Date: 1715-1720

"[W]hat a Crowd of terrible Ideas in this one Simile!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"Tis the natural Discharge of a vast Imagination, heated in its Progress, and giving itself vent in this Crowd of Images"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"He weighs everything in the balance of Reason; he sets before himself the Baseness of Flight, and the Courage of his Enemy, till at last the thirst of Glory preponderates all other Considerations."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"His Country's Cares lay rowling in his Breast. / As when by Light'nings Jove 's Ætherial Pow'r / Foretells the ratling Hail, or weighty Show'r, / Or sends soft Snows to whiten all the Shore, / Or bids the brazen Throat of War to roar; / By fits one Flash succeeds, as one expire...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"This strong and ruling Faculty was like a powerful Planet, which in the Violence of its Course, drew all things within its Vortex."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"It seem'd not enough to have taken in the whole Circle of Arts, and the whole Compass of Nature; all the inward Passions and Affections of Mankind to supply this Characters, and all the outward Forms and Images of Things for his Descriptions; but wanting yet an ampler Sphere to expatiate in, he ...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"'Tis however remarkable that his Fancy, which is every where vigorous, is not discover'd immediately at the beginning of his Poem in its fullest Splendor: It grows in the Progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on Fire like a Chariot-Wheel, by its own Rapidity."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"And yet no dire Presage so wounds my Mind, / My Mother's Death, the Ruin of my Kind, / Not Priam 's hoary Hairs defil'd with Gore, / Not all my Brothers gasping on the Shore; / As thine, Andromache!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: August 18, 1716; 1735

"If Momus’s project had taken, of having windows in our breasts, I should be for carrying it further, and making those windows casements: that while a man showed his heart to all the world, he might do something more for his friends, e’en take it out, and trust to their handling."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1716

"Their Conscience is a Worm within, / That gnaws them Night and Day."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)