The Works of Alexander Pope Part 38

[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, aen. 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.]

[Footnote 50: The architecture is agreeable to that part of the world.--POPE.]

[Footnote 51: The learning of the northern nations lay more obscure than that of the rest. Zamolxis was the disciple of Pythagoras, who taught the immortality of the soul to the Scythians.--POPE.

They wors.h.i.+pped Zamolxis, and thought they should go to him when they died. He was said by the Greeks who dwelt on the sh.o.r.es of the h.e.l.lespont, to have been the slave of Pythagoras before he became the instructor of his countrymen, but Herodotus believed that if Zamolxis ever existed, he was long anterior to the Greek philosopher.]

[Footnote 52: Odin, or Woden, was the great legislator and hero of the Goths. They tell us of him, that, being subject to fits, he persuaded his followers, that during those trances he received inspirations, from whence he dictated his laws. He is said to have been the inventor of the Runic characters.--POPE.]

[Footnote 53: Pope borrowed this idea from the pa.s.sage he quotes at ver.

179, where Chaucer describes Statius as standing

Upon an iron pillar strong That painted was, all endelong, With tigers' blood in every place.]

[Footnote 54: These were the priests and poets of those people, so celebrated for their savage virtue. Those heroic barbarians accounted it a dishonour to die in their beds, and rushed on to certain death in the prospect of an after-life, and for the glory of a song from their bards in praise of their actions.--POPE.

The opinion was general among the Goths that men who died natural deaths went into vast caves underground, all dark and miry, full of noisome creatures, and there for ever grovelled in stench and misery. On the contrary, all who died in battle went to the hall of Odin, their G.o.d of war, where they were entertained at infinite tables in perpetual feasts, carousing in bowls made of the skulls of the enemies they had slain.--SIR W. TEMPLE.]

[Footnote 55:

It shone lighter than a gla.s.s, And made well more than it was, To s.e.m.e.n every thing, ywis, As kind of thinge Fames is.--POPE.]

[Footnote 56: Addison's Vision: "On a sudden the trumpet sounded; the whole fabric shook, and the doors flew open."]

[Footnote 57: Milton, Par. Lost, i. 717:

The roof was fretted gold.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 58: The exterior of Chaucer's House of Fame,

Both the castle, and the tower And eke the hall, and every bower

was of beryl, which Pope transfers to the inside of the building.

Chaucer says of the interior that

Every wall Of it, and floor, and roof, and all Was plated half a foote thick Of gold.

This gold was covered, as gra.s.s clothes a meadow, with jewelled ornaments

Fine, of the finest stones fair That men read in the Lapidaire.]

[Footnote 59: Milton, Par. Lost, i. 726:

From the arched roof Pendent by subtle magic many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed With Naptha and Asphaltus, yielded light As from a sky.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 60: Addison's Vision: "A band of historians took their station at each door."]

[Footnote 61: Alexander the Great. The tiara was the crown peculiar to the Asian princes. His desire to be thought the son of Jupiter Ammon, caused him to wear the horns of that G.o.d, and to represent the same upon his coins, which was continued by several of his successors.--POPE.]

[Footnote 62: Dryden, Ode to St. Cecilia:

A dragon's fiery form belied the G.o.d.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 63: As a warrior and a man of letters; for skill in both capacities was supposed to be due to Minerva.]

[Footnote 64: Prior, in his Carmen Seculare, says of William III.,

How o'er himself as o'er the world he reigns.]

[Footnote 65: A concise and masterly stroke, which at once sets before us the mixture of character, which appears in that extraordinary man, Julius Caesar.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 66: "In other ill.u.s.trious men you will observe that each possessed some one s.h.i.+ning quality, which was the foundation of his fame: in Epaminondas all the virtues are found united; force of body, eloquence of expression, vigour of mind, contempt of riches, gentleness of disposition, and, what is chiefly to be regarded, courage and conduct in war."--Diodorus Siculus, lib. xv.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 67: Timoleon had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in the battle between the Argives and Corinthians; but afterwards killed him when he affected the tyranny, preferring his duty to his country to all the obligations of blood.--POPE.

