Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

(Tina Meador) #1

71 airy horns horns, a conventional image suggesting
adultery; airy because they are imaginary here.
82 Ulysses Homer’s hero who in Odyssey, X is given a
bag enclosing the storm winds which his companions
foolishly unleash with dire effects.
109 toast a lady whose beauty was honoured with raised
glasses in company.
114 Exposed through crystal displayed under glass as in a
finger ring.
117 Hyde Park Circus See note on I, 44.
118 Bow St Mary le Bow is in Cheapside, the site of
business and commerce and therefore no place for a
person of fashion.
124 nice conduct fine management.
clouded cane a variegated walking-stick.
133 But by this lock recalls the oath of Achilles, ‘Now by
this sceptre’, at Iliad, I, 309 in Pope’s version.
156 bohea a blend of tea.
161 omens common in epic; omens foreshadow Dido’s
death.
164 Poll the pet parrot.


Canto V
5 the Trojan Aeneas whom Dido begged not to leave
her for Italy. When Aeneas left she committed suicide.
6 Anna Dido’s sister.
9 Say in parody of Sarpedon’s speech, see p. 110.
14 side-box In the theatre men sat in the side boxes,
women in the front boxes.
20 small-pox Lord Petre (the Baron) died of smallpox in
1713 after the first edition of the poem. This speech
was added in 1717 to ‘open more clearly the moral of
the poem’ (Pope).
24 paint put on make-up.
40 whalebones to stiffen the petticoat.
45 So when bold Homer Pope’s Iliad, XX, 91ff. Pallas is
another name for Athene; Mars is the god of war;
Latona is the mother of Apollo; Hermes is the
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