Part 26

Wide is the fronting gate, and raised on high With adamantine columns, threats the sky.]

Charles Dryden's translation of the seventh Satire of Juvenal, ver. 245:

Behold how raised on high A banquet house salutes the southern sky.]

No Thracian born, But in that town which arms and arts adorn.]

The fourfold walls in breathing statues grace.

Addison in his Letter from Italy had called the Roman statues "breathing rocks."]

Or teach their animated rocks to live. And emperors in Parian marble frown.]

Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave, nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven.--WAKEFIELD.]

An ample goblet stood of antique mould And rough with figures of the rising gold.

Dryden, Æn. viii. 830:

And Roman triumphs rising on the gold.

Addison's Letter from Italy:

And pillars rough with sculpture pierce the skies.]

It were to be wished that our author, whose knowledge and taste of the fine arts were unquestionable, had taken more pains in describing so famous a statue as that of the Farnesian Hercules; for he has omitted the characteristical excellencies of this famous piece of Grecian workmanship; namely, the uncommon breadth of the shoulders, the knottiness and spaciousness of the chest, the firmness and protuberance of the muscles in each limb, particularly the legs, and the majestic vastness of the whole figure, undoubtedly designed by the artist to give a full idea of strength, as the Venus de Medicis of beauty. To mention the Hesperian apples, which the artist flung backwards, and almost concealed as an inconsiderable object, and which therefore scarcely appear in the statue, was below the notice of Pope.--WARTON.

Addison's Vision: "At the upper end sat Hercules, leaning an arm upon his club."]

And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delayed to strike.--WAKEFIELD.]

a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation.--BOWLES.]

With burnished gold and flaming jewels blazed.

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.]

Charms in her wonted course can stop the moon.]

Thin airy shapes, that o'er the furrows rise, A dreadful scene! and skim before his eyes.]

And sigils framed in planetary hours.

Dryden's Virgil, Æn. vii. 25:

That watched the moon and planetary hour.]

They worshipped Zamolxis, and thought they should go to him when they died. He was said by the Greeks who dwelt on the shores of the Hellespont, 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.]

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

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 god 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.]

It shone lighter than a glass, And made well more than it was, To semen every thing, ywis, As kind of thinge Fames is.--POPE.]