the Roman empire) and the medieval inheritance
(here associated with monkish ignorance).
693 Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–
1536) who sought to unite the best of pagan culture
with Christianity in an ideal of lettered piety. His
humanism made him an opponent of scholasticism and
church abuses satirized in his Praise of Folly and
Colloquies, subsequently put on the index of
prohibited books by the Catholic church. He supported
reform, but a natural inclination to moderation and
concord precluded full support for Luther. Pope again
praises his ‘honest mean’ in the Horatian imitation
addressed ‘To Mr Fortescue’, line 66.
697 Leo Leo X, Pope from 1513–21, also believed in the
Erasmian ideal, and was a great patron of the arts.
704 Raphael...Vida Raphael, the famous painter 1483–
- Vida of Cremona wrote an Art of Poetry in
Latin much admired in the Renaissance and
eighteenth century, because like Horace in the Art of
Poetry and Pope here Vida embodied in the beauty of
his verse the critical precepts he advocated. He
therefore merits the laurel wreath accorded in ancient
times to the poet and the wreath of ivy bestowed
upon the critic. Pope may be echoing Dryden in his
fine poem ‘To the memory of Mr Oldham’: Thy
brows with ivy and with laurels bound.
Thy brows with ivy and with laurels bound.
709 Latium the ancient name for the region in Italy in
which Rome was founded, here meaning modern
Italy.
714 Boileau Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), French poet
and critic identifying much, like Pope, with Horace.
723 the Muse refers to an ‘Essay on poetry’ by John
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (1648–1721) from
which the next line is a quotation.
725 Roscommon Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon
(1633–85), who translated Horace’s Art of Poetry
and wrote ‘An essay upon translated verse’ (1684).
729 Walsh William Walsh (1663–1708), a friend to