Pope followed the narrative of Diodorus. Plutarch says that Timoleon did not strike the blow, but stood by weeping, and giving his pa.s.sive countenance to the a.s.sa.s.sins. Some of the Corinthians applauded, and some execrated his conduct. He was soon overtaken with remorse, and shunning the haunts of men he pa.s.sed years in anguish of mind.]

[Footnote 68: This triplet was not in the first edition.]

[Footnote 69: In the first edition,

Here too the wise and good their honours claim, Much-suff'ring heroes of less noisy fame.

Pope did not perceive that in the attempt to improve the poetry he had introduced an inconsistency. He winds up the preceding group of patriots with the "wise Aurelius," whom he celebrates as an example of "unbounded virtue," and the "much-suffering heroes" could not be instances of "less guilty fame" than a man whose virtue was unbounded. The cla.s.sification was probably suggested by Addison's Vision in the Tatler of the Three Roads of Life, and having his original in his mind when he composed his poem, Pope avoided the inconsistency which he subsequently imported into the pa.s.sage. "The persons," says Addison, "who travelled up this great path, were such whose thoughts were bent upon doing eminent services to mankind, or promoting the good of their country. On each side of this great road were several paths. These were most of them covered walks, and received into them men of retired virtue, who proposed to themselves the same end of their journey, though they chose to make it in shade and obscurity."]

[Footnote 70: The names which follow are inappropriate examples of "fair virtue's _silent_ train." The first on the list spent his days in promulgating his philosophy, and they were all energetic public characters who made a stir in the world. When Pope originated the expression, he must have been thinking of the un.o.btrusive virtues of private life, and he probably added the ill.u.s.trations later without observing the incongruity.]

[Footnote 71: Aristides, who for his great integrity was distinguished by the appellation of the Just. When his countrymen would have banished him by the ostracism, where it was the custom for every man to sign the name of the person he voted to exile in an oyster-sh.e.l.l, a peasant, who could not write, came to Aristides to do it for him, who readily signed his own name.--POPE.]

[Footnote 72: Who, when he was about to drink the hemlock, charged his son to forgive his enemies, and not to revenge his death on those Athenians who had decreed it.--WARTON.

He was condemned to death B. C. 317, at the age of 85, on the charge of treason to his country. Mistrusting the ability of Athens to maintain its independence, he connived at the dominion of the Macedonian kings.

Many of those who admit his integrity contend that his policy was mistaken and unpatriotic. His party regained the ascendancy after his death, honoured his remains with a public funeral, and erected a statue of bra.s.s to his memory.]

[Footnote 73: Very unpoetically designated. Agis might as well have been left out, if all that could be said of him was that he was "not the last of Spartan names."--BOWLES.

Agis, king of Sparta, was celebrated for his attempt to restore the ancient Spartan regulations. Especially he was anxious to resume the excess of land possessed by the rich and divide it among the poor. He failed in his design, and was dethroned, and beheaded. At his execution one of the officers of justice shed tears. "Lament me not," said Agis; "I am happier than my murderers."]

[Footnote 74: In the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Cato sided with Pompey, and when the cause was lost, he stabbed himself in the bowels to avoid being captured. He was found by his friends insensible, but alive, and a physician began to sew up the wound. Cato recovered his consciousness, pushed away the physician, tore open the wound, and expired.]

[Footnote 75: A horrible spectre appeared to Brutus while he sat meditating in his tent at night. "What art thou?" said Brutus, "and what is thy business with me?" "I am thy evil genius," replied the spectre; "thou wilt see me at Philippi." At Philippi the spectre rose up again before him on the night preceding the battle in which he suffered a total defeat. He destroyed himself in the night which followed.]