ALCHEMIES OF SATIRE: A HISTORY OF THE SYLPHS IN THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

by bonnie latimer
Alexander Popes dedicatory letter to Arabella Fermor on the publication of the ve- canto version of The Rape of the Lock (1714) introduces the poems new cast of sylphs and cites as their origin a French alchemical satire, the abbe de Villarss Le Comte de Gabalis (1670). Gabalis, in its various editions and continuations, is not often read nowadays; yet it is an engaging and allusive text. As one of Popes main sources for the sylphs, it deserves re-reading, and this article oers a critical discussion of the relationship between Gabalis and The Rape. In so doing, it (i) suggests that, contrary to Popes own assertion, Gabalis is not Rosicrucian, but rather based on the writings of Paracelsus; (ii) identies how Gabalis adapted Paracelsian elemental theory for its own satiric ends; (iii) considers how the satiric- sexual themes of Gabalis might inform modern critical judgements of The Rape; (iv) comments on the role of the sylphs and representations of womens souls and deaths in the poem. Generally, the article situates Gabalis in relation to Popes work and argues forThe Rape as a highly sexualised piece, linking it to Popes youthful would-be rakish persona and to Scriblerian satires.

A race of aerial people never heard of before is presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the reader seeks for no further information . . . ^ (Dr Johnson)1

Recent critical work on The Rape of the Lock (1714) reassesses key interpretive junctures in the poem: the importance of epic to Popes satire, the role of Thalestris, and the extent to which Pope sympathises with Belinda.2 In the last 20 years especially, gender-informed analyses have made valuable contributions to debates surrounding the text.3
I should like gratefully to acknowledge the kind assistance of Professors David Fairer and Vivien Jones and Dr James Ward in preparing this article. 1 S. Johnson, Life of Pope in Lives of the English Poets, G. B. Hill (ed.), 3 vols (Oxford, 1905), 3: 82^276; 233. 2 See C. D. Williams, Breaking decorums in D. Fairer (ed.), Pope: New Contexts (Hemel Hempstead, 1990), 59^79; P. Stael, Recovering Thalestris in D. C. Mell (ed.), Pope, Swift, and Women Writers (London, 1996), 86^104; N. M. Goldsmith, Alexander Pope (Burlington, VT, 2002), 78. For the implication that Rape comprises a series of cruces at which interpretations divide, see V. Rumbold, Womens Place in Popes World (Cambridge, 1989), 71. 3 See E. Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth (Chicago, 1985); L. Damrosch, Jr., The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope (Berkeley, 1987); P. Bruckmann,Virgins Visited by Angel Powers . . . in G. S. Rousseau and P. Rogers (edd.), The Enduring Legacy (Cambridge, 1988), 3-20; C. D. Williams (see above).
The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 57, No. 232 The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press 2006; all rights reserved doi:10.1093/res/hgl122

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With notable exceptions, however, recent readings of The Rape downplay the (presumably) humorous intentions of the satire. The Rape has been described as a jeu desprit,4 and whatever one decides about its ideological implications, it is important to keep in mind the lightness of touch that Pope displays here. As I will attempt to show, such delicacy is crucial to the satire of The Rape, which works through innuendo and re-writing of the history of ideasmodes which depend upon a shared and exclusivist community of knowledge. This analysis will consider accepted critical perspectives through the history of satirical tropes behind the poema history with which Pope would have been at least partially familiar.5 This will help to elucidate some of the implications of Popes innuendo and clarify some allusions. I will begin by delving back into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tracing one critically neglected history of ideas behind The Rape: the conceptual history of the sylphs. Several modern critics have identied literary forebears for the sylphs: Ovidian, Chaucerian, Shakespearean and Miltonian, amongst others.6 Consideration of such analogues is useful and augments an understanding of the poems aesthetic and satiric eects. However, the most immediate indication of the sylphs origins is often overlooked. This clue comes in the dedicatory letter Pope wrote to Arabella Fermor on the publication of the ve- canto version of The Rape in 1714. Introducing the new Machinery of the expanded poem, he explains that he determind to raise [these Machines] on a very new and odd Foundation, the Rosicrucian Doctrine of Spirits. He refers Arabella to a French Book calld Le Comte de Gabalis that contains the best Account [he] know[s] of them.7 There has, of course, been a handful of critics who have written on Gabalis notably, in recent years, Donna Scarboro, Patricia Bruckmann, James McLaverty, and Netta Murray Goldsmith.8 Of these, Scarboros study is the most informed, lling in some of the religious and ideological conicts surrounding Gabalis and The Rape.9 However, even her article, detailed as it is, does not trace the sylphs beyond Gabalis and she does not draw attention to some of the sexual-politics implications of the satire. A reading of the tradition behind Gabalis may yield new

4 H. D. Weinbrot, Eighteenth-Century Satire (Cambridge, 1988), 100. 5 For aliations between Popes work and alchemy, see D. Brooks-Davies, Popes Dunciad and the Queen of the Night (Manchester, 1985). 6 See C. Knellwolf citing H. Bloom in A Contradiction Still, 149; Rumbold, Womens Place in Popes World, 85; R. K. Root, The Poetical Career of Alexander Pope (Princeton, 1938), 79^80; D. Fairer, Popes Imagination (Manchester, 1984), 56; P. Rogers,Faery lore and The Rape of the Lock, RES 25 (1974), 25^38. William Warburton believed that the sylphs were based on nursery tales (Bruckmann,Virgins Visited by Angel Powers, 5). 7 A. Pope, To Mrs. Arabella Fermor in The Rape of the Lock, G. Tillotson (ed.) (London, 1962), 142^3; 142. Hereafter cited as Rape in the main text. 8 D. Scarboro, Thy Own Importance Know: The Inuence of Le Comte de Gabalis on The Rape of the Lock, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 14 (1985), 231^41; for Bruckmann and Goldsmith, see above; J. McLaverty, Pope, Print, and Meaning (Oxford, 2001), 37^40. 9 See Scarboro, Thy Own Importance Know , 238^40.

