Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

around the manuscript text of an author, hence an
annotator.
98 Horace Bentley’s edition of Horace was published in
1711 and his Milton in 1732. He was over-
rationalistic in his approach to poetry. See Critical
commentary, p. 246.
103 Gellius or Stobaeus minor ancient grammarians.
109 Kuster, Burman, Wasse three contemporary classical
scholars in the mould of Bentley whose labours on the
minutiae of the text were vitiated by a lack of any
real poetical sense.
115 house a college of Oxford or Cambridge.
116 the Greek word for mind or understanding.
127 paper ruff used to protect prize blooms.
129 Caroline ‘It is a compliment which the florists usually
pay to princes and great persons to give their names
to the most curious flowers of their raising: some
have been very jealous of vindicating this honour but
none more than that ambitious gardener at
Hammersmith, who caused his favourite to be
painted on his sign with this inscription: This is My
Queen Caroline’ (1743). Caroline, George II’s queen.
150 beauteous bird the butterfly.
163 vertù excellence in the sense of virtue or perhaps in
the collection of art objects as in virtuoso.
164 F.R.S. Fellow of the Royal Society.
166 Isis and Cam the rivers of Oxford and Cambridge.
176 St James’s the royal chapel of St James’s Palace.
Gilbert later Archbishop of York.
177 the hall Westminster Hall, the seat of government.
182 Palinurus the helmsman of Aeneas who fell asleep
and fell from his ship in the Aeneid. The reference is
to Walpole.
192 quiet, and entrance verbs here.
203 Medea the powerful witch in ancient myth.
205 Argus the monster with a hundred eyes slain by
Hermes (Mercury).
212 second cause nature; the first cause is God. The
following lines suggest the abuses of human reason in
confounding the sciences and rationalizing religion.