[!--Line Note 619--] [Line 619: Garth, Dr., afterwards Sir Samuel (born 1660) an eminent physician and a poet of considerable reputation He is best known as the author of The Dispensary, a poetical satire on the apothecaries and physicians who opposed the project of giving medicine gratuitously to the sick poor. The poet alludes to a slander current at the time with regard to the authorship of the poem.]
[!--Line Note 623--] [Line 623: St Paul's Churchyard, before the fire of London, was the headquarters of the booksellers.]
[!--Line Note 645--] [Lines 645, 646: See note on line 138.]
[!--Line Note 648--] [Line 648: The Maeonian star.—Homer, supposed by some to have been born in Maeonia, a part of Lydia in Asia Minor, and whose poems were the chief subject of Aristotle's criticism.]
[!--Line Note 652--] [Line 652: Who conquered nature—He wrote, besides his other works, treatises on Astronomy, Mechanics, Physics, and Natural History.]
[!--Line Note 665--] [Line 665: Dionysius, born at Halicarnassus about 50 B.C., was a learned critic, historian, and rhetorician at Rome in the Augustan age.]
[!--Line Note 667--] [Line 667: Petronius.—A Roman voluptuary at the court of Nero whose ambition was to shine as a court exquisite. He is generally supposed to be the author of certain fragments of a comic romance called Petronii Arbitri Satyricon.]
[!--Line Note 669--] [Line 669: Quintilian, born in Spain 40 A.D. was a celebrated teacher of rhetoric and oratory at Rome. His greatwork is De Institutione Oratorica, a complete system of rhetoric, which is here referred to.]
[!--Line Note 675--] [Line 675: Longinus, a Platonic philosopher and famous rhetorician, born either in Syria or at Athens about 213 A.D., was probably the best critic of antiquity. From his immense knowledge, he was called "a living library" and "walking museum," hence the poet speaks of him as inspired by all the Nine—Muses that is. These were Clio, the muse of History, Euterpe, of Music, Thaleia, of Pastoral and Comic Poetry and Festivals, Melpomene, of Tragedy, Terpsichore, of Dancing, Erato, of Lyric and Amorous Poetry, Polyhymnia, of Rhetoric and Singing, Urania, of Astronomy, Calliope, of Eloquence and Heroic Poetry.]
[!--Line Note 686--] [Line 686: Rome.—For this pronunciation (to rhyme with doom) he has Shakespeare's example as precedent.]