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insights into both texts. For instance, to the best of my knowledge, no critic has challenged Popes assertion that his source-text uses Rosicrucian ideas. This article will begin by sketching out what real Rosicrucianism was, moving on to assert that Gabalis was more informed by Paracelsianism than Rosicrucianism. In so doing, it will document the written history of the sylphs as they change from serious philosophical concepts to satiric tools. It will conclude by exploring how this revised view of Gabalis might impact on a scholarly understanding of The Rape.

The Number of the Elect: Unravelling terminology and history behind Gabalis
Having said that I wish to problematise the idea that Pope used Rosicrucian ideas, it is rst necessary briey to dene Rosicrucian. As far as is known, Rosicrucianism in the strict sense was launched by the publication of two manifestos, probably written by the German scholar Johann Valentin Andre (1586^1654): the Fama (1614) and the Confessio Fraternitatis (1615).10 In these tracts, inscribed to the learned in Europe, Andre gave an account of the (most probably ctional) Christian Rosenkreutz, who had allegedly founded the Rosicrucian sect some time in the fteenth century.11 Andres manifestos called for the spread of learning based on the pursuit of knowledge through the study of nature, the cabbala, and the work of alchemists such as the sixteenth- century doctor, Paracelsus (of whom more shortly).12 In fact, Paracelsuss oeuvre was particularly signicant for Andre: amongst the treasures in Christian Rosenkreutzs tomb, he claimed, were the works of Paracelsus.13 In this manner, Andre co - opted Paracelsus into the Rosicrucian canon. Andres treatises provoked a furore amongst the wits, scientists and theologians of Europe that lasted some years. When the dust had settled, later observers often had diculty distinguishing (or did not bother to distinguish) between Paracelsianism, alchemy in general, and Andres writings. They tended simply to group all such occult ideas under the generic term Rosicrucian.14
10 F. A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), 30. There was a further publication in 1616, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. 11 Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 43; J. V. Andre, Fama Fraternitatis (1614), trans. T. Vaughan (1652) in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 238^51; 250. 12 See gure 23, Following the Foot-prints of Nature, between pages 96 and 97 of Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment. 13 Andre, Fama, 247. Although he claims Paracelsus as an inspiration, he does say that Paracelsus is denitely not a Rosicrucian (241). 14 I am indebted to a conversation with Ryan Friesen of the University of Leeds for this insight. For suggestions as to how Rosicrucians were satirically conated with other occult philosophers, see J. Mebane, Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age (London, 1989), 138, 162^3.

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So in one sense, Pope is not inaccurate when he says that Gabalis discusses Rosicrucianism; but this designation is perhaps misleading to modern scholars. I will therefore use Rosicrucian slightly articially to refer solely to Andres manifestos; I hope this will help to maintain a sense of the dierences between Paracelsus, Andre, Gabalis, and Pope during this discussion. But these comments assume familiarity with Paracelsus and with the contents of Popes immediate satiric source, Gabalis. This should not be taken for granted. Very little secondary work has been done on Gabalis in English, and its history is often confused in critical accounts that refer to it. It may be as well, then, to begin with an introduction to this text, sketching out its relation to Paracelsuss work and then moving on to discuss why this matters in reading The Rape. Le comte de Gabalis, ou entretiens sur les sciences secre' tes . . . was rst published in 1670 by Nicholas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon, the abbe de Villars (1635^1673). T English translations appeared ten years later, in 1680: one by Philip Ayres and wo one by Archibald Lovell.15 Ayres was a translator of amorous poetry, art-treatises, and political and travel writing. Lovell had a much stronger scientic background, having Englished a number of serious scientic reference works, as well as early science ction and comparative anthropology texts.16 In 1700, another French edition was published, augmente dans cette dernie' re edition dune seconde partie.17 As it is not known which edition of Gabalis Pope used, I have assumed that he had access to this 1700 edition, which is comprised of the original 1670 text and a second set of entretiens. Given that he cites the title in French in his dedicatory letter, I think it possible that he read it in the original, and this would have been the most recent version available when The Rape was expanded.18 There was a further English translation of

15 See the abbe de Villars (Nicholas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon), The Count of Gabalis (1670), trans. P. A. Gent. [Philip Ayres, Gentleman] (London, 1680); Villars, The Count of Gabalis (1670), trans. A. Lovell (London, 1680). 16 See, for example, Emblemata amatoria (1683), Lyric Poems (1687), and The Revengeful Mistress (1696), all translated or composed by Ayres; the English translation of Isaac Vossiuss A Treatise Concerning the Motion of the Sea and Winds (1677), Franc ois Antoine Pomeys Indiculus universalis (1679), The Critical History of the Religions and Customs of the Eastern Nations (1685), and Savinien Cyrano de Bergeracs The Comical History of the States and Empires of the World[s] of the Moon and Sun (1687), all translated or edited by Lovell. 17 Villars, Le comte de Gabalis, ou entretiens sur les sciences secretes . . . (Amsterdam, 1700). Hereafter cited in the main text as Villars for references to the second part only. For convenience, the rst part will be cited in Bayles English translation; see below. 18 Pope, To Mrs. Arabella Fermor, 142. In a note on this page, Tillotson seems to imply that Pope used Ayress translation, but this seems purely conjectural. Maynard Mack does not include any version of Gabalis in A nding list of books surviving from Popes library . . . in Mack (ed.), Collected in Himself (Newark, NJ, 1982), 394^460.

