[18] 'Duck-lane:' a place near Smithfield, where old books were sold. [19] 'Milbourns:' the Rev. Mr Luke Milbourn, an opponent of Dryden. [20] Hall has imitated and excelled this passage. See his pamphlet, 'Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom.' [21] In this passage he alludes to Cromwell, Charles II., and the Revolution of 1688, and to their various effects on manners, opinions, &c. [22] 'Appius:' Dennis. [23] 'Garth did not write:' a common slander at that time in prejudice of that author. [24] 'Maeonian star:' Homer. [25] 'Dionysius:' of Halicarnassus. [26] 'Mantua:' Virgil's birth-place. [27] 'Such was the Muse:' Essay on poetry by the Duke of Buckingham. [28] 'Caryll:' Mr Caryll (a gentleman who was secretary to Queen Mary, wife of James II., whose fortunes he followed into France, author of the comedy of 'Sir Solomon Single,' and of several translations in Dryden's Miscellanies) originally proposed the subject to Pope, with the view of putting an end, by this piece of ridicule, to a quarrel that had arisen between two noble families, those of Lord Petre and of Mrs Fermor, on the trifling occasion of his having cut off a lock of her hair. The author sent it to the lady, with whom he was acquainted; and she took it so well as to give about copies of it. That first sketch (we learn from one of his letters) was written in less than a fortnight, in 1711, in two cantos only, and it was so printed; first, in a miscellany of Ben. Lintot's, without the name of the author. But it was received so well that he enlarged it the next year by the addition of the machinery of the Sylphs, and extended it to five cantos. [29] 'Sylph:' the Rosicrucian philosophy was a strange offshoot from Alchemy, and made up in equal proportions of Pagan Platonism, Christian Quietism, and Jewish Mysticism. See Bulwer's 'Zanoni.' Pope has blended some of its elements with old legendary stories about guardian angels, fairies, &c. [30] 'Baron:' Lord Petre. [31] Burns had this evidently in his eye when he wrote the lines 'Some hint the lover's harmless wile,' &c., in his 'Vision.' [32] 'Atalantis:' a famous book written about that time by a woman: full of court and party-scandal, and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar. [33] 'Winds:' see Odyssey. [34] 'Thalestris:' Mrs Morley. [35] 'Sir Plume:' Sir George Brown. [36] 'Maeander:' see Ovid. [37] 'Partridge:' see Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies. [38] This poem was written at two different times: the first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals; the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published. [39] 'Stuart:' Queen Anne. [40] 'Savage laws:' the forest-laws. [41] 'The fields are ravish'd:' alluding to the destruction made in the New Forest, and the tyrannies exercised there by William I.