Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

190 Tate Nahum Tate (1651–1715), a former poet
laureate of limited ability.
192 Addison Joseph Addison (1672–1719), the eminent
arbiter of taste, a Spectator editor and author of
Cato, a tragedy on the life of the Roman Republican
Stoic, for which Pope wrote a prologue. They
quarrelled over the translation of Homer when
Addison promoted a rival (and inferior) version of the
first book of the Iliad by a protégé, Thomas Tickell,
in 1715. Pope’s response was to compose the Atticus
portrait finally published here. Atticus was a Roman
man of letters, friend of Cicero and later Augustus.
Atticus betrays the ideal of the true critic set out in
An Essay on Criticism.
198 the Turk the Sultan who, it was said, on succeeding to
the throne executed his brothers to secure his
position.
211 Templars law students.
215 stood rubric Publishers displayed title pages in red
letters, ‘rubric’, on billboards. These posters were
called claps.
222 birthday song The poet laureate recited a birthday
ode in the presence of the king. The poetry was
feeble, and George II did not like poetry anyway.
225 daggled dragged.
228 orange commonly sold at theatres.
230 Bufo Latin for toad, a creature that puffs itself up
with air. The portrait is a composite of notable
patrons, Bubb Doddington and the Earl of Halifax.
Castalian state poetry; Castalian refers to the spring
on the twin-peaked mountain, Parnassus, the ‘forked
hill’, sacred to the Muses.
234 Horace and he as a modern Maecenas, the great
patron of Virgil and Horace.
236 Pindar famous Greek lyric poet of the fifth century
BC. The line ridicules the taste for decorative busts of
poets.
244 in kind with verses of his own.
245 Dryden the point being that the patron fails to