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Gabalis (only the original 1670 text) in 1714, possibly by Pierre Bayle, after the publication of the ve- canto version of The Rape.19 After the 1700 edition which Pope probably used, there were two later sequels to Gabalisand here the waters become somewhat muddied. One (La suite du Comte de Gabalis) was published in 1715 and it is generally accepted that it is the work of Villars (in common with the original Gabalis of 1670 and the 1700 edition). The title page describes it as an ouvrage posthume. This 1715 text includes the original 1670 version, but excludes the second part of the 1700 edition. Instead, it has a dierent continuation, this time with seven additional entretiens; these are primarily concerned with an apparently pro -Catholic discussion of Christian faith and morality in which Luther, Calvin and Descartes are heavily criticised. It scarcely refers to sylphs or indeed to the Count of Gabalis.20 In addition to this 1715 publication, there was a 1718 continuation entitled Les genies assistans, et gnomes irre conciliables; ou Suite au Comte de Gabalis. This 1718 text mostly seems to take issue with the Catholicism of Villarss La suite and also has little relation to the original Gabalis, which is what Pope seems to have used. Authorship of this 1718 text is disputed, but it may have been by Antoine Androl.21 Whatever the truth behind these intricacies, however, this discussion will use Villarss 1700 text for the reasons cited above; it will be referred to as Gabalis and quoted in Bayles English translation wherever possible for the sake of convenience. Gabalis, then, is comprised of a series of entretiens, or quasi-Socratic discourses, between the Count of Gabalis and his two pupils: the anonymous male narrator in the rst part, who is joined by the Vicomtesse de Martesie in the second. The Count is a German sage who has travelled to France in part to meet the narrator and encourage him to aspire to the ranks of the Rosicrucian philoso phers (Bayle, 5^8). The idea of a Rosicrucian visiting France, and specically Paris, may have been inspired by actual events: in 1623, mysterious men describing themselves as Rosicrucians descended on Paris, putting up posters and oering

19 See Villars, The Count de Gabalis, trans. P. Bayle (London, 1714). Hereafter cited as Bayle in the main text for references to the rst part. Cynthia Wall has suggested that this translation is actually by John Ozell and that only the preface is Bayles, but no British library catalogue seems to substantiate this attribution (see C. Wall (ed.), The Rape of the Lock (Boston, 1998), 258). It may be correct, as Bayle had died in 1706 and so the 1714 version would necessarily be posthumous if it were his, but as it does not seem to be widely accepted I have assumed Bayles authorship for the purposes of this discussion. 20 See Villars, La Suite du Comte de Gabalis, ou Nouveaux Entretiens . . . (Amsterdam, 1715). 21 See [A. Androl], Les Genies [sic] assistans [sic], et Gnomes Irreconciliables; ou Suite au Comte de Gabalis (Haye, 1718). Anette Hagan of the National Library of Scotland believes that the Androl attribution is generally accepted, and most British library catalogues seem to concur. However, Didier Kahn of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientique in Paris, who is currently working on a modern edition of Gabalis, is not familiar with Androl and questions the attribution (although he conrms that the 1718 version is not by Villars). Confusingly, there is also a 1742 reprint in which Villarss 1670 original and Androls continuation are bound together and both labelled as Villarss, suggesting contemporary confusion over authorship of these texts. I am grateful to both Dr Hagan and Prof. Kahn for correspondence on this matter.

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to teach their secrets to would-be sages.22 The Counts name alone would have been evocative for the late- seventeenth- century cognoscenti: Andres Confessio Fraternitatis had originally been published with a text called the Consideratio Brevis, authored by one Philip a' Gabella (about whom little is known; it may well have been a pseudonym).23 Without going into further detail, Villarss Gabalis immediately commanded a range of satiric associations for the late- seventeenth- century reader. As it opens, the narrator has just received word of the death of his erstwhile mentor, the Count of Gabalis, who has apparently had his neck writhed by an avenging angel in retribution for blab[bing] the secrets of the philosophical sages. Heedless of danger, the narrator is now preparing to publish said secrets, remarking cheerfully that discretion is not a characteristic associated with his astrological sign (Bayle, 1^3). This narrator is a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic, who is nevertheless curious about philosophical matters. Realising that researching alchemy and the cabbala will involve some heavy reading, he decides instead to cultivate the company of professed sages to see what he can learn. He rapidly becomes the Condant of the most considerable among em, including handsome Ladies, and ugly ones too. Some, he remarks tolerantly,had a ing at Angels, others at the Devil. All of them, however,had a good Opinion enough of themselves, to believe they were of the Number of the Elect (Bayle, 4^5). Hearing through this network that the famed Count of Gabalis may visit France, the narrator sends his nativity to the Count for inspection and is rewarded with an unannounced visit, during which the entretiens of the title are held. These are mostly concerned with the Count explaining Old Testament stories according to a pseudo -Paracelsian satiric rubric. It is worth pausing briey to emphasise the satiric nature of Gabalis. Several modern critics have seemed uncertain about whether or not Villarss text is ironic: William Kinsley, for instance, remarks that the irony is delicate enough to leave open the possibility that the book might be a serious treatise and speculates on whether or not Pope missed the satire.24 How do we know that Gabalis is tongue-in- cheek? After all, even serious alchemical writers of the time make

22 A. G. Debus, The French Paracelsians (Cambridge, 1991), 66^7. 23 Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 46. See also the well-known alchemist Oswald Crolls description of man as Gabalis socius Angelorum, a curdled companion of the Angells in Croll, Discovering the Great and Deep Mysteries of Nature . . ., in H. Pinnell (trans., ed.) Philosophy Reformed and Improved in Four Profound Tractates . . . (London, 1657), 1^226; 63. Hereafter cited as Croll. Compare this with Pinnells denition of gabalum as a thing . . . curdld (Philosophy Reformed, 66). Gabalis might also be a quasi-homophone for cabbala; in his notes, Pinnell mentions the Gabalisticall Art (Philosophy Reformed, 71n), although this may simply be a misprint. 24 W. Kinsley, The Rape of the Lock (Hamden, 1979), 186. A more recent critic, Netta Murray Goldsmith, writing in 2002, also seems not to note Gabaliss satiric nature, referring to it as a Rosicrucian document which is a polemic against marriage (Goldsmith, Alexander Pope, 76).

