alliance of France, which he satirically calls romances: hinting thereby, that these promises and protestations were no more to be relied on than those idle legends. Of these he is said to build an altar; to intimate that the foundation of his schemes and honours was fixed upon the French romances abovementioned.
A fan, a garter, half a pair of gloves.
One of the things he sacrifices is a fan; which, both for its gaudy show and perpetual fluttering, has been held the emblem of woman: this points at the change of the ladies of the bedchamber. The garter alludes to the honours he conferred on some of his friends; and we may, without straining the sense, call the half pair of gloves a gauntlet, the token of those military employments, which he is said to have sacrificed to his designs. The prize, as I said before, means the treasury, which he makes his prayer soon to obtain, and long to possess.
The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r,
The rest, the winds dispers'd in empty air.
In the first of these lines he gives him the treasury, and in the last suggests, that he should not long possess that honour.
That Thalestris is the duchess of Marlborough, appears both by her nearness to Belinda, and by this author's malevolent suggestion that she is a lover of war.
To arms, to arms, the bold Thalestris cries:
but more particularly by several passages in her speech to Belinda upon the cutting off the lock, or treaty.
