending on the rustling leaves.--WAKEFIELD.

[655] Dryden, Virg. Geo. iv. 432:

When western winds on curling waters play.

[656] Dryden, Virg. Æn. iii. 575:

Most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid.--WAKEFIELD.

[657] Milton's Penseroso:

To arched walks of twilight groves.--WAKEFIELD.

[658] Waller's version of Æneid iv.:

A death-like quiet, and deep silence fell.

Dryden's Astræa Redux:

A dreadful quiet felt.--WAKEFIELD.

Charles Bainbrigg on the death of Edward King:

Abyssum
Terribilis requies et vasta silentia cingant.--STEEVENS.

[659] Fenton in his version of Sappho to Phaon:

With him the caves were cool, the grove was green,
But now his absence withers all the scene.--WAKEFIELD.

[660] Dryden's Theodore and Honoria:

With deeper brown the grove was overspread.--STEEVENS.

Dryden, Æn. vii. 40:

The Trojan from the main beheld a wood,
Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood.--WAKEFIELD.

[661] In allusion to this sacrifice of herself at his will she says in her first letter: "You are of all mankind most abundantly indebted to me; and particularly for that proof of absolute submission to your commands in thus destroying myself at your injunction."--WAKEFIELD.

[662] Heloisa to Abelard: "Death only can make me leave the place where you have fixed me, and then too my ashes shall rest there, and wait for yours."

[663] Abelard to Heloisa: "I hope you will be contented when you have finished this mortal life to be buried near me. Your cold ashes need then fear nothing."

[664] Heloisa to Abelard: "Among those who are wedded to God I serve a man. What a prodigy am I! Enlighten me, O Lord! Does thy grace or my despair draw these words from me?"

[665] Heloisa to Abelard: "I am sensible I am in the temple of chastity only with the ashes of that fire which has consumed us."

[666] This couplet, and its wretched rhymes, seem derived from an elegy of Walsh in Dryden's Miscellanies:

I know I ought to hate you for the fault;
But oh! I cannot do the thing I ought.--WAKEFIELD.

[667] Heloisa to Abelard: "I am here a sinner, but one, who far from weeping for her sins, weeps only for her lover; far from abhorring her crimes endeavours only to add to them, and then who pleases herself continually with the remembrance of past actions when it is impossible to renew them." And again: "I, who have experienced so many pleasures in loving you feel, in spite of myself, that I cannot repent of them, nor forbear enjoying them over again as much as is possible by recollecting them in my memory." Abelard, in the translation of the letters, expresses the same sentiment: "Love still preserves its dominion in my fancy, and entertains itself with past pleasures."

[668] Abelard to Heloisa: "To forget in the case of love is the most necessary penitence, and the most difficult."

[669] Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia:

Then impotent of mind, with altered sense
She hugged th' offender, and forgave th' offence.--WAKEFIELD.

[670] Abelard to Heloisa: "How can I separate from the person I love the passion I must detest? Will the tears I shed be sufficient to render it odious to me? It is difficult in our sorrow to distinguish penitence from love."

[671] Heloisa to Abelard: "A heart which has been so sensibly affected as mine cannot soon be indifferent. We fluctuate long between love and hatred before we can arrive at a happy tranquillity." Abelard to Heloisa: "In such different disquietudes I contradict myself; I hate you; I love you."