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rather startling pronouncements. Oswald Croll, for example, writes that the Phylosophycall Basilisk like Lightning suddenly and unawares burneth up any imperfect metall whatsoever, whilst Paracelsus documents the case of the possessed nymph Melusine, who was condemned to change into a serpent every Saturday. Mind you, he reects, she remained the same serpent to the end of her life, and God knows how long it lasted.25 Arcane characters such as Crolls Phylosophycall Basilisk (or, elsewhere, the philosophic chicken)26 may be seen, however, as metaphoric representations of the power of the new scientic thought advocated by Paracelsus and other leading alchemists. Gabalis, by contrast, is much more obviously satirical: the Count recommends that the narrator read fairy-tales to prepare himself for initiation into philosophy (Bayle, 87). The narrator himself, meanwhile, at rst believes that the zealously Christian Count is possessed. He decides to run the risk of conversing with the Count anyway, but grumbles, I was aware that I had some Sermons to rub through, and that the Dmon which actuated him, was a mighty Moralizing, Preaching Dmon (Bayle, 9). This sort of bathetic pragmatism as satiric eect is one which is familiar from Pope. Amusing though Gabalis may be, however, I am not primarily interested in its satiric processes as suchonly in how it transformed the sylphs, ready for Popes rendering of them in The Rape. But rst it is useful to see where Villars got the sylphs in the rst place; this leads us to Paracelsian elemental theory. Paracelsus (1493?^1541) was a Helvetic-German doctor, actually called Philip Aureole Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim. Generally, his writings advocate a move away from the syllogistic, university-centred learning of the schoolmen of his time, and towards direct observation of nature as the true means of scientic discovery. He also attacked the traditional Galenist school of medical thought and questioned the Aristotelian four-element system. Paracelsus did not ultimately discard the four elements, but he did come up with his own tria prima of elementssulphur, salt and mercurywhich he believed formed the basis of all physical matter. He rst described zinc and is often regarded as the father of modern toxicology and pharmaceutical medicine.27 As well as being a medical maverick, Paracelsus was something of a theological radical. There had long been a belief in dmons, or elemental spirits, probably derived from Grco -Roman mythology. Theologians traditionally regarded such spirits as diabolical (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 218). Paracelsus, however, reclaimed them as part of an animist-Christian system. He believed that each separate
25 Croll, 196n; P. A. T. B. von Hohenheim (Paracelsus), A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders . . ., trans. H. E. Sigerist in Sigerist (ed.), Four Treatises of . . . Paracelsus (Baltimore, 1941), 245^6. Hereafter cited in the main text as Paracelsus, Nymphs. 26 A. E. Waite, A Short Lexicon of Alchemy in Waite (trans., ed.) Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of . . . Paracelsus the Great, 2 vols (London, 1894), 2: 348^86; 377. 27 G. Dunea, Au zinc, British Medical Journal 322 (2001), 117; Debus, French Paracelsians, 10^12.

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element (which he termed a chaos) is inhabited by elemental creaturesnymphs or undines in the water, sylphs in the air, salamanders or vulcans in re, and pygmies or gnom in the earth (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 231).28 These elemental peopleParacelsus disapproved of the term spiritsare an odd mixture of man and beast. They look and behave like humans, but they do not have immortal souls or the judgement to serve God (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 230). Both of these factors will be signicant later in the analysis. Paracelsus also wrote that elemental people could intermarry with humans and produce children. If a female nymph married a human male, she would gain an immortal soul, and so would her children. Generally, human- elemental partnerships were conducted along these gender lines; as Paracelsus explained, There are more women than men in such groups [of elemental people] . . . hence they are after men whenever they have a chance (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 243). However, things were dierent if it was the woman who was human. Human women could get pregnant by elemental males, but these copulations resulted in mixed beings or monsters, which might either be elemental and soulless, or human and immortal (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 250^51). This theory was broadly adopted by other alchemical writersbut not, signicantly, by Andre in his Rosicrucian manifestos. Sylphs are not referred at all in the manifestos; in fact, the very existence of elemental beings of any sort is only mentioned in passing by Andre in one sentence of the Fama and not at all in the Confessio.29 For the purposes of modern criticism, then, I believe it is misleading to refer to the sylphs as Rosicrucian; instead, their presentation in Gabalis, Popes source, is based not on Rosicrucianism but on Paracelsianism. I will now turn to how Villars adapted Paracelsian elemental theory in Gabalis.

Those chasteT ypifyings: Sex and satire in Gabalis

Villars seized on the satiric potential of Paracelsian nymphs. The Counts introduction of them, in which he proposes to show their Habits, their Meats, their Manners, their Polity, their admirable Laws (Bayle, 15), reads like a direct parody of several parts of Paracelsuss Book on Nymphs.30 Villars adopts almost wholesale Paracelsuss thoughts on elemental people: according to both, elementals have no souls, but can marry humans to gain them (Bayle, 15^16). There are a number of local parodies of Paracelsus. Just as Paracelsus thought that Venus might really have been a nymph, the Count speculates that Pan may have been a sylph (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 243^4; Bayle, 25). Both the Count and Paracelsus insist on the naturalness of their respective theories
28 Croll located the sylphs in the earth, rather than the air (Croll, 26). 29 Andre, Fama, 240. 30 See such passages as [W]e consider . . . their creation and what they are; second, their country and habitation, where they stay and what their mode of living is . . . (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 226).

