translation of Vergil, Georg. II. 458 sqq., at the end of his fourth essay :

'Some swell up their slight sails with popular fame,

Charm'd with the foolish whistlings of a name.'

284. Cromwell] See note on 11. 250-2 above.

289. hearts of kings] So Dante, Inferno XIII. 58-59, makes Piero delle Vigne, the treacherous chancellor of the emperor Frederick II., say, 'I am he who held both the keys of the heart of Frederick,' etc.

290. How happy] I.e. what a form their happiness took, consisting in ruining the kings who trusted and the queens who loved them!

292. Venice] Venice is said to have been founded during the invasions of the Huns by refugees from Aquileia and Padua. The city was founded on the islands near the mouth of the Brenta.

295. The context points to the fact that these lines refer to the duke of Marlborough, who had died in 1722. The original version of 11. 295-8 read:

'Let gather'd nations next their chief behold,

How bless'd with conquest, yet more bless'd with gold!
Go then and steep thine age in wealth and ease,

Stretch'd on the spoils of plunder'd provinces.'

302. imperious wife] Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, whose character Pope drew as that of 'great Atossa' in Moral Essays, Ep. п. 11. 115-50-a merciless exposure of her ungovernable and fickle temper.

303-4. In 1704 Queen Anne granted the manor of Woodstock, Oxon, to the duke of Marlborough and his heirs, and parliament voted £500,000 for the building of Blenheim palace as a national memorial. Owing to Marlborough's loss of public favour, barely half this sum was paid, and the house, which he never inhabited, was completed at the expense of himself and his duchess. She erected the triumphal arch which is the chief entrance to the park. The architect of the house was Sir John Vanbrugh, who indulged in it his love of gigantic classical proportions.

303. story'd] I.e. painted with pictures of historical or legendary scenes. The ceiling of the great hall at Blenheim is

painted with an allegorical picture of the battle by Sir James Thornhill.

305-6. 'Be not misled by the splendour of such noon-tide prosperity, but take into account the beginning and end of the career.' Marlborough rose into favour by the patronage of Charles II's mistress, the duchess of Cleveland: he died of paralysis and senile decay.

315-16. The sense of the couplet is quite clear, but the construction is too elliptic. If virtue gain its end, the joy is unequalled: if it lose, the loss is attended with no pain.

318. more relish'd] It would be more true to say that virtue in distress is more relished as a spectacle by the philosopher than as a possession by the owner. The tragedies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, represented by such plays as Congreve's Mourning Bride and Rowe's Fair Penitent, ministered to a popular admiration for distressed virtue, the idealism of which formed a striking antithesis to the cynicism of contemporary comedy.

325. where no wants] I.e. where there are no wants.

331. Slave to no sect] The exclusive definitions of happiness by various philosophical sects have been referred to, 11. 19-26 above. Cf. also Ep. III. 11. 305-6. The private road is that of the zealot: the man whose life is in the right seeks God by preferring nature's road.

337. the rising Whole] The stupendous Whole' (Ep. 1. 1. 267) of the universe, rising from nothing to the Infinite (ibid. 11. 240—1). 341. For him alone] I.e. man is the only creature who has the gift of hope. Cf. Ep. 11. 11. 77-8.

347-8. Other creatures are blessed with a natural instinct which leads them inevitably to realise their objects. So man, with the additional instinct of hope, has assurance of the realisation of immortal happiness.

349-52. The gift of hope connects benevolence, man's greatest virtue, with his eternal hope, and thus, providing man with the prospect of future bliss, becomes the motive of his conduct in order to deserve it.

359-60.

The

The construction is again somewhat elliptic. sense is consecutive, i.e., So grasp, etc., that you shall be happier in

proportion as you love your kind more, and that your height of happiness shall be the height of your love.

364. Cf. Pope's version of Chaucer's House of Fame, The Temple of Fame, 11. 436--47; ‘As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes,' etc. The simile is also used in a comic vein, Dunciad 11. 405-10. 373. Pope concludes by addressing Bolingbroke, and the opening of the address may be taken as a direct confession of the inspiring influence which Bolingbroke exercised upon the poem. Pope's flattery was probably sincere; but Elwin, on 1. 378, quotes an appropriate criticism from A Letter to Mr Pope, 1735: Did he (Bolingbroke) rise with temper when he drove furiously out of the kingdom the duke of Marlborough? or did he fall with dignity when he fled from justice and joined the Pretender?' He also quotes Lord Hervey's directly opposite criticism, Elate and insolent in power, dejected and servile in disgrace.'

378. temper] I.e. moderation.

379-80. The couplet is borrowed from Sir William Soame's Art of Poetry, translated from Boileau and corrected by Dryden, canto 1. 11. 75-6:

'Happy who in his verse can gently steer,

From grave to light; from pleasant to severe.'

381. Correct] This adjective was used by Pope and his school as a general description of their aim in poetry. It implies a habit of thought in antagonism to the strained and inappropriate conceits and extravagances of wit which marked the poetry of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. The word is explained to some extent by the previous couplet. Correctness avoided forced and unnatural displays of wit or emotion: its ideal was the following of nature which Pope recommended no less in art than in ethics.

389. pretend] I.e. shew forth, proclaim.

391-2. Pope appears to regard the Essay on Man, not merely as marking a change in his own choice of subject, but as the beginning of a revolution in poetry. This was perhaps too much to claim; but it is unquestionable that he endeavoured in his poem, more seriously and successfully than any of his predecessors, to express his thoughts for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of the fancy with which they were clothed.

393. wit's false mirror] nation of reason to instinct.

This applies primarily to his subordi-
But it also refers to the habit of wit in

poetry, i.e. the indulgence of artificial fancy which was characteristic

of the metaphysical' school in poetry. Cf. Imitations of Horace, Epistle to Augustus, 11. 75-6:

'Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,

His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.'

394-8. In each of 11. 394-7 the teaching of one of the four epistles is summarised. The last line repeats the theme of Ep. 11. 11. 1, 2.