Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

2 Smithfield ‘Smithfield is the place where
Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows, machines
and dramatical entertainments formerly agreeable
only to the taste of the rabble were by the hero of this
poem and by others of equal genius brought to the
threatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-inn-Fields and
the Hay-Market to be the reigning pleasures of the
court and town’ (1729). ‘The restoration of the reign
of Chaos and Night by the ministry of Dullness their
daughter, in the removal of her imperial seat from the
city to the polite world, as the action of the Aeneid is
the restoration of the empire of Troy by the removal
of the race from thence to Latium’: Martinus
Scriblerus, ‘Of the poem’ (an introductory essay,
1729). For Martinus Scriblerus, see Introduction, p.
2.
10 Pallas Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, born from
the head of Jupiter who is called the Thunderer from
the thunderbolt, an emblem of his power.
20 Monro physician to Bethlehem hospital for the
insane, Bedlam.
21 his famed father’s hand ‘Mr Caius Gabriel Cibber,
father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the
lunatics over the gates of Bedlam hospital were done
by him and (as the son justly says of them) no ill
monuments to his fame as an artist’ (1743).
27 Proteus in ancient myth a minor deity who could
change into whatever shape he pleased.
30 Curll’s chaste press ironic; the bookseller was fined
for publishing obscene books. Edmund Curll and
Bernard Lintot were the leading publishers of Pope’s
time, Curll being the more unscrupulous of the two.
He published a pirated edition of Pope’s letters. They
feature prominently in the next book.
Lintot’s rubric post Lintot was so fond of red-letter
title pages to the books he printed that the show-
boards and posts before his door were generally
bedaubed with them.
31 Tyburn ‘It is an ancient custom for the malefactors
to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no