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(Villars, 190; Bayle, 64). Yet such insistence becomes absurd in the world of Gabalis, where the Count can easily make himself invisible by plac[ing] before [himself] the reversd Side of Light (Bayle, 75^6, 69). Whereas Paracelsians use the concept of Naturall Magick as a sort of epistemological framework to describe the unknowns and unknowables of nature, Gabalis earnestly explains that supposed witches sabbats are the Christian evangelical meetings of gnomes (Croll, 69; Bayle, 82^3). Villarss text thus consistently drags the soaring, bombastic rhetoric of Paracelsianism back to earthor rather, to earthiness. For the real satiric achievement of Gabalisand the one that is most relevant to this discussionis Villarss rewriting of the alchemical discourse of marriage and chastity. If one wanted to satirise occultists and Paracelsians in particular, it would be easy to portray these self-proclaimed truth- seekers as gold-hungry hypocrites.31 After all, the transmutation of lead into gold was supposed to be one of the alchemists primary goals. But Villars rejects this easy satiric hit for one that would resonate to a much greater extent with actual alchemical texts. Although the related concepts of self- containment, discretion and chastity are enjoined throughout the Paracelsian corpus, there seems to be a distinct (and rather counter-intuitive) emphasis on sex and marriage as metaphorical gures. Arthur Edward Waite, the nineteenth- century occult scholar, denes copulation as the union of the philosophical male and female, the xed and the volatile. This type of phraseology comes up throughout Paracelsian texts: Henry Pinnell glosses the philosophers ascension to sacred knowledge as Divine Matrimony, whilst Oswald Croll gures Paracelsuss tria prima as beautiful women who cover themselves from the dishonest looks of mortalls (editors note in Croll, 213; Croll, 193). Elsewhere, Croll sees hermetical secrets as being hid under the robe of the Phylosophycall Virgin, who must presumably be uncovered or penetrated (Croll, 186). Although Paracelsus himself is alleged to have been a misogynist, the metaphoric language of heterosexual coupling seems to pervade much Paracelsian thought.32 At any rate, Villars seems to have identied this as one of its salient characteristics when he came to write Gabalis, reguring Paracelsian discourse to emphasise its (unwitting) lascivious possibilities. For instance, in his Book on Nymphs, Paracelsus tells the story of the Count von Staufenberg, who marries a nymph but then abandons her for a human woman. In retribution, his elemental wife returns on his second wedding day to give him an unspecied warning sign;
31 Steele would later do exactly that when he told the story of Basil Valentine and his son and grandson, each of whom cheats his respective father out of the benets of the elixir of life in expectation of claiming them for himself (Steele, Spectator no. 426 in R. Steele and J. Addison, The Spectator, G. A. Aitken (ed.), 8 vols (London, 1898), 6: 146^51). 32 Paracelsus is characterized as misogynistic by Waite (Preface to the English Translation in Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, 1: ix-xvi; xi), and Croll cites him as believing that women are the original cause of illness in the world (Croll, 95). Philip Ayres, too, thought sardonically that a philosopher was a great Hater of Women; yet much addicted to Venery, in a Philosophick Way (Ayres, Translators Animadversions in Villars, Gabalis, trans. Ayres, 1^11; 1).

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when he does not listen, she kills him (Paracelsus, Nymphs, 244^5).Villars recycles this story, but embellishes the detail of the warning sign. He recounts how whilst Stauemberg [sic] sat at his wedding-banquet,with his new Paramour and some Friends, there appeard in the Air the fairest, most lilly-whiteThigh in the World; (the invisible Sweet-heart did that, to let her Traitors Friends see how much he was to blame in preferring a Woman to her . . .) (Bayle, 59). The gratuitous eroticism pushes a cautionary tale into farce. This is not an isolated incident. Villarss Gabalis, it turns out, is not primarily concerned with the search after philosophical truth. Instead, it is about sex. Repeatedly, the Count describes the philosophers and sylphs mutual desire to make each other happy (e.g., Bayle, 60). He insists that this is the result of a high-minded desire for immortality on the part of the sylphs and heroic evangelism on behalf of the sages. Female sylphs are more beautiful than any human woman and the philosophers can marry as many as they wantyet they do so primarily out of charity (Bayle, 60). Yes, Son . . . the Count piously exhorts the narrator, renounce the vain and transitory Pleasures which Women aord; adding encouragingly, the fairest of them all is a Mother Shipton to the meanest Sylphid (Bayle, 18). Somewhat unexpectedly, it is actually the Chastity of Philosophers [that] causes them to propose . . . themselves as the Immortality of the Sylphids (Bayle, 53). Such chastity, clearly, is a smug self-delusion, similar to the one detected in Popes Belinda by Donna Scarboro.33 If the content of Gabalis is highly sexual, its language is steeped in innuendo. In an apparently non- sexual context, the Count talks suggestively of virgins who tee[m] and brin[g] forth (Bayle, 32). The Count explains in a typical piece of Biblical exegesis that when Solomon said, I will climb up the Palm-Tree, and gather the Fruit thereof; he had quite another sort of Appetite upon him, than to be eating of Dates (Bayle, 54).34 Elsewhere, he congratulates the Vicomtesse de Martesie on her philosophical learning, remarking that the elemental people will be particularly pleased with her penetration (Villars, 187). In each case, there is a teasing, double meaning left for the reader to uncover. Lest such interpretations be seen as a stretch, we should remember the Counts comment that angels language (from which the Bible is translated) has no sexual terminology; [b]ut, he continues complacently,a Sage easily unriddles those chasteTypifyings (Bayle, 54).

