Notes

1] Pope began his Imitations of Horace around 1733, presumably on a hint or suggestion from Bolingbroke. Epistle II, i, usually called the Epistle to Augustus, was written in 1736 and first published in May 1737. By 1737 George II had become sufficiently unpopular that it was safe for Pope to publish this ironic version of Horace's tribute to the Emperor Augustus. While Horace's Augustus might have questioned the usefulness of poets to the state, he had been a major ruler, who had demonstrated qualities of leadership, integrity, sagacity, and intelligence. The monarch to whom Pope addressed his poem was hardly able to speak English and was antagonistic to learning and the arts. George II, although having personal courage, had little else a monarch required. His desire for personal glory was frustrated by Walpole's pacifism, while his blind egoism prevented him from realizing that the royal power was actually controlled by Queen Caroline. These qualities, coupled with George's indifference to English culture, made him the ideal recipient for Pope's poem, which is an apology for the arts and an ironic defence of cultural values.
Pope's summary is as follows: "The reflections of Horace, and the judgments passed in his pistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present times that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his Prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a monarch upon whom the Romans depended for the increase of an absolute empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours. This epistle will show the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate: Admonebat Praetores ne paterentur Nomen suum obsolefieri, etc. The other, that this piece was only a general discourse of poetry; whereas it was an apology for the poets, in order to render Augustus more their Patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his contemporaries, first against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the theatre; and lastly against the emperor himself, who had conceived them of little use to the government. He shows (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste among the Romans) that the introduction of the polite arts of Greece had given the writers of his time great advantages over their predecessors; that their morals were much improved, and the licence of those ancient poets restrained; that satire and comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagances were left on the stage were owing to the ill taste of the nobility; that poets, under due regulations, were in many respects useful to the state, and concludes, that it was upon them the emperor himself must depend for his fame with posterity. We may farther learn from this epistle that Horace made his court to this great prince by writing with a decent freedom toward him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character.
Ne Rubeam, ... : lest I have to blush at (when presented with) the stupid gift.

7] Edward: Edward III. Henry: Henry V. England's warrior king.

17] Alcides: Hercules.

25] liberty. The Tories charged that liberty was being lost in George II's reign.

38] Skelton "[Pope] Poet Laureate to Henry VIII, a volume of whose verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of ribaldry, obscenity and scurrilous language."

40] Christ's Kirk o' the Green: "[Pope] A ballad made by a King of Scotland." Usually attributed to James I or James V.

42] "[Pope] The Devil's Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his Poetical Club."
Devil: rhymes with civil, (dívil).

48] Refers to contemporary pantomime.

66] Stowe: an Elizabethan chronicler.

69] "[Pope] Shakespeare and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought of this immortality, the one in many pieces composed in haste for the stage; the other in his latter works in general which Dryden called his Dotages [in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy."

75] Cowley: Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), a metaphysical poet whom Pope considered a "fine poet,in spite of all his faults."

77] Pindaric Art: "[Pope] which has much more merit than his Epic: but very unlike the character, as well as numbers of Pindar."

83-86] Pope satirizes the chatter of would-be men of taste employing the critical clichés of his day.

84] Beamount ... Fletcher: see note to Dryden's To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, line 20.

85] Shadwell ... Wycherly. "[Pope] Nothing was less true than this particular: But the whole paragraph has a mixture of irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own judgment, only the common chatt of the pretenders to criticism; in some things right, in others wrong: as he tells us in his answer, Interdum vulgus rectum videt, est ubi peccat (Sometimes the public sees right: sometimes they err) II, i, 63."
Shadwell: see notes to MacFlecknoe.
Wycherley: see notes to To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, line 30.

86] Southerne: Thomas Southerne (1660-1746), dramatist; a writer of "pathetic" tragedy, e.g., The Fatal Marriage (1694).
Rowe: Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718), considered chief tragic dramatist in the reign of Queen Anne; also the first editor of Shakespeare and a friend of Pope's.

88] Heywood: John Heywood (1497?-1580?), the author of several interludes.
Cibber: see notes to The Dunciad.

91] Gammer Gurton: "[Pope] a piece of very low humour, one of the first printed plays in English, and therefore much valued by some antiquaries." In Pope's time, before the discovery of an earlier example, it was believed to the earliest.

