Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

Montaigne the French essayist (1553–92) noted like
Horace for candour and self-revelation.
66 Erasmus See note to An Essay on Criticism, line 693.
71 hectors bullies.
72 supercargoes officers concerned with the trade of
shipping vessels (often corrupt).
directors The directors of the South Sea Company, for
example, had been guilty of fraud.
73 Save but our Army a satirical thrust against the
maintenance of a standing army in time of peace.
75 Fleury the French cardinal whose policy, like
Walpole’s, was peace.
81 Delia Mary Howard, Countess of Delorain, who was
supposed to have poisoned a rival in love.
82 Page Sir Francis Page, a hard judge.
83 Sappho Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This couplet
provoked the attack which in turn led to the ‘Epistle
to Dr Arbuthnot’.
88 Pug a Cornish boxer.
98 whitened wall in Bedlam, for example.
99 the Mint a sanctuary for debtors.
100 Lee or Budgell both poets who were insane for a
time.
103 Plums large sums of money.
104 club their testers pool their sixpences.
108 star the decoration for the knight of the garter.
116 unpensioned having no income from the state,
therefore independent.
127 St John Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. See the
first note on the next poem.
129 Iberian lines the Earl of Peterborough who captured
Barcelona and Valencia in 1705–6.
130 quincunx five trees, one at the centre of a square
formed by the rest.
145 Richard Richard III in whose reign a poet was
executed for calling the king a hog.
153 Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, to whom
Pope was opposed and who took a keen interest in
all writing with any political content. The passage
is finely double-edged. The king might read (but