Certain seeming V|rgins: Unchastity in The Rape

But why is the rhetoric of false chastity in Popes immediate satiric source important for reading The Rape? Belindas possible lack of purity has been hinted

33 See Scarboro, Thy Own Importance Know, 232. 34 Compare Song of Solomon 7.8.

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at by a number of commentators: Valerie Rumbold believes that Ariels motives may be just as objectionable as the Barons and Cleanth Brooks has of course noted the potential anities between Belindas chastity and a frail china jar.35 The evidence from Gabalis supports such analyses. At one point, the Count describes how some sylphs, desperate for immortality but afraid of disgusting women, appear to them as animals (which are apparently more acceptable). Signicantly, he comments on ladies pet dogs, who may be more than they seem: I could tell you several Stories of those Bolognia Lap-Dogs, and certain seeming Virgins (Bayle, 75^6). In this context, Patricia Bruckmanns note that Shock is quite likely a transgured elemental is useful.36 Bruckmann suggests that Belindas misplaced devotion to Shock (who was most Unkind on the morning of the rape) makes her worthy of Ariels warning and protection.37 Given that Shock appears just as Ariel vanishes, there may rather be a continuity of identity between the two, with Ariels explicitly sexual presence merging into Shocks potentially sexual touch. With this in mind, David Fairers reference to Ariel as Belindas ally takes on new meaning: quite possibly, he is her lover as well.38 With these comments, I want to suggest that the poem is sexualised to an even greater extent than has been recognised. Robin Grove has noted the innuendo -laden language of The Rape: the verse throbs on every side with contrary undermeanings . . . trembling, melting, softend .39 It is worthwhile picking out a few instances. We are told at the outset that Whoever fair and chaste/Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embracd. Those who do so out of pride are predestind to the Gnomes Embrace (Rape, 1: 67^8, 80). Such verbal repetition is not coincidental in a poet as craftsmanlike as Pope. These women are not being embraced in the sense of welcomed or befriended, but quite literally. Suggestions of unchastity are scattered throughout the poem. As well as the china jar parallel, it is hinted airily that Belinda might break Dianas Law and as she travels to Hampton Court, we are told that it is Here Britains Statesmen oft the Fall foredoom/Of Foreign T yrants, and of Nymphs at home (Rape, 2: 105; 3: 5^6). The Lovelacean echoes are unmistakeable. Without getting into the overtly sexualised card game or the well-known play on pubic hair, it is fairly safe to say that beneath the Reveren[tial] tone, one can detect not merely ambiguity about Belindas chastity, but downright scepticism.40 This may problematise Patricia Bruckmanns suggestion that the Count of Gabalis dierentiates

35 Rumbold, Womens Place in Popes World, 78; Brooks, quoted in Fairer, Popes Imagination, 70. 36 P. Bruckmann,Popes Shock and the Count of Gabalis, ELN 1 (1964), 261^2. 37 Bruckmann,Popes Shock, 262. 38 See Fairer, Popes Imagination, 53. 39 R. Grove, Uniting Airy Substance in H. Erskine-Hill and A. Smith (edd.), The Art of Alexander Pope (New York, 1979), 52^87; 68. 40 Pope,To Mrs. Arabella Fermor, 143.

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between the worldly understanding of love and his recommendation of a higher kind.41 Such a reading fails to take account of the deliberate satirical fudging of the distinction between the two. Nor can I follow Steve Clark when he claims that Popes discursive authority is constituted through an exorcism of desire.42 Just the opposite: by inviting interpretations of desire, Pope manages to score satiric points o Belinda and thereby establishes himself as the one in control, the manipulator of irony. Satire necessarily depends upon a shared, simultaneous understanding of what is being said overtly and other possible readings of the subject. Arabella Fermor, reading Gabalis like a novel (if at all) would not have been able to understand the in-jokes of The Rapewhich just made them better.

Locker-room talk: Popes sylphs as interpretive machinery

It is in light of these considerations that I would like to examine the sexualsatirical meanings of The Rape more closely. Brean Hammond has dissociated the sexual undertones and puns of the poem from what he terms male lockerroom talk.43 I think there may be more in his own formulation than he allows, however. Locker-room talk implies a closed group of peopleespecially mencommenting particularly on women, and specically in a sexual sense. Outside the context of the locker room, the commentators may treat the individual women they talk about with at least supercial respect, friendliness, or politeness; but inside that sequestered space, they are free to discuss them in ways that would be unacceptable in a face-to -face interaction. This does not necessarily mean that in the locker room they will say what they really think. To a certain extent, the topics or tenor of the conversation may involve self- conscious (sexual) preening, intentional crudity, or gratuitous innuendo to impress peers. Yet this kind of consciously witty, cocky auto -projection may be a fairly apt description of the satiric processes in The Rape. I have already tried to point out ways in which The Rape can be read as a text thoroughly steeped in sexual meanings. Popes dedicatory letter to Arabella Fermor is also full of this sort of disingenuous doubling. After apologizing for mak[ing] use of hard Words before a Lady, he goes on to claim that tis so much the Concern of a Poet to have his Works understood, and particularly by your Sex that he will explain two or three dicult Terms. Of course, he does no such thing. Whether Pope distinguished between Rosicrucianism in the strict sense of Andres manifestoes, or whether he simply lumped all occultists together under this title is not really relevantwhoever he thought he was describing, he must have been aware that Gabalis was not the best Account . . . of

41 Bruckmann,Virgins Visited by Angel Powers, 7. 42 S. Clark,Let Blood and Body bear the fault in Fairer, Pope: New Contexts, 81^101; 96. This remark refers to both The Rape and Epistle to a Lady (1735). 43 B. Hammond, Pope (Brighton, 1986), 171.

