the name of a foolish poet mentioned by Horace. Pope uses it here for his enemy Welsted, mentioned in l. 373.--'his Grace:' the title given a Duke in Great Britain. The Duke here referred to is said to be the Duke of Argyle, one of the most influential of the great Whig lords.
a notorious publisher of the day, and an enemy of Pope. The implication is that if Pope will not grant Pitholeon's request, the latter will accept Curll's invitation and concoct a new libel against the poet.
Pope was one of the few men of letters of his day who had not written a play, and he was at this time on bad terms with certain actors.
Bernard Lintot, the publisher of Pope's translation of Homer.
share the profits. Pope represents the unknown dramatist as trying to bribe him to give a favorable report of the play.
an old legend tells us that Midas was presented with a pair of ass's ears by an angry god whose music he had slighted. His barber, or, Chaucer says, his queen, discovered the change which Midas had tried to conceal, and unable to keep the secret whispered it to the reeds in the river, who straightway spread the news abroad.
With this line Arbuthnot is supposed to take up the conversation. This is indicated here and elsewhere by the letter A.
a name borrowed from Juvenal to denote a foolish poet. Pope uses it here for some conceited dramatist who thinks none the less of himself because his tragedy is rejected with shouts of laughter.
a stock name for a bad poet. See note on 'Essay on Criticism', l. 34.
Ambrose Philips, author among other things of a set of 'Pastorals' that appeared in the same volume with Pope, 1709. Pope and he soon became bitter enemies. He was patronized by a Bishop Boulter.
Here as elsewhere Pope uses the name of the Greek poetess for his enemy, Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
a wretched street in London, inhabited in Pope's day by hack writers, most of whom were his enemies.
(see note to l. 53) had printed a number of Pope's letters without the poet's consent some years before this poem was written.
Pope here describes the flatterers who were foolish enough to pay him personal compliments. They compare him to Horace who was short like Pope, though fat, and who seems to have suffered from colds; also to Alexander, one of whose shoulders was higher than the other, and to Ovid, whose other name, Naso, might indicate that long noses were a characteristic feature of his family. Pope really had large and beautiful eyes. Maro, l. 122, is Virgil.