92] the Careless Husband: one of Cibber's successful comedies.

97] Spenser ... absolute: "[Pope] Particularly in the Shepherd's Calendar, where he imitates the unequal measures, as well as the language, of Chaucer."

101] Quibbles: see Paradise Lost, VI, 609-28.

102] School Divine: see Paradise Lost, II, 80-134.

104] slashing Bentley. Bentley was generally ridiculed for his heavily amended edition of Paradise Lost (1732). For further information see Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, note on line 164. hook: (1) a pruning tool, (2) the square brackets that Bentley used to indicate passages that he thought were spurious in Milton.

107-08] days ... ease: a rhyme in Pope's day.

109] Sprat: Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), writer and divine, who became Bishop of Rochester in 1684. He is noted for his prose writing, especially his History of the Royal Society (1667), which had an important influence on the prose style of Pope's day.
Carew: Thomas Carew (1595?-1639?), a lyric poet in the cavalier tradition.
Sedley: Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), a lyric poet of the Restoration court circle. Pope had little respect for these three as poets.

110] Miscellanies: collections of poems by various writers.

122] Betterton: Thomas Betterton (1635?-1710), the leading tragic actor during the Restoration periodand an intimate friend of Pope's.

123] Booth: Barton Booth (1681-1733), a well-known eighteenth century tragic actor who played the title role in Addison's Cato (1713).

124] "[Pope] An absurd custom of several actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere proper names of Greeks or Romans, which (as they call it) fill the mouth of the player."

132] Merlin's prophecy: translated from the Welsh unto Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Book VII of his Historia Regium Brittaniae. English translations appeared in 1641 and 1718.

142] "[Pope] A verse of Lord Landsdowne" (George Granville) from The Progress of Beauty.

143] "[Pope] The Duke of Newcastle's Book of Horsemanship: the Romance of Parthenissa by the Earl of Orrery, and most of the French romances translated by persons of quality."

144] Newmarket: a race track frequented by Charles II.

149] Lely: Sir Peter Lely (1618--1680), a Dutch portrait paunter who came to England in 1641 with William III.

153] "[Pope] The Siege of Rhodes (1656) by Sir William Davenant, the first opera sung in England."

156] Refers to the exile of Charles I and the recall of Charles II, the exile of James II and the invitation to William and Mary, and finally the invitation to the Hanovarians.

182] Ward: "[Pope] A famous Empiric, whose Pill and Drop had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at this time."

183] Radcliff: Dr. John Radcliffe (1653-1714), a London physician noted as a diagnostician, who left a large fortune in trust for building and for travelling medical fellowships at Oxford.

186] Ripley: See Moral Epistle IV, 18.

195] Flight of cashiers: refers to the flight of the cashiers of the South Sea Company to France, after being found guilty of a breach of trust. Pope often refers to the South Sea Bubble.

197] Peter: Peter Walter (1664?-1746), politician, M.P., and moneylender, who was notorious for usurious practices. He is the original of Fielding's Peter Pounce in Joseph Andrews.

204] "[Pope] Horace had not acquitted himself much to his credit in this capacity; (non bene relicta parmula [Odes, II, vii, 10]) in the battle of Philippi. It is manifest he alludes to himselí in this whole account of a poet's character; but with an intermixture of irony: Vivit siliquis et pane secundo has a relation to his Epicurism; os tenerum pueri is ridicule: The nobler office of a poet follows, Torquet ab obscoenis--Mox etiam pectus--Recte facta refert, etc. which the imitator has applied where he thinks it more due than to himself. He hopes to be pardoned, if, as he is sincerely inclined to praise what deserves to be praised, he arraigns what deserves to be arraigned, in the 210, 211 and 212th verses.

214] Roscommon: see Essay On Criticism, note on line 725.

222] Her trade supported: refers to Swift's proposals to improve the economy of Ireland in his Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720).
supplied: to supplement.

224] Refers to his attack on a court-approved project that would have debased the Irish monetary system. For this he chose the person of a Dublin drapier; consequently, the work is called The Drapier's Letters.

226] the idiot and the poor: " [Pope] A foundation for the maintenance of idiots, and a fund for assisting the poor, by lending small sums of money on demand."

230] Hopkins and Sternhold: authors of a naive, sixteenth-century metrical version of the Psalms.

