the existence of certain Rosicrucian societies, had rendered their names familiar to the society for which Pope wrote. He had but to weave them into the action of his poem, and the brilliant little sketch of society was transformed into a true mock-epic.

The manner in which this interweaving was accomplished is one of the most satisfactory evidences of Pope's artistic genius. He was proud of it himself. "The making the machinery, and what was published before, hit so well together, is," he told Spencer, "I think, one of the greatest proofs of judgment of anything I ever did." And he might well be proud. Macaulay, in a well-known passage, has pointed out how seldom in the history of literature such a recasting of a poem has been successfully accomplished. But Pope's revision of The Rape of the Lock was so successful that the original form was practically done away with. No one reads it now but professed students of the literature of Queen Anne's time. And so artfully has the new matter been woven into the old that, if the recasting of The Rape of the Lock were not a commonplace even in school histories of English literature, not one reader in a hundred would suspect that the original sketch had been revised and enlarged to more than twice its length. It would be an interesting task for the student to compare the two forms printed in this edition, to note exactly what has been added, and the reasons for its addition, and to mark how Pope has smoothed the junctures and blended the old and the new. Nothing that he could do would admit him more intimately to the secrets of Pope's mastery of his art.

A word must be said in closing as to the merits of The Rape of the Lock and its position in English literature. In the first place it is an inimitable picture of one phase, at least, of the life of the time, of the gay, witty, heartless society of Queen Anne's day. Slowly recovering from the licentious excesses of the Restoration, society at this time was perhaps unmoral rather than immoral. It was quite without ideals, unless indeed the conventions of "good form " may be dignified by that name. It lacked the brilliant enthusiasm of Elizabethan times as well as the religious earnestness of the Puritans and the devotion to patriotic and social ideals which marked a later age. Nothing, perhaps, is more characteristic of the age than its attitude toward women. It affected indeed a tone of high-flown adoration which thinly veiled a cynical contempt. It styled woman a goddess and really regarded her as little better than a doll. The passion of love had fallen from the high estate it once possessed and become the mere relaxation of the idle moments of a man of fashion.

In the comedies of Congreve, for example, a lover even if honestly in love thinks it as incumbent upon him to make light of his passion before his friends as to exaggerate it in all the forms of affected compliment before his mistress.

In The Rape of the Lock Pope has caught and fixed forever the atmosphere of this age. It is not the mere outward form and circumstance, the manners and customs, the patching, powdering, ogling, gambling, of the day that he has reproduced, though his account of these would alone suffice to secure the poem immortality as a contribution to the history of society. The essential spirit of the age breathes from every line. No great English poem is at once so brilliant and so empty, so artistic, and yet so devoid of the ideals on which all high art rests. It is incorrect, I think, to consider Pope in The Rape of the Lock as the satirist of his age. He was indeed clever enough to perceive its follies, and witty enough to make sport of them, but it is much to be doubted whether he was wise enough at this time to raise his eyes to anything better. In the social satires of Pope's great admirer, Byron, we are at no loss to perceive the ideal of personal liberty which the poet opposes to the conventions he tears to shreds. Is it possible to discover in The Rape of the Lock any substitute for Belinda's fancies and the Baron's freaks? The speech of Clarissa which Pope inserted as an afterthought to point the moral of the poem recommends Belinda to trust to merit rather than to charms. But “merit” is explicitly identified with good humor, a very amiable quality, but hardly of the highest rank among the moral virtues. And the avowed end and purpose of "merit" is merely to preserve what beauty gains, the flattering attentions of the other sex, surely the lowest ideal ever set before womankind. The truth is, I think, that The Rape of the Lock represents Pope's attitude toward the social life of his time in the period of his brilliant youth. He was at once dazzled, amused, and delighted by the gay world in which he found himself. The apples of pleasure had not yet turned to ashes on his lips, and it is the poet's sympathy with the world he paints which gives to the poem the air, most characteristic of the age itself, of easy, idle, unthinking gayety. We would not have it otherwise. There are sermons and satires in abundance in English literature, but there is only one Rape of the Lock.

The form of the poem is in perfect correspondence with its spirit. There is an immense advance over the Essay on Criticism in ease, polish, and balance of matter and manner. And it is not merely in matters of detail that the supremacy of the latter poem is apparent. The Rape of

the Lock is remarkable among all Pope's longer poems as the one complete and perfect whole. It is no mosaic of brilliant epigrams, but an organic creation. It is impossible to detach any one of its witty paragraphs and read it with the same pleasure it arouses when read in its proper connection. Thalestris' call to arms and Clarissa's moral reproof are integral parts of the poem. And as a result, perhaps, of its essential unity The Rape of the Lock bears witness to the presence of a power in Pope that we should hardly have suspected from his other works, the power of dramatic characterization. Elsewhere he has shown himself a master of brilliant portraiture, but Belinda, the Baron, and Thalestris are something more than portraits. They are living people, acting and speaking with admirable consistency.

instinct with life.

