http://englishworld20111.wordpress.

com/

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK / 2513

To failings mild, but zealous for desert;

The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,
This praise at least a grateful M u s e may give:
735 The M u s e , whose early voice you taught to sing,
Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers 0 short excursions tries: humble verses
Content, if hence the unlearned their wants may view,
740 The learned reflect on what before they knew:
Careless of° censure, nor too fond of fame; unconcerned at
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;
Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

1709 1711

The Rape of the Lock The Rape of the Lock is based on an actual episode
that provoked a quarrel between two prominent Catholic families. Pope's friend John
Caryll, to whom the poem is addressed (line 3), suggested that Pope write it, in the
hope that a little laughter might serve to soothe ruffled tempers. Lord Petre had cut
off a lock of hair from the head of the lovely Arabella Fermor (often spelled "Farmer"
and doubtless so pronounced), much to the indignation of the lady and her relatives.
In its original version of two cantos and 334 lines, published in 1712, The Rape of
the Lock was a great success. In 1713 a new version was undertaken against the
advice of Addison, who considered the poem perfect as it was first written. Pope
greatly expanded the earlier version, adding the delightful "machinery" (i.e., the super-
natural agents in epic action) of the Sylphs, Belinda's toilet, the card game, and the
visit to the Cave of Spleen in canto 4. In 1717, with the addition of Clarissa's speech
on good humor, the poem assumed its final form.
With delicate fancy and playful wit, Pope elaborated the trivial episode that occa-
sioned the poem into the semblance of an epic in miniature, the most nearly perfect
heroicomical poem in English. The verse abounds in parodies and echoes of the Iliad,
the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost, thus constantly forcing the reader to compare small
things with great. The familiar devices of epic are observed, but the incidents or
characters are beautifully proportioned to the scale of mock epic. The Rape tells of
war, but it is the drawing-room war between the sexes; it has its heroes and heroines,
but they are beaux and belles; it has its supernatural characters ("machinery"), but
they are Sylphs (borrowed, as Pope tells us in his dedicatory letter, from Rosicrucian
lore)—creatures of the air, the souls of dead coquettes, with tasks appropriate to their
nature—or the Gnome Umbriel, once a prude on earth; it has its epic game, played
on the "velvet plain" of the card table, its feasting heroes, who sip coffee and gossip,
and its battle, fought with the cliches of compliment and conceits, with frowns and
angry glances, with snuff and bodkin; it has the traditional epic journey to the under-
world—here the Cave of Spleen, emblematic of the ill nature of female hypochon-
driacs. And Pope creates a world in which these actions take place, a world that is
dense with beautiful objects: brocades, ivory and tortoiseshell, cosmetics and dia-
monds, lacquered furniture, silver teapot, delicate chinaware. It is a world that is
constantly in motion and that sparkles and glitters with light, whether the light of the
sun or of Belinda's eyes or that light into which the "fluid" bodies of the Sylphs seem
to dissolve as they flutter in shrouds and around the mast of Belinda's ship. Pope
laughs at this world, its ritualized triviality, its irrational, upper-class women and
feminized men—and remembers that a grimmer, darker world surrounds it (3.19—

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/
 http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/

2514 / ALEXANDER POPE

24 and 5.145—48); but he also makes us aware of its beauty and charm.
The epigraph may be translated, "I was unwilling, Belinda, to ravish your locks; but
I rejoice to have conceded this to your prayers" (Martial's Epigrams 12.84.1—2). Pope
substituted his heroine for Martial's Polytimus. The epigraph is intended to suggest
that the poem was published at Miss Fermor's request.

The Rape of the Lock

An Heroi-Comical Poem
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
sed juvat hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
— M A R T I A L

TO MRS. ARABELLA FERMOR

MADAM,

It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate
it to you. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few
young ladies, who have good sense and good humor enough to laugh not only
at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it was commu-
nicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way into the world. An
imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had the good nature
for my sake to consent to the publication of one more correct; this I was forced
to, before I had executed half my design, for the machinery was entirely want-
ing to complete it.
The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics, to signify that
part which the deities, angels, or demons are made to act in a poem; for the
ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies: let an action be
never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance.
These machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the
Rosicrucian 1 doctrine of spirits.
I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady; but
'tis so much the concern of a poet to have his works understood, and partic-
ularly by your sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult
terms.
The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best
account I know of them is in a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis, 2
which both in its title and size is so like a novel, that many of the fair sex have
read it for one by mistake. According to these gentlemen, the four elements
are inhabited by spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Sala-
manders. The Gnomes or Demons of earth delight in mischief; but the Sylphs,
whose habitation is in the air, are the best-conditioned creatures imaginable.
For they say, any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these
gentle spirits, upon a condition very easy to all true adepts, an inviolate pres-
ervation of chastity.
As to the following cantos, all the passages of them are as fabulous as the
vision at the beginning, or the transformation at the end (except the loss of
your hair, which I always mention with reverence). The human persons are as

I. A system of arcane philosophy introduced into 2. By the Abbe de Montfaucon de Villars, pub-
England from Germany in the 17th century. lished in 1670.