236] .... or ... Turk: alludes to the closing line in the prayer at the end of the Hopkins-Sternhold version, "From Pope and Turk defend us, Lord." Pope, of course, is playing on his name as well.

257] statutes: here, of course, the various laws concerning libel.

267] "[Pope] Mr. Waller, about this time [1664] with the Earl of Dorset, Mr. Godolphin, and others, translated the Pompey of Corneille; and the more correct French Poets began to be in reputation."

277-78] Otway: Thomas Otway (1652-1685), tragic dramatist of the Restoration, whose plays included Venice Preserved.

279-81] fluent ... blot: refers to Ben Jonson's Discoveries where he had observed: "Shakespeare ... never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand."

284] images of life: i.e., critical commonplaces.

287] Congreve's fools: e.g., Witwoud in The Way of the World, or Brisk in The Double Dealer.

288] Farqu'ar: George Farquhar (1677-1707), Restoration comic dramatist.

289] Van: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), comic dramatist and architect. His literary works include The Provoked Wife and his architectural works Blenheim Palace and the Clarendon Building, Oxford.

290] Astraea: "[Pope] A name taken by Aphra Behn, Authoress of several obscene Plays." Astraea was goddess of justice.

293] Pinky: William Penkethman, a comic actor, notorious for having, in a performance of Cibber's Loves Makes Man, eaten two chickens in three seconds.

309] Black Joke. The Coal Black Joke was a popular air to which various indecent songs were set.

313] "From Plays to Opera, and from Operas to Pantomimes" (Warburton). Cf. Dunciad IV, 45-60.

315] scenes: painted flats, which when parted, revealed the inner stage. Hence the equivalent of the modern curtain.

319] "[Pope] The Coronation of Henry VIII and Queen Anne Boleyn, in which the Playhouses vied with each other to represent all the pomp of a Coronation. In this noble contention, the Armour of one of the Kings of England was borrowed from the Tower to dress the Champion."

320] Democritus: A Greek atomist and philosopher (460 B.C.), who was described by Juvenal as ever laughing at the follies of mankind, and therefore came to be known as "the laughing philosopher" in opposition to the melancholy Heraclitus.

328] Orcas: "[Pope] The farthest Northern Promontory of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades."

331] .... Quin's ... Oldfield's ...: James Quin and Mrs. Oldfield, most popular comic actor and actress of the time.

332] birthday suit: one of the magnificent suits worn at royal birthday celebrations. Cf. Rape of the Lock, note on line 23.

337] Cato ... chair: from Addison's Cato where the stage direction for the opening of the last act reads: "Cato, solus, sitting in a thoughtful posture."

338] rally: rail (spelt "railly" in the eighteenth century).

353] mountain ... spring: Parnassus and the Pierian spring.

354] "[Pope] Munus Apolline dignum. The Palatine Library then building by Augustus" (refers to 1. 217 of Latin text).

355] Merlin's cave: "[Pope] A Building in the Royal Gardens of Richmond, where is a small, but choice Collection of Books." (Pope is ironically comparing Queen Caroline's collection of wax figures and a few books with Augustus' building of the great Palatine Library.)

375] Under Charles II, Dryden was the royal historiographer, while Louis XIV made Racine and Boileau, France's great neo-classical poet and critic, royal historiographers.

379] The Laureate had not been a poet of note since Dryden was replaced in 1688.

381] Bernini: (1598-1680) the architect who designed the great colonnade at St. Peter's. His bust of Charles I (now destroyed) was made in Rome, 1636-37, from a triple portrait by Vandyke.

382] Kneller: Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), German-born portrait painter who settled in England in 1675. He was a neighbour and acquaintance of Pope's, who at his death requested Pope write his epitaph.

387] Blackmore: Sir Richard Blackmore (1655?-1729), physician to William III, notorious for long prosaic poems, such as Prince Arthur (1695), an epic, and Creation, a philosophic poem.
Quarles: nothing is known of Quarles' pension.

394] Maeonian. Homeric; see Essay on Criticism, note to line 648.

414] i.e., King George or his Laureate, Cibber.

417] Eusden: Laurence Eusden (1688-1730), Poet Laureate in 1718 after Rhodes' death, a person often attacked by Pope. He had written a number of birthday odes to the King. Philips: see Epistle to Arbuthnot, notes to lines 100 and 179-82.

Other poems by Alexander Pope