'588 tax:'

blame, find fault with.

'591'

In Pope's time n.o.blemen could take degrees at the English universities without pa.s.sing 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 a.s.serted 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 Halicarna.s.sus, 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 'Inst.i.tutiones Oratoriae' of Quintilia.n.u.s, 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.e.' the Muses.

'692'

The willful hatred of the monks for the works of cla.s.sical antiquity tended to complete that destruction of old books which the Goths began when they sacked the Roman cities. Many ancient writings were erased, for example, in order to get parchment for monkish chronicles and commentaries.

'693 Erasmus:'

perhaps the greatest scholar of the Renaissance. Pope calls him the "glory of the priesthood" on account of his being a monk of such extraordinary learning, and "the shame" of his order, because he was so abused by monks in his lifetime. Is this a good ant.i.thesis?