Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

33 As on some mountain Pope comments on the fertility of Homer’s imagination and invention apparent in the five similes in this ...

‘justice, in that he scorns to enjoy what he does not merit; gratitude, because he would endeavour to recompense his obligations ...

preserve his body and arms from becoming a prey to the enemy: and this he says without any regard to himself, but out of most te ...

115 Pallas another name for Minerva, daughter of Jupiter. 144 hind workman, labourer. 178 Linus perhaps a personification of the ...

70 Chiron the wise centaur, half-man half-horse, who taught the young Achilles. 83 Phoebus means shining in Greek; another name ...

heroes in the highest point of light. There is hardly any in the whole Iliad more proper to move pity than this circumstance of ...

imitate these effects in Homer are remarkably varied. 198 So when a peasant Pope comments: ‘This changing of the character is ve ...

1 Aeaean Circe, a minor deity, lives on Aeaea, the floating isle, a mythical place but identified with one of the Lipari islands ...

EPITAPH. ON MR ELIJAH FENTON. AT EASTHAMSTEAD IN BERKS, 1730 He had been one of Pope’s collaborators in the translation of the O ...

5 Sceptic one who doubts the possibility of any knowledge. 6 Stoic’s pride The Stoic takes pride in the capacity of human reason ...

and Atossa were added after the first edition. The lady of the title is Pope’s long-standing friend Martha Blount. 7 Arcadia’s c ...

70 punk prostitute. 71 frank free. 78 Tall-boy a handsome young lover in popular comedy. Charles a common name for a footman as ...

266 tickets lottery tickets. codille See the note on The Rape of the Lock, III, 92. 267 vapours See The Rape of the Lock, IV, 18 ...

20 Bubo George Bubb Doddington completed East-bury in Dorset. 25 noble rules Burlington had published Palladio’s designs in 1730 ...

espaliers trellis-work for the support of trees or shrubs. 94 Dryads in Greek myth the spirits that inhabit trees. 98 alley a wa ...

doctor who sends successive dishes away on the grounds that they are unhealthy, with the tap of his whalebone wand. 162 God bles ...

AN EPISTLE TO DR ARBUTHNOT (1735) Called by Warburton ‘The prologue to the satires’, it has traditionally been printed before Th ...

49 Pitholeon a foolish and pretentious poet in ancient times. 50 place sinecure. 53 Curll Edmund Curll (1675–1747), a disreputab ...

122 Maro the familiar name of Virgil, the greatest Roman poet. As no contemporary representations of ancient poets survive the s ...

190 Tate Nahum Tate (1651–1715), a former poet laureate of limited ability. 192 Addison Joseph Addison (1672–1719), the eminent ...