Part 21 (1/2)

The quotation is from a song in an opera called 'Camilla'.

'65'

The Maeander is a river in Asia Minor. Ovid ('Heroides', VII, 1-2) represents the swan as singing his death-song on its banks.

'68'

Chloe: a fanciful name. No real person is meant.

'71'

The figure of Jove weighing the issue of a battle in his scales is found in the 'Iliad', VIII, 69-73. Milton imitated it in 'Paradise Lost', IX, 996-1004. When the men's wits mounted it showed that they were lighter, less important, than the lady's hair, and so were destined to lose the battle.

'89-96'

This pedigree of Belinda's bodkin is a parody of Homer's account of Agamemnon's scepter ('Iliad', II, 100-108).

'105-106'

In Shakespeare's play Oth.e.l.lo fiercely demands to see a handkerchief which he has given his wife, and takes her inability to show it to him as a proof of her infidelity.

'113'

the lunar sphere: it was an old superst.i.tion that everything lost on earth went to the moon. An Italian poet, Ariosto, uses this notion in a poem with which Pope was familiar ('Orlando Furioso', Canto x.x.xIV), and from which he borrowed some of his ideas for the cave of Spleen.

'122'

Why does Pope include ”tomes of casuistry” in this collection?

'125'

There was a legend that Romulus never died, but had been caught up to the skies in a storm. Proculus, a Roman senator, said that Romulus had descended from heaven and spoken to him and then ascended again (Livy, I, 16).

'129' Berenice's Locks:

Berenice was an Egyptian queen who dedicated a lock of hair for her husband's safe return from war. It was said afterward to have become a constellation, and a Greek poet wrote some verses on the marvel.