[Line 376: The son of Libyan Jove.--A title arrogated to himself by Alexander.] [Line 393: Dullness here 'seems to be incorrectly used. Ignorance is apt to magnify, but dullness reposes in stolid indifference.'] [Line 441: Sentences--Passages from the Fathers of the Church who were regarded as decisive authorities on all disputed points of doctrine.] [Line 444: Scotists--The disciples of Duns Scotus, one of the most famous and influential of the scholastics of the fourteenth century, who was opposed to Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), another famous scholastic, regarding the doctrines of grace and the freedom of the will, but especially the immaculate conception of the Virgin. The followers of the latter were called Thomists, between whom and the Scotists bitter controversies were carried on.] [Line 445: Duck Lane.--A place near Smithfield where old books were sold. The cobwebs were kindred to the works of these controversialists, because their arguments were intricate and obscure. Scotus is said to have demolished two hundred objections to the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and established it by a cloud of proofs.] [Line 459: Parsons.--This is an allusion to Jeremy Collier, the author of _A Short View etc, of the English Stage_. Critics, beaux.--This to the Duke of Buckingham, the author of _The Rehearsal_.] [Line 463: Blackmore, Sir Richard (1652-1729), one of the court physicians and the writer of a great deal of worthless poetry. He attacked the dramatists of the time generally and Dryden individually, and is the Quack Maurus of Dryden's prologue to _The Secular Masque_. Millbourn, Rev. Luke, who criticised Dryden; which criticism, although sneered at by Pope, is allowed to have been judicious and decisive.] [Line 465: Zoilus. See note on line 183.] [Line 479: Patriarch wits--Perhaps an allusion to the great age to which the antediluvian patriarchs of the Bible lived.] [Line 536: An easy monarch.--Charles II.] [Line 541: At that time ladies went to the theater in masks.] [Line 544: A foreign reign.--The reign of the foreigner, William III.] [Line 545: Socinus.--The reaction from the fanaticism of the Puritans, who held extreme notions of free grace and satisfaction, by resolving all Christianity into morality, led the way to the introduction of Socinianism, the most prominent feature of which is the denial of the existence of the Trinity.]