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them at all. Although Arabella may now believe she grasps the basis of the poems machinery, in fact the hard words are still not fully intelligible to her. Pope then summarises the Rosicrucians belief system, remarking that they say, any Mortals may enjoy the most intimate Familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a Condition very easie to all true Adepts, an inviolate preservation of Chastity.44 As I hope will be clear from my previous comments, in the context of Gabalis this chastity may be read as problematic at best and the phrase intimate Familiarities is a signicant and loaded one. But if Arabella was not intended to understand the implications behind her dedicatory letter, who was? Clearly, neither satire nor innuendo exists in isolation; each requires a (virtual, conceived, or real) audience to get the joke. Innuendo in particular plays on the contrast between knowingness and innocence or ignorance. In this case, the requisite knowledge would be at least a passing acquaintance with the alchemical science of the last century. It would be very dicult (and perhaps irrelevant) to convincingly recreate actual audience knowledge of seventeenth- century science, but it may be worth glancing at the sort of audience Pope may have had in mind as he wrote The Rape. In this context, I think it is important to emphasise both Popes relative youth and his social circumstances at the time. One of his companions at this stage was Henry Cromwell, a young man of the town and womaniser with whom Pope corresponded regularly.45 There is a distinct tone to some of this correspondence that mightrather anachronisticallybe termed laddish. Maynard Mack has recounted how Pope wrote to Cromwell, speculating whimsically about the possibility of exchanging his poems for maidenheads (specically those of the two Blount sisters).46 Valerie Rumbold has reprinted a highly suggestive rondeau that Pope slyly passed to a young woman to read, unawares, to the assembled company.47 Such precocious- schoolboy antics t with my reading of The Rape as a jubilantly cocky, light-hearted, sparkling satire. I would argue that its audience was conceived as one of literary coee-house wits: au courant, well-read young men of the world. In this context, The Rape can be read not as a carefully considered, vitriolic anti-female piece, but rather, as carelessly, elegantly contemptuous, gleefully caught up in its own cleverness. It is perhaps worth calling to mind here the satiric associations of learning or philosophy
44 Pope, To Mrs. Arabella Fermor, 142^3; compare his comment in a letter to Martha Blount in which he remarks that he is surprised to learn that Arabella Fermor is Actually, directly, and consummatively married and in which he refers to her as part of a guilty Couple (Alexander Pope, Correspondence, G. Sherburn (ed.), 5 vols (Oxford, 1956), 1: 269). 45 See Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven, 1985), 148^52; particularly his comment that with Cromwell, he could . . . indulge[,] . . . trie, joke, talk bawdy (149) and his description of Popes sad-dog pose (150^51). See also J. A. Winn,Pope plays the rake in Erskine-Hill and Smith, Art of Alexander Pope, 89^118. 46 Mack, Alexander Pope, 151. George Sherburn suggested decades ago that Pope put up a brave front at being a rake in Early Career of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1934), 157. 47 Rumbold, Womens Place in Popes World, 50^51.

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with sexual meaning in some of Popes collaboratively authored Scriblerian work: when Phoebe Clinket unwittingly trades highfalutin double entendres with Sir Tremendous in Three Hours after Marriage, or when Martin Scriblerus ees Spain following his visit to a married lady in her bath (he remarks bemusedly that his letters to her duenna had been misinterpreted as being sexually rather than philosophically motivated).48 In his dedicatory letter to Arabella, Pope painstakingly, mockingly explains what he never intends for her to understand; he writes a poem which will inscribe her midst the Stars whilst potentially simultaneously equating her for posterity (and select contemporaries) with a lustful, self-deluded sage. But is Belinda really any kind of a sage? She has visions of sylphs in her dreams, like some philosophers do (Villars, 208^11). As Donna Scarboro has pointed out, she is visionary and self-absorbed in the same way that philosophers are.49 But her interaction with the sylphs does not actually make her analogous to a philosopher. In Gabalis, the ability to summon a sylph is contingent on possession of esoteric, hermetic knowledge. Does Belinda have such knowledge? No. Popes elemental people function dierently to Villarss. Belinda does not call up or control these sylphs. The sylphs of Gabalis visit philosophers in order to acquire knowledge (particularlybizarrelyinterpretations of the Arabian philosopher Averroes). It is only after study that a philosopher is able to communicate with sylphs (Bayle, 8). But Belinda is visited suddenly, unexpectedly by Ariel, who explains himself to her. Partially, this is due to artistic requirements: it would have been far too clumsy to have a third party, like the Count, explaining the sylphs to Belinda. It is also indicative, though, of Belindas lack of ability to judge, explain, or understand. In Pope, it is the sylphs doing the explaining, not the other way round. This oers a clue as to how we might read their role in the poem as a whole. David Fairer has identied in The Rape a sensed presence of an uncomfortable truth, of a world beyond Belindas imaginative inuence threatening to judge it. This, he says, is integral to the meaning of the poem.50 The threat of judgementor, perhaps less heavily, the interpretive possibility of judgement is part of what I see as the sylphs relation to the heroine. I would demur, however,

48 A. Pope et al., Three Hours after Marriage (1717), R. Morton and W. M. Peterson (edd.) (Ohio, 1961), 18; this exchange involves verbal confusion between intellectual concepts such as profound Capacity and manly Penetration with obvious sexual meanings. A. Pope et al., Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus (1742), C. K. Miller (ed.) (New Haven, 1950), 93; in this episode, Scribleruss supposedly intellectually curious desire to see a married ladys unusual pomegranate-shaped birthmark (on the inside of her thigh) is couched in highly suggestive terms. Satire on alchemical learning crops up several times in Three Hours and the Memoirs, sometimes showing similarities to Gabalis, and there are arguably points of comparison between the Count and Scriblerus. 49 Scarboro,Thy Own Importance Know, 232^3. 50 Fairer, Popes Imagination, 53.

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from the term truth. To my mind, this satire is not about a nal, greater truth in any absolute sense; it is too elusive and scintillating. The danger lies rather in the chance that the reader will glimpse the implications of Popes use of Gabalis and judge Belinda accordingly. This sense of judgement does not exactly correspond with the critical sense Fairer uses in his discussion, where it is opposed in Hobbesian terms to imagination.51 Judgement can be discriminating, but it can also be judgemental. Both connotations are relevant to The Rape, but I would like to emphasise the latter. Fairer has also seen the sylphs as being removed from the world of moral judgment, representing neither good nor bad .52 I would rene upon this by adding that in downplaying the role of morality, we should be careful not to remove the element of judgement from the critical equation. It is important not to ignore the extent to which judging can take place in the absence of a dened moral schema. The sylphs participate in and are used to point up Belindas comical self-delusion: she may extend favours to none, but she dreams of glittering young beaux, and such dreams, readers of Gabalis will know, may include an Honour she dreamt not of (Bayle, 76). This does not necessarily imply a harsh moralistic judgement, but it does give Pope and clued-up readers the opportunity to laugh in their sleeves at Belinda, whilst paying lip- service to the notion that the poem is about memorializing her.53 As Pope himself would later remark, Laughter implies censure.54 Censure, however, can consist in a snide comment or a witty reection as well as a sermon based on a coherent moral system. In semantic contrast to Fairers machinery of imagination, then, I would like to read the sylphs role as that of a machinery of interpretation.55 The inclusion of the sylphs in the expanded version of the poem takes the occasional innuendo of the 1712 version and amplies it, giving a denite slant to the comedy of the original piece.56 Their place in the revised poem allows readers to glimpse interpretationsjudgementsthat might otherwise be invisible.

