[Footnote 90: A very tame and lifeless verse indeed, alluding to the treatise of Aristotle "concerning animals."--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 91: Pope here refers to Aristotle's treatise on the Heavens.]
[Footnote 92: This beautiful attitude is copied from a statue in the collection which Lady Pomfret presented to the University of Oxford.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 93: Addison's translation of some lines from Sannazarius:
And thou whose rival tow'rs invade the skies.
[Footnote 94: Chaucer in a passage, not quoted by Pope, represents Fame as enthroned upon "a seat imperial," which was formed of rubies.]
Methoughte that she was so lite That the length of a cubite Was longer than she seemed to be; But thus soon in a while she, Herself tho wonderly straight, That with her feet she carthe reight, And with her head she touched heaven.--POPE.]
[Footnote 96: This notion of the enlargement of the temple is also from Chaucer, who says that it became in length, breadth, and height, a thousand times bigger than it was at first.]
[Footnote 97: The corresponding passage in Chaucer is not quoted by Pope, who translated from their common original, Virg. Æn. iv. 181:
Cui quot sunt corpore plumæ, Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu, Tot lunguæ, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris.]
I heard about her throne y-sung That all the palays walles rung; So sung the mighty Muse, she That cleped is Calliope, And her eighte sisters eke.--POPE.
Pope should have continued the extract; for his next four lines were prompted by the succeeding four in Chaucer:
And evermore eternally They sing of Fame as tho heard I; "Heried be thou and thy name Goddess of renown or fame."
I heard a noise approchen blive, That fared as bees done in a hive, Against their time of out flying; Right such a manere murmering, For all the world it seemed me. Tho gan I look about and see That there came entring into th' hall, A right great company withal; And that of sundry regions, Of all kind of conditions, &c.--POPE.]
[Footnote 100: This description is varied with improvements from Dryden, Æneis, vi. 958.
About the boughs an airy nation flew Thick as the humming bees that hunt the golden dew: The winged army roams the field around, The rivers and the rocks remurmer to the sound.--WAKEFIELD.