Addison's Vision: "At the upper end sat Hercules, leaning an arm upon his club."]
[Footnote 36: The pause at the word "strikes" renders the verse finely descriptive of the circumstance. Milton, in Par. Lost, xi. 491, has attempted this beauty with success:
And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delayed to strike.--WAKEFIELD.]
a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 38: "Trees," says Dennis, "starting from their roots, a mountain rolling into a wall, and a town rising like an exhalation are things that are not to be shown in sculpture." This objection, that "motion is represented as exhibited by sculpture," is said by Johnson, "to be the most reasonable of Dennis' remarks," but Dennis neutralised his own criticism when he added, that "sculpture can indeed show posture and position, and from posture and position we may conclude that the objects are in motion."]
[Footnote 39: Wakefield quotes from Milton (Par. Lost, ii. 4), the expression, "barbaric pearl and gold," and from Addison's translation of the second book of Ovid's Met. the line in which it is said that the palace of the sun
With burnished gold and flaming jewels blazed.
[Footnote 40: Cyrus was the beginning of the Persian, as Ninus was of the Assyrian monarchy.--POPE.]
[Footnote 41: The Magi and Chaldæans (the chief of whom was Zoroaster) employed their studies upon magic and astrology, which was, in a manner, almost all the learning of the ancient Asian people. We have scarce any account of a moral philosopher, except Confucius, the great law-giver of the Chinese, who lived about two thousand years ago.--POPE.
There are several mistakes in Pope's note. Zoroaster was not a magician who "waved the circling wand" of the necromancer. "The Magians," says Plato, "teach the magic of Zoroaster, but this is the worship of the Gods." His creed was theological, and had no connexion with sorcery. Some of his nominal followers subsequently professed to be fortune-tellers. Astrology was not a general characteristic of the diverse nations who constituted the "ancient Asian people," and their learning was by no means limited to it. The Hindoos, for instance, were the precursors of Aristotle in logic, and the earliest metaphysicians whose doctrines have come down to us. "The Indian philosophy," says M. Cousin, "is so vast that all the philosophical systems are represented there, and we may literally affirm that it is an abridgment of the entire history of philosophy." Nor was Confucius the only oriental "law-giver who taught the useful science to be good." The Hindoo body of laws, which bears the name of Menu, was compiled centuries before Confucius was born, and it is eminently a moral and religious, as well as a political code.]