Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 390 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? ; NOTES. my Lord Bacon. THE DESIGN. It is curious to find this common mistake so early, as in Pope. It may be regarded as a popular protest against the disguise of name adopted by many newly-made peers, but wisely not by Macaulay nor by Tennyson. It is known that Bacon was a lord; but the popular mind does not burden itself with his titles, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. The quotation is from the dedication of the enlarged edition of the Essays, in 1625, to the Duke of Buckingham: "I do now publish my Essays, which, of all my works, have been most current, for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms." On Bacon, see note, iv. 281. EPISTLE I. Argument. The old meaning of this word was 'subject.' So Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 24: "The height of this great argument." The Latin argumentum has this force, and is specially used for the_subject-matter of a play. Milton also uses 'argument,' as Pope here, for a summary of the contents of a book. An argument is prefixed to each book of the Paradise Lost. 5. Expatiate, derived from Latin ex and spatior, to range over. (1) To wander in space without restraint; (2) in discussion or argument, to travel over wide ground. 6. maze. A kind of practical puzzle; hedges being planted so as to make a long walk with intricate turnings in a small space. There is a very famous maze in the grounds of Hampton Couri Palace. The most famous labyrinth in ancient story (name said to be derived from an Egyptian king named Labyris, but more probably akin to the Greek laúpa, a passage,) was that built by Dædalus in Crete, to imprison the fabulous beast, the minotaur. The only means of finding the way in or out of this was by a skein of thread. There was a similar fable in English history to the effect that Henry II. built a labyrinth at Woodstock to imprison fair Rosamond. The word 'maze' is said to be from A.S. word, meaning a whirlpool. There is a verb 'maze,' to confuse (like amaze); and in provincial English the word means to wander as if stupefied, mazed, drunk. In the first edition this line was: A mighty maze of walks without a plan.” Pope altered it, says Dr. Johnson, because "if there were no plan, it was in vain to describe or to trace the maze.” 7. A wild. 10. the open. These words, here nouns, are properly adjectives. Wild, as a noun, is commoner in the plural, the wilds of Africa.' Milton, Pardise Regained, i. 331, has: I saw and heard, for we sometimes Who dwell this wild, constrained by want, come forth 10. covert is used indifferently as noun or adjective. It is properly participle of verb 'cover. It is adjective in Bacon's Essay Of Gardens: "You are, of either side the green, to plant a covert alley, upon carpenters' work, about twelve feet in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden." It is noun in Milton's Comus, 945: "I shall be your faithful guide Through this gloomy covert wide." The modern sporting term is cover. Notice the metaphors from field sports: beat, open, covert from the chase; shoot as it flies from shooting. Abbott and Seeley, English Lessons for English People, p. 103, say that "technical metaphors borrowed from athletic sports, polite amusements and warfare, being also vivid and real, are liked by the English people and used by our best authors." They instance, 'pull well together,' 'force an antagonist's hand,' but also remark that many similar metaphors are in bad taste and vulgar, the only safe rule being the custom of polite society. Mr. Pattison quotes two quaint parallel passages from two old writers, showing the use of similar illustrations, even on the most serious topics. Henry King (chaplain to James I.): "O guide my faith! and by thy grace's clew And Francis Quarles (a contemporary of King): Keenly they hunted, beat in every brake, That game, from squat, they term felicity." Beating is done with a view to start the game. 13. Eye. A verb. Milton's Comus, 329: "Eye me, blest Providence." 15. candid. According to Elwin, 'candid' has here the unusual sense of 'lenient and favourable in our judgment.' The word is derived from the Latin candidus (white), and usually means 'open, ingenuous, free from malice.' In this sense, Pope has the lines: "A candid judge will read each piece of wit With the same spirit that its author writ." 'Candid' is used ironically in the sense of 'anxious to find fault' in the well-known lines: "But of all plagues, good heaven, thy wrath can send, 16. vindicate the ways of God. duction to Paradise Lost, i. 26 : Canning, New Morality. Imitated from Milton's intro "I may assert Eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to men. 26. circle. Verb, sometimes active, meaning as here—(a) to move round an object, or (b) to surround, i.e. be round it, sometimes (c) neuter, to move round. Illustrations from Milton's Paradise Lost : (a) "Angels,-for ye behold Him, and with songs And choral symphonies, day without night Circle his throne rejoicing" (v. 163). (b) "Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar Circled his head" (iii. 626). (c) "For seasons and for days and circling years" (vii. 342). 27. What varied being peoples every star. "Before the great truths of astronomy were demonstrated; before the dimensions and motions of the planets were ascertained, and the fixed stars placed at inconceivable distances from the system to which we belong, philosophers and poets described in the celestial spheres, the abodes of the blest; but it was not till the form and size and motions of the earth were known, and till the conditions of the D other planets were found to be the same, that analogy compelled us to believe that these planets must be inhabited like our own (Sir David Brewster, More Worlds Than One, introduction). The first formal treatise on the Plurality of Worlds was published in Paris in 1686 by M. Fontenelle, Secretary to the Academy of Sciences. This date is one year before the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia. Many astronomers, including Newton, have written in support of the view that the earth is not the only orb in the universe on which animate life is found. Dr. Whewell, however, has taken the opposite side. His treatise on the subject bears the title of the Plurality of Worlds. There is little doubt that this book, which is a book of marked ability, was the work of Whewell's pen; but Whewell never definitely acknowledged that it was written by him. peoples every star. For the thought, compare Tennyson. Ode on Death of Duke of Wellington : "Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll And other forms of life than ours. People used as verb in Thomson, Seasons, Summer, 250: "Ten thousand forms, ten thousand diff'rent tribes People the blaze.' Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 151, has the opposite verb: "To have dispeopled Heaven.” 29. this frame, the world. The metaphor is from a fabric put together of various parts or members, and arranged upon a definite system. Tillotson, in his sermons, says: "We see this vast frame of the world and an innumerable multitude of creatures in it; all which we who believe in a God attribute to Him as the author." Bacon, Essay 16, Of Atheism: "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind." Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 154: "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, 41. argent fields, the sky, bright like silver. Borrowed from Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 460: "Those argent fields more likely habitants, Translated saints or middle spirits hold." "This 42. Jove's Satellites. Latin satelles, a companion. word is commonly pronounced in prose with e mute in the plural, as in the singular, and is therefore only of three syllables, but Pope has in the plural continued the Latin form and assigned it four, I think, improperly" (Johnson, Dictionary). Mr. Patti |