Page:A Key to the Lock. Or, A Treatise Proving, Beyond All Contradiction, the Dangerous Tendency of a Late Poem, Entituled, The Rape of the Lock, to Government and Religion - Pope (1715).djvu/31



An open Satyr upon Hereditary Right. The three Seal Rings plainly allude to the three Kingdoms.

These are the chief Passages in the Battle, by which, as hath before been said, he means the Squabble of Parties. Upon this Occasion he could not end the Description of them, without testifying his malignant Joy at those Dissentions, from which he forms the Prospect that both should be disappointed, and cries out with Triumph, as if it were already accomplished.

The Lock at length is turn'd into a Star, or the Old Barrier Treaty into a new and glorious Peace; this no doubt is what the Author, at the time he printed his Poem, would have been thought to mean, in hopes by that Complement to escape Punishment for the rest of his Piece. It puts me in mind of a Fellow, who concluded a bitter Lampoon upon the Prince and Court of his Days, with these Lines.