TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS 471

Berkeley's Alciphron: Or, The Minute Philosopher, 1732. It is difficult to assess
Pope's debt to Alciphron, but at B iv 453-516 he goes over much the same
ground as Berkeley had covered. In "The First Dialogue", Sect, x, Crito
remarks that "the modern free-thinkers are the very same with those Cicero
called minute philosophers, which name admirably suits them, they being a
sort of sect which diminish all the most valuable things, the thoughts, views,
and hopes of men; all the knowledge, notions, and theories of the rnind they
reduce to sense; human nature they contract and degrade to the narrow low
standard of animal life, and assign us only a small pittance of time instead of
immortality."
B iv in. Dr. Ian Jack (Augustan Satire, 1952, p. 124^.) remarks, fairly enough,
that my comment on Warburton's note * 'contains only part of the truth: the
main reason for the note was the shift of intention between 1728 and 1743",
B iv 4. deep intent] Gf. Satan's "dark intent", Milton, P.L., ix 162. (A.L.W.)
B iv 6. To whom Time . . , wing] Cf. Milton's sonnet, "How soon hath Time
. . .", 1-2, 12, (A.L.W.)
B iv *8«. Cf. Exodus, xxxiii 23: "And I will take away mine hand, and thou
shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen." (F.E.H.)
B iv 75 f. by sun Attraction] Professor Maynard Mack remarks (Pope and his
Contemporaries, ed. James L, Clifford and Louis A. Landa, 1949, p. 29) on the
resemblance between "the dunces irresistibly drawn into the gravitational
field of Dulness" and "the feeling Sin has in Milton's poem, after the Fall, of
being pulled toward earth by 'sympathy, or some connatural force'." Cf.
P.L., x«62f.:
so strongly drawn
By this new-felt attraction and instinct.
B iv 104. sunk beneath a show'r] Cf. also Pope, Iliad, viii 371 ff.
B iv 162, padlock on the mind] Cf. Prior, "An English Padlock", Works, ed. cit.,
i 229:
Let all her Ways be unconfin'd:
And clap your PADLOCK—on her Mind. (N.W.B.)
B iv I74«. Cf. Dryden, "Dedication of the ^Eneis", Essays, ed. W, P. Ker, ii
154: "A Heroic Poem, truly such, is admittedly the greatest work which the
soul of man is capable to perform."
B iv 178. war with words alone] Probably an allusion to James I's proud boast of
being "Pacificus". (F.E.H.)
Cf. Dryden, MacFlecknoe, 84:
And Ponton waging harmless war with words,
and Prior, "A Satyr on the Modern Translators", n8 (Works, ed. cit., i 22):
He shou'd be kept from waging War with words. (N.W.B.)
B iv 204. Plowed was his front] Cf. Milton, P.L., ii 301 ff.:
rose and in his rising scern'd
A Pillar of State; deep on his Front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
and i 599 flT, (of Satan):