No More Learning

'588 tax:'

blame, find fault with.


'591'

In Pope's time noblemen could take degrees at the English universities
without passing the regular examinations.


'617'

Dryden's 'Fables' published in 1700 represented the very best narrative
poetry of the greatest poet of his day. D'Urfey's 'Tales', on the other
hand, published in 1704 and 1706, were collections of dull and obscene
doggerel by a wretched poet.


'618 With him:'

according to "the bookful blockhead. "


'619 Garth:'

a well-known doctor of the day, who wrote a much admired mock-heroic
poem called 'The Dispensary'. His enemies asserted that he was not
really the author of the poem.

'623'

Such foolish critics are just as ready to pour out their opinions on a
man in St. Paul's cathedral as in the bookseller's shops in the square
around the church, which is called St. Paul's churchyard.


'632 proud to know:'

proud of his knowledge.


'636 humanly:'

an old form for "humanely. "


'642 love to praise:'

a love of praising men.


'648 Maeonian Star:'

Homer. Maeonia, or Lydia, was a district in Asia which was said to have
been the birthplace of Homer.
'652 conquered Nature:'

Aristotle was a master of all the knowledge of nature extant in his day.


'653 Horace:'

the famous Latin poet whose 'Ars Poetica' was one of Pope's models for
the 'Essay on Criticism'.


'662 fle'me:'

phlegm, according to old ideas of physiology, one of the four "humours"
or fluids which composed the body. Where it abounded it made men dull
and heavy, or as we still say "phlegmatic. "


'663-664'

A rather confused couplet. It means, "Horace suffers as much by the
misquotations critics make from his work as by the bad translations that
wits make of them. "


'665 Dionysius:'

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a famous Greek critic. Pope's manner of
reference to him seems to show that he had never read his works.


'667 Petronius:'

a courtier and man of letters of the time of Nero. Only a few lines of
his remaining work contain any criticism.


'669 Quintilian's work:'

the 'Institutiones Oratoriae' of Quintilianus, a famous Latin critic of
the first century A. D.


'675 Longinus:'

a Greek critic of the third century A. D. , who composed a famous work
called 'A Treatise on the Sublime'. It is a work showing high
imagination as well as careful reasoning, and hence Pope speaks of the
author as inspired by the Nine, 'i.