Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“How vain are all these glories, all our pains, Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:”
- Source
- The Rape of the Lock
- Date
- 1717
- Local voice
- Fictional character · Clarissa
Meaning of “How vain are all these glories, all our…”
Clarissa’s speech argues that appearance and social admiration are unstable unless judgment and character give them something more durable to rest on.
Where does it come from?
The Rape of the Lock, Canto V, lines 15–16 in Pope’s 1717 revision; spoken by Clarissa. Her moralizing speech (Canto V lines 7–36) was added in 1717, so the inherited 1714 source year is corrected to 1717. The reviewed evidence opens the 1717 Canto V scan start; the exact couplet is independently preserved in the complete final-form text.
Why the local voice matters
The Rape of the Lock, Canto V; spoken by Clarissa in a mock-heroic social satire, so the speaker and comic setting remain part of the source context.