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/
 http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/

T H E RAPE OF THE L O C K , CANTO 1 / 2515

fictitious as the airy ones; and the character of Belinda, as it is now managed,
resembles you in nothing but in beauty.
If this poem had as many graces as there are in your person, or in your mind,
yet I could never hope it should pass through the world half so uncensured as
you have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to
have given me this occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem,
MADAM,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
A. POPE

Canto 1
What dire offense from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing—This verse to Carvll, Muse! is due:
This, even Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
5 Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle?
Oh, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
10 Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?
Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray,
And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day.
15 Now lapdogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake:
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground,
And the pressed watch 3 returned a silver sound.
Belinda still her downy pillow pressed,
20 Her guardian Sylph prolonged the balmy rest.
T w a s he had summoned to her silent bed
The morning dream that hovered o'er her head.
A youth more glittering than a birthnight beau 4
(That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow)
25 S e e m e d to her ear his winning lips to lay,
And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say:
"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care
Of thousand bright inhabitants of air!
If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought,
30 Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught,
Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen,
The silver token, and the circled green, 5
Or virgins visited by angel powers,
With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers,
35 Hear and believe! thy own importance know,

3. A watch that chimes the hour and the quarter in England even in winter, were held to be caused
hour when the stem is pressed down. 'Knocked the by the round dances of fairies. According to pop-
ground": summons to a maid. ular belief, fairies skim off the cream from jugs of
4. Courtiers wore especially fine clothes on the milk left standing overnight and leave a coin ("sil-
sovereign's birthday. ver token") in payment.
5. Rings of bright green grass, which are common

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/
 http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/

2516 / ALEXANDER POPE

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.

S o m e secret truths, from learned pride concealed,
To maids alone and children are revealed:
What though no credit doubting wits may give?
40 The fair and innocent shall still believe.
Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,
The light militia of the lower sky:
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
H a n g o'er the box, and hover round the Ring. 6
45 Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
And view with scorn two pages and a chair." sedan chair
As now your own, our beings were of old,
And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mold;
Thence, by a soft transition, we repair
so From earthly vehicles to these of air.
Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled,
That all her vanities at once are dead:
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.
55 Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,
And love of ombre, 7 after death survive.
For when the Fair in all their pride expire,
To their first elements 8 their souls retire:
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame
60 Mount up, and take a Salamander's 9 name.
Soft yielding minds to water glide away,
And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental tea. 1
The graver prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of mischief still on earth to roam.
65 The light coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the fields of air.
"Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste
Rejects mankind, is by some Sylph embraced:
For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
70 Assume what sexes and what shapes they please. 2
What guards the purity of melting maids,
In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,
S a f e from the treacherous friend, the daring spark,
The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,
75 When kind occasion prompts their warm desires,
When music softens, and when dancing fires?
T i s but their Sylph, the wise Celestials 0 know, heavenly beings
Though Honor is the word with men below.
" S o m e nymphs 3 there are, too conscious of their face,

6. The "box" in the theater and the fashionable in fire. Each element was inhabited by a spirit, as
circular drive ("Ring") in Hyde Park. the following lines explain. "Termagants": shrewish
7. T h e popular card game (see n. 1, p. 2 5 2 1 ) . or overbearing women.
8. T h e four elements out of which all things were 1. Pronounced toy.
believed to have been made were fire, water, earth, 2. C f . Paradise Lost 1.427—31; this is one of many
and air. One or another of these elements was sup- allusions to that poem in the Rape.
posed to be predominant in both the physical and 3. Here and after, a fanciful n a m e for a young
the psychological makeup of each h u m a n being. woman, to be distinguished from the " N y m p h s "
In this context they are spoken of as " h u m o r s . " (water spirits) in line 62.
9. A lizardlike animal, in antiquity believed to live

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/
http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/

T H E RAPE OF THE L O C K , CANTO 1 / 2517

so For life predestined to the G n o m e s ' embrace.

These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,
When offers are disdained, and love denied:
Then gay ideas 0 crowd the vacant brain, showy images
While peers, and dukes, and all their sweeping train,
85 And garters, stars, and coronets 4 appear,
And in soft sounds, 'your Grace' 0 salutes their ear. a duchess
T i s these that early taint the female soul,
Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll,
Teach infant cheeks a bidden blush to know,
90 And little hearts to flutter at a beau.
"Oft, when the world imagine women stray,
The Sylphs through mystic mazes guide their way,
Through all the giddy circle they pursue,
And old impertinence 0 expel by new. trifle
95 What tender maid but must a victim fall
To one man's treat, but for another's ball?
When Florio speaks, what virgin could withstand,
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?
With varying vanities, from every part,
ioo They shift the moving toyshop 5 of their heart;
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.
This erring mortals levity may call;
Oh, blind to truth! the Sylphs contrive it all.
105 "Of these am I, who thy protection claim,
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.
Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,
In the clear mirror of thy ruling star
I saw, alas! some dread event impend,
110 Ere to the main this morning sun descend,
But Heaven reveals not what, or how, or where:
Warned by the Sylph, O pious maid, beware!
This to disclose is all thy guardian can:
Beware of all, but most beware of M a n ! "
us He said; when Shock, 6 who thought she slept too long,
Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue.
'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true,
Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux;
Wounds, charms, and ardors were no sooner read,
120 But all the vision vanished from thy head.
And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
125 A heavenly image in the glass appears;
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears.
The inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here

E m b l e m s of nobility. 6. A long-haired poodle, Belinda's lapdog.

A shop stocked with baubles and trifles.

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/
 http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/

2518 / ALEXANDER POPE

130 The various offerings of the world appear;

From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
135 The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, 7 billet-doux.
Now awful 0 Beauty puts on all its arms; awe-inspiring
140 The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
145 The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
And Betty's 8 praised for labors not her own.

Canto 2
Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
5 Fair nymphs and well-dressed youths around her shone,
But every eye was fixed on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
10 Q u i c k as her eyes, and as unfixed as those:
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
15 Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
20 Nourished two locks which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets her smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
25 With hairy springes 9 we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,

7. It has been suggested that Pope intended here 8. Belinda's maid, the "inferior priestess" men-
not "Bibles," but "bibelots" (trinkets), but this tioned in line 127.
interpretation has not gained wide acceptance. 9. S n a r e s (pronounced sprin-jez).

http://englishworld20111.wordpress.com/