51 Fairer, Popes Imagination, 54^5. 52 Fairer, Popes Imagination, 62. 53 Knellwolf, A Contradiction Still, 171; Weinbrot, Eighteenth-Century Satire, 108. I recognize, of course, that the poem does in some respects function as a memorial to Arabella Fermor. 54 Pope, Postscript to the Odyssey in Selected Prose, ed. P. Hammond (Cambridge, 1987), 119^28; 124. 55 See Fairer, Popes Imagination, 66. Compare Pat Rogerss comment that the sylphs are the handmaiden[s] of the social satire in Faery lore and The Rape, 26. 56 Iam thinking of such 1712 lines as Who sought no more than on his Foe to die (372) or the Hairs less in sight (365) exclamation. This sort of wit is clearly latent in the 1712 original, but is not brought out to the same extent as in later, expanded versions: the 1712 Shock episode (356), for instance, contains none of the suggestiveness of the 1714 and 1717 versions of the same. See A. Pope, The Rape of the Locke in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (London, 1712); as this edition does not contain line numbers, references in brackets are to pages.

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For instance: do women have immortal souls? Popes satiric appropriation of Gabalis might suggest not. In Paracelsian thought, women can copulate with male elementals to produce childrenthough such partnerships are less fruitful than those between human men and nymphs. In Gabalis, women sages frequently make male sylphs and gnomes happy; the Count specically cites the cases of Magdalen de la Croix and Joan Hervillier (Bayle, 60). But nowhere in either of these texts does it imply that women turn into elemental creatures after death. This is precisely what Pope says, however. Ariel, we all know, was once inclosd in Womans beauteous Mold, but has now, by a soft Transition, entered into the spirit realm (Rape, 1: 48-9). Dierent types of women turn into dierent elemental people: To their rst Elements their Souls retire (Rape, 1: 58). The problem with this is that elemental people, unlike humans, do not have immortal souls and may be fundamentally less intelligent than humans. Oswald Croll has elucidated the Paracelsian position on this issue: Paracelsus saith, that to avoyd an Emptiness in all the four Elements, [God] created living creatures, inanimate, that is to say, without an Intellectual Soule (Croll, 26). Paracelsus himself remarked that only beings with eternal souls had understanding.57 Popes implication is that women, rather than progressing to heaven, purgatory, or damnation, dissolve into soulless, intellectually inanimate elements. Although I do not believe that Pope was seriously questioning womens chances of salvationto do so would have been radically at odds with his faith groupthe sly insinuations that can be read into this particular satiric twist might once again recall rakish sophistry on the same subject. In death, womens souls, like Paracelsian bodies, break down into component elements. Obvious orgasmic connotations aside, dissolution is something of a thematic motif in The Rape: bodies are always on the brink of fragmenting, breaking apartand death, real or gurative, is never far away. The sails on Belindas boat are Shrouds; the sylphs uid Bodies are half dissolvd (Rape, 2: 57, 62). The poem famously ends with a preview of Belindas death, and the battle preceding it is lled with the gurative death of sentimental language (e.g., Rape, 5: 61^4). Death is omnipresent, but trivialised, just as womens individual deaths are. It is possible also to see the deaths in this poem as the satiric inversions of alchemical processes. Paracelsians viewed death as a purier, extracting the gold of the soul from the gross elements of the body.58 In The Rape, of course, it is the dross that is left behind: Think not, when Womans transient Breath is ed,/That all her Vanities at once are dead (Rape, 1: 51^2). Transmutational magic goes similarly wrong in the Cave of Spleen, where we nd the boundaries between animate and inanimate objects blurred (Rape, 4: 49-54). These are mostly women who have (partially) turned into things; it is worth recalling Crolls explication of elemental creatures as things that are living but inanimate,
57 Paracelsus in Philosophy Reformed, trans. H. Pinnell, 24. 58 Paracelsus, Selected Writings, trans. N. Guterman (London, 1951), 287^8.

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because they do not have intellectual souls. Ultimately, in a rather Swiftian reading, Ariels soft Transition to the elements can be seen as a type of putrefaction ^ one of the fundamental mysteries of Paracelsian natural magic and the greatest principle of transmutation on earth.59 The Rape oers an almost bewildering array of competing interpretive possibilities; what allows it to remain so engaging after 290 years is precisely the fact that one can never say with real certainty what it is about. Innuendo and intention, sexuality and seriousness, are deliberately ambiguous in this text. However, by reading it in the light of a specic body of scientic writing, I have tried to suggest perspectives on some accepted critical judgements of Popes work. Although this article has considered Gabalis primarily as it is useful to understanding The Rape, this text also represents a skilful and often beguiling satiric approach to seventeenth- century science and occultism. As I hope has been evident, there is still much to be said about this text in terms of its participation in discourses on alchemy, learning, sexual behaviour, and their constructions in satire. For Pope scholars, though, it can be read as a relatively minor source-text that nevertheless may comment on the sexual politics and satiric strategies of The Rape.

School of English, University of Leeds

59 S. J. Linden (ed.), Alchemy Reader (Cambridge, 1993), 152, 160. I nd this interesting in view of claims that Swift is nastier or more anti-female than Pope (Fairer, Popes Imagination, 69^70; Hammond, Pope, 167).

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