Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

20 Bubo George Bubb Doddington completed East-bury
in Dorset.
25 noble rules Burlington had published Palladio’s
designs in 1730.
33 pilaster a square pillar projecting from a wall.
34 rustic ‘characterized by a surface artificially
roughened or left rough-hewn’ (OED).
36 Venetian door ‘a door or window so called from
being much practised at Venice by Palladio and
others’ (Pope). The door probably incorporated panes
of glass for Palladio exploited opportunities for light
and airiness afforded by the Mediterranean sun.
Starve in line 38 is used in the sense of starve for cold.
Slavish imitators reproduce these features
inappropriately in colder northern climes.
38 starve See previous entry.
39 brother peer Allen, Lord Bathurst, see line 178.
44 the seven referring to the seven liberal arts that were
the traditional university subjects.
46 Jones Inigo Jones (1573–1652), the famous English
architect and designer working in a classical style. Le
Nôtre André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) designer of the
formal gardens at Versailles. Pope was an early
champion of the informality that came to be
associated with the great landscape gardeners of the
eighteenth century. He put his ideas into practice in
his own garden at Twickenham.
57 genius guardian spirit.
70 Stowe the house and gardens of Richard Temple,
Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghamshire.
72 Nero’s terraces raised garden walks now in ruins in
Rome.
73 parterre ‘a level space in a garden occupied by an
ornamental arrangement of flower-beds of various
shapes and sizes’ (OED).
78 Dr Clarke a philosopher of unorthodox religious
views whose bust, put there by Queen Caroline, was
out of place in the hermitage in Richmond Park.
80 quincunx five trees, one at the centre of a square
formed by the rest.