[Footnote 42: It was often erroneously stated that the Brahmins dwelt always in groves. By the laws of Menu the life of a Brahmin was divided into four portions, and it was during the third portion only that he was commanded to become an anchorite in the woods, to sleep on the bare ground, to feed on roots and fruit, to go clad in bark or the skin of the black antelope, and to expose himself to the drenching rain and scorching sun. The caste have ceased to conform to the primitive discipline, and the old asceticism is now confined to individual devotees. The functions which Pope ascribes to the Brahmins formed no part of their practices. They did not pretend to "stop the moon," and summon spirits to "midnight banquets." Pope copied Oldham's version of Virgil's eighth Eclogue:
Charms in her wonted course can stop the moon.]
[Footnote 43: Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian:
Thin airy shapes, that o'er the furrows rise, A dreadful scene! and skim before his eyes.]
[Footnote 44: Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
That watched the moon and planetary hour.]
[Footnote 45: Confucius flourished about two thousand three hundred years ago, just before Pythagoras. He taught justice, obedience to parents, humility, and universal benevolence: and he practised these virtues when he was a first minister, and when he was reduced to poverty and exile.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 46: The learning of the old Egyptian priests consisted for the most part in geometry and astronomy: they also preserved the history of their nation. Their greatest hero upon record is Sesostris, whose actions and conquests may be seen at large in Diodorus, &c. He is said to have caused the kings he vanquished to draw him in his chariot. The posture of his statue, in these verses, is correspondent to the description which Herodotus gives of one of them, remaining in his own time.--POPE.]
[Footnote 47: The colossal statue of the celebrated Eastern tyrant is not very strongly imagined. The word "hold" is particularly feeble.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 48: Virgil's giant Bitias, Æn. ix. 958, has in Dryden's translation, quoted by Wakefield, "a coat of double mail with scales of gold."]
[Footnote 49: Two flatter lines upon such a subject cannot well be imagined.--BOWLES.]