Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

(Tina Meador) #1

106 berries coffee berries, first roasted then ground.
107 shining altars of Japan lacquered tables.
110 China’s earth porcelain cups.
122 Scylla daughter of Nisus. His safety and that of his
kingdom depended upon a lock of hair which Scylla
stole to betray him to his enemy Minos with whom
she had fallen in love. She was punished for her
impiety by being turned into a bird.
147 forfex scissors.
165 Atalantis refers to a novel by Mary Manley notorious
for its libels which had led to her arrest.
167 visits made in the evening when the lady was escorted
by servants bearing lights.


Canto IV
8 manteau a loose upper garment worn by women.
13 Umbriel the Latin umbra means shadow.
16 Cave of Spleen Compare Ovid’s Cave of Envy in the
Metamorphoses, II, 760ff and see Introduction, p. 19.
Spleen was a fashionable complaint of high society
associated with melancholia and moroseness.
18 vapour The spleen was also called the vapours,
supposedly induced by a misty climate.
20 east a wind favourable to spleen.
24 Megrim headache.
40–6 phantoms Hallucinations were symptoms of the
spleen. Here Pope satirizes scenic effects in
contemporary opera and pantomime.
51 pipkin a small earthen boiler.
Homer’s tripod an allusion to Iliad, XVIII, 440–8 in
Pope’s version.
56 spleenwort a kind of fern with medicinal properties
supposed to cure the spleen, reminiscent here of the
Golden Bough carried by Aeneas as his passport
through Hades.
62 physic medicine.
64 in a pet in a fit of ill humour.
69 citron waters brandy flavoured with citron or lemon
rind.
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