No More Learning

'109 toast':

a slang term in Pope's day for a reigning beauty whose health was
regularly drunk by her admirers. Steele ('Tatler', No. 24) says that the
term had its rise from an accident that happened at Bath in the reign of
Charles II. A famous beauty was bathing there in public, and one of her
admirers filled a glass with the water in which she stood and drank her
health.

"There was in the place," says Steele "a gay fellow, half-fuddled, who
offered to jump in, and swore though he liked not the liquor, he would
have the Toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave
foundation to the present honor which is done to the lady we mention
in our liquors, who has ever since been called a TOAST. "

To understand the point of the story one must know that it was an old
custom to put a bit of toast in hot drinks.

In this line in the poem Thalestris insinuates that if Belinda submits
tamely to the rape of the lock, her position as a toast will be
forfeited.


'113-116'

Thalestris supposes that the baron will have the lock set in a ring
under a bit of crystal. Old-fashioned hair-rings of this kind are still
to be seen.


'117 Hyde-park Circus':

the Ring of Canto I, l. 44. Grass was not likely to grow there so long
as it remained the fashionable place to drive.


'118 in the sound of Bow':

within hearing of the bells of the church of St. Mary le Bow in
Cheapside.
So far back as Ben Jonson's time (Eastward Ho, I, ii, 36) it
was the mark of the unfashionable middle-class citizen to live in this
quarter. A "wit" in Queen Anne's day would have scorned to lodge there.


'121 Sir Plume':

this was Sir George Brown, brother of Mrs. Morley (Thalestris). He was
not unnaturally offended at the picture drawn of him in this poem. Pope
told a friend many years later that

"nobody was angry but Sir George Brown, and he was a good deal so, and
for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing
but nonsense. "


'124 a clouded cane':

a cane of polished wood with cloudlike markings. In the 'Tatler', Mr.
Bickerstaff sits in judgment on canes, and takes away a cane, "curiously
clouded, with a transparent amber head, and a blue ribband to hang upon
his wrist," from a young gentleman as a piece of idle foppery. There are
some amusing remarks on the "conduct" of canes in the same essay.


'133'

The baron's oath is a parody of the oath of Achilles ('Iliad', I, 234).


'142'

The breaking of the bottle of sorrows, etc. , is the cause of Belinda's
change of mood from wrath as in l. 93 to tears, 143-144.


'155 the gilt Chariot':

the painted and gilded coach in which ladies took the air in London.