Note 1039 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
"A nation" in the first edition. The expression is hyperbolical. Pope alludes to such catastrophes as the inundation of Jutland when the sea broke down the dykes in 1634, and fifteen thousand people were drowned. Irruptions on a smaller scale have sometimes been occasioned by the rising of the sea during an earthquake. In that of 1783 the inhabitants of Scilla, in the kingdom of Naples, deserted their city to avoid being crushed by the falling houses, and fled to the shore. A mighty wave, which swept three miles inland, carried back with it 2473 persons, and their prince among the number. Cowper, The Task, ii. 117, has recorded the tragedy in his grandest verse:
Where now the throng That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart, Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone, Gone with the refluent wave into the deep, A prince with half his people.