Even the little sketch of Sir Plume is

Finally The Rape of the Lock, in its limitations and defects, no less than in its excellencies, represents a whole period of English poetry, the period which reaches with but few exceptions from Dryden to Wordsworth. The creed which dominated poetic composition during this period is discussed in the introduction to the Essay on Criticism (see p. 103) and is admirably illustrated in that poem itself. Its repression of individuality, its insistence upon the necessity of following in the footsteps of the classic poets, and of checking the outbursts of imagination by the rules of common sense, simply incapacitated the poets of the period from producing works of the highest order. And its insistence upon man as he appeared in the conventional, urban society of the day as the one true theme of poetry, its belief that the end of poetry was to instruct and improve either by positive teaching or by negative satire, still further limited its field. One must remember in attempting an estimate of The Rape of the Lock that it was composed with an undoubting acceptance of this creed and within all these narrowing limitations. And when this is borne in mind, it is hardly too much to say that the poem attains the highest point possible. In its treatment of the supernatural it is as original as a poem could be at that day. The brilliancy of its picture of contemporary society could not be heightened by a single stroke. Its satire is swift and keen, but never ill natured. And the personality of Pope himself shines through every line. Johnson advised authors who wished to attain a perfect style to give their days and nights to a study of Addison. With equal justice one might advise students who wish to catch the spirit of our so-called Augustan age, and to realize at once the limitations and possibilities of its poetry, to devote themselves to the study of The Rape of the Lock.

DEDICATION

Mrs. Arabella: the title of Mrs. was still given in Pope's time to unmarried ladies as soon as they were old enough to enter society.

the Rosicrucian doctrine: the first mention of the Rosicrucians is in a book published in Germany in 1614, inviting all scholars to join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with superstitions handed down from ancient times. Pope probably knew nothing more of them than what he had read in Le Comte de Gabalis.

This was the work of a French abbé, de Montfaucon Villars (16351673), who was well known in his day both as a preacher and a man of letters. It is really a satire upon the fashionable mystical studies, but treats in a tone of pretended seriousness of secret sciences, of elemental spirits, and of their intercourse with men. It was translated into English in 1680 and again in 1714.

CANTO I

Lines 1-2 Pope opens his mock-epic with the usual epic formula, the statement of the subject. Compare the first lines of the Iliad, the Eneid, and Paradise Lost. In 1. 7 he goes on to call upon the " goddess," i.e. the muse, to relate the cause of the rape. This, too, is an epic formula. Compare Æneid, I, 8, and Paradise Lost, I, 27-33.

3 Caryl: see Introduction, p. 83. In accordance with his wish his name was not printed in the editions of the poem that came out in Pope's lifetime, appearing there only as C- or Cl.

4 Belinda: a name used by Pope to denote Miss Fermor, the heroine of The Rape of the Lock.

12 This line is almost a translation of a line in the Æneid (I, 11), where Virgil asks if it be possible that such fierce passions (as Juno's) should exist in the minds of gods.

13 Sol: a good instance of the fondness which Pope shared with most poets of his time for giving classical names to objects of nature. This

trick was supposed to adorn and elevate poetic diction. Try to find other instances of this in The Rape of the Lock.

Why is the sun's ray called "tim'rous"?

16 It was an old convention that lovers were so troubled by their passion that they could not sleep. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (11. 97–98), Chaucer says of the young squire —

So hote he lovede, that by nightertale

He sleep namore than dooth a nightingale.

Pope, of course, is laughing at the easy-going lovers of his day who in spite of their troubles sleep very comfortably till noon.

17 The lady on awaking rang a little hand-bell that stood on a table by her bed to call her maid. Then as the maid did not appear at once she tapped impatiently on the floor with the heel of her slipper. The watch in the next line was a repeater.

19 All the rest of this canto was added in the second edition of the poem. See pp. 84-86. Pope did not notice that he describes Belinda as waking in l. 14 and still asleep and dreaming in ll. 19-116.

20 guardian Sylph: compare 11. 67–78.

23 a Birth-night Beau: a fine gentleman in his best clothes, such as he would wear at a ball on the occasion of a royal birthday.

30 The nurse would have told Belinda the old tales of fairies who danced by moonlight on rings in the greensward, and dropped silver coins into the shoes of tidy little maids. The priest, on the other hand, would have repeated to her the legend of St. Cecilia and her guardian angel who once appeared in bodily form to her husband holding two rose garlands gathered in Paradise, or of St. Dorothea, who sent an angel messenger with a basket of heavenly fruits and flowers to convert the pagan Theophilus.

42 militia: used here in the general sense of "soldiery."

44 the box: in the theater.

the ring: the drive in Hyde Park, where the ladies of society took the air.

46 a chair: a sedan chair in which ladies used to be carried about. Why is Belinda told to scorn it?

50 What is the meaning of " vehicles " in this line?

56 Ombre: the fashionable game of cards in Pope's day. See his account of a game in Canto III and the notes on that passage.

57-67 See Introduction, p. 85.