His mother
was the daughter of a Yorkshire gentleman, who lost two sons in the
service of Charles I (cf.
was the daughter of a Yorkshire gentleman, who lost two sons in the
service of Charles I (cf.
Alexander Pope
'374-375'
There is an allusion here that has never been fully explained. Possibly
the passage refers to Teresa Blount whom Pope suspected of having
circulated slanderous reports concerning his relations with her sister.
'376-377'
Suffered Budgell to attribute to his (Pope's) pen the slanderous gossip
of the 'Grub Street Journal',--a paper to which Pope did, as a matter of
fact, contribute--and let him (Budgell) write anything he pleased except
his (Pope's) will. Budgell, a distant cousin of Addison's, fell into bad
habits after his friend's death. He was strongly suspected of having
forged a will by which Dr. Tindal of Oxford left him a considerable sum
of money. He finally drowned himself in the Thames.
'378 the two Curlls':
Curll, the bookseller, and Lord Hervey whom Pope here couples with him
because of Hervey's vulgar abuse of Pope's personal deformities and
obscure parentage.
'380 Yet why':
Why should they abuse Pope's inoffensive parents? Compare the following
lines.
'383'
Moore's own mother was suspected of loose conduct.
'386-388 Of gentle blood . . . each parent':
Pope asserted, perhaps incorrectly, that his father belonged to a
gentleman's family, the head of which was the Earl of Downe.
His mother
was the daughter of a Yorkshire gentleman, who lost two sons in the
service of Charles I (cf. l. 386).
'389 Bestia':
probably the elder Horace Walpole, who was in receipt of a handsome
pension.
'391'
An allusion to Addison's unhappy marriage with the Countess of Warwick.
'393 The good man':
Pope's father, who as a devout Roman Catholic refused to take the oath
of allegiance (cf. l. 395), or risk the equivocations sanctioned by the
"schoolmen," 'i. e'. the Catholic casuists of the day (l. 398).
'404 Friend':
Arbuthnot, to whom the epistle is addressed.
'405-411'
The first draft of these appeared in a letter to Aaron Hill, September
3, 1731, where Pope speaks of having sent them "the other day to a
particular friend," perhaps the poet Thomson. Mrs. Pope, who was very
old and feeble, was of course alive when they were first written, but
died more than a year before the passage appeared in its revised form in
this 'Epistle'.
'412'
An allusion to the promise contained in the fifth commandment.
