Note 465 — RAPE OF THE LOCK. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Oldham had expressed the same idea in The Dream:
Not dying saints enjoy such ecstacies When they in visions antedate their bliss.
The ancients believed the spleen to be the seat of mirth, and hence a disordered spleen was supposed to produce melancholy and moroseness. The second sense, in modern usage, has driven out the first, and spleen has become synonymous with surliness and gloom, but Pope in prose as well as verse gave it a wider range, and appears to ascribe to it those creations of the imagination which are mistaken for realities. "Methinks," he writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "I am imitating in my ravings the dreams of splenetic enthusiasts and solitaires, who fall in love with saints and fancy themselves in favour of angels and spirits."