3. =wit.= This is a favorite word with Pope, and is used by him to indicate a variety of ideas,--such as thought, knowledge, imagination, expression, the exercise of humor, etc. In this poem there are no fewer than twelve couplets rhyming to it. 4. "It requires very little reading of the French text-books to find the maxims which Pope has strung together in this poem, but he has dressed them so neatly, and turned them out with such sparkle and point, that these truisms have acquired a weight not their own, and they circulate as proverbs among us in virtue of their pithy form rather than their truth. They exemplify his own line, 'What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' Pope told Spence that he had gone through all the best critics, specifying Quintilian, Rapin, and Le Bossu. But whatever trouble he took in collecting what to say, his main effort is expended upon how to say it."--_Pattison._ 5. =as women men.= "As women value men," or "as women by men are valued"--which? 6. =humbly take upon content.= Are satisfied to take in faith. 7. =sort.= Agree. 8. =Fungoso.= A character in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Every Man in his Humour." 9. =sparks.= Fops; vain, showy men. 10. =Parnassus.= A mountain in Hellas, the chief seat of Apollo and the Muses. Hence, figuratively, a resort of the poets. 11. =mend.= Improve, make better, amend. "Mend your speech a little Lest it may mar your fortunes." --_Shakespeare_, _King Lear_, Act i, sc. i. 12. "The gaping of the vowels in this line, the expletive _do_ in the next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a beauty to this passage as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet."--_Addison._ 13. Pope himself is not disinclined to make use of these rhymes. See "Essay on Man," 271. "Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees." 14. Referring to the Spenserian stanza which is composed of nine lines, eight of which are iambic pentameters, and the ninth a hexameter or Alexandrine. The name Alexandrine is said to have been derived from an old French poem on Alexander the Great, written about the twelfth or thirteenth century, and composed entirely of hexameter verses. See note on the versification of the "Faerie Queene," page 234. 15. Observe the skill with which, both in this line and in several which precede and follow, the poet has made "the sound to seem an echo to the sense." 16. Waller had been regarded as the greatest poet of the seventeenth century (see page 205), and Denham, in the time of Pope, was more esteemed than Milton or Spenser. Dryden called Denham "That limping old bard Whose fame on 'The Sophy' and 'Cooper's Hill' stands." 17. =numbers.= Poetical metre. "As yet a child nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." --_Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot._