No More Learning

He had been poor and obliged to work hard for a
living in his last years, but hardly had to starve. Halifax offered to
pay the expenses of his funeral and contribute five hundred pounds for a
monument, and Pope not unreasonably suggests that some of this bounty
might have been bestowed on Dryden in his lifetime.


'249'

When a politician wants a writer to put in a day's work in defending
him. Walpole, for example, who cared nothing for poetry, spent large
sums in retaining writers to defend him in the journals and pamphlets of
the day.


'254'

John Gay, the author of some very entertaining verses, was an intimate
friend of Pope. On account of some supposed satirical allusions his
opera 'Polly' was refused a license, and when his friends, the Duke and
Duchess of Queensberry (see l. 260) solicited subscriptions for it in
the palace, they were driven from the court. Gay died in 1732, and Pope
wrote an epitaph for his tomb in Westminster Abbey. It is to this that
he alludes in l. 258.


'274'

Balbus is said to mean the Earl of Kinnoul, at one time an acquaintance
of Pope and Swift.


'278'

Sir William Yonge, a Whig politician whom Pope disliked. He seems to
have written occasional verses. Bubo is Bubo Doddington (see note on l
230).


'297-298'

In the Fourth Moral Essay, published in 1731 as an 'Epistle to the Earl
of Burlington', Pope had given a satirical description of a nobleman's
house and grounds, adorned and laid out at vast expense, but in bad
taste.
Certain features of this description were taken from Canons, the
splendid country place of the Duke of Chandos, and the duke was at once
identified by a scandal-loving public with the Timon of the poem. In the
description Pope speaks of the silver bell which calls worshipers to
Timon's chapel, and of the soft Dean preaching there "who never mentions
Hell to ears polite. " In this passage of the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' he
is protesting against the people who swore that they could identify the
bell and the Dean as belonging to the chapel at Canons.


'303 Sporus':

a favorite of Nero, used here for Lord Hervey. See introduction to this
poem, p. 128.


'304 ass's milk':

Hervey was obliged by bad health to keep a strict diet, and a cup of
ass's milk was his daily drink.


'308 painted child':

Hervey was accustomed to paint his face like a woman.


'317-319'

Pope is thinking of Milton's striking description of Satan "squat like a
toad" by the ear of the sleeping Eve ('Paradise Lost', IV, 800). In this
passage "Eve" refers to Queen Caroline with whom Hervey was on intimate
terms. It is said that he used to have a seat in the queen's hunting
chaise "where he sat close behind her perched at her ear. "


'322 now master up, now miss':

Pope borrowed this telling phrase from a pamphlet against Hervey written
by Pulteney, a political opponent, in which the former is called "a
pretty little master-miss. "


'326 the board':

the Council board where Hervey sat as member of the Privy Council.


'328-329'

An allusion to the old pictures of the serpent in Eden with a snake's
body and a woman's, or angel's, face.


'330 parts':

talents, natural gifts.


'338-339'

An allusion to Pope's abandoning the imaginative topics to his early
poems, as the 'Pastorals' and 'The Rape of the Lock', and turning to
didactic verse as in the 'Essay on Man', and the 'Moral Epistles'.