[25] The temple is described to be square, the four fronts with open gates facing the different quarters of the world, as an intimation that all nations of the earth may alike be received into it. The western front is of Grecian architecture: the Doric order was peculiarly sacred to heroes and worthies. Those whose statues are after mentioned, were the first names of old Greece in arms and arts.—Pope.
The exterior of the Doric temples abounded in sculptured figures, which may be the reason that Pope supposes the order to have been "peculiarly sacred to heroes and worthies," but it may be doubted whether he had any good grounds for his assertion.
[26] The expression literally interpreted would signify that the gates were placed on the top of columns. Pope could not have had such a preposterous notion in his mind, and the meaning must be that the lofty gates were hung upon columns. He copied a couplet in Dryden's Æneis, vi. 744, where the translation misrepresents the original:
Wide is the fronting gate, and raised on high
With adamantine columns, threats the sky.
[27] Addison's Vision of the Table of Fame, in the Tatler: "In the midst there stood a palace of a very glorious structure; it had four great folding doors that faced the four several quarters of the world."
Charles Dryden's translation of the seventh Satire of Juvenal, ver. 245:
Behold how raised on high
A banquet house salutes the southern sky.
[28] Dryden, Juvenal, Sat. iii. 142:
No Thracian born,
But in that town which arms and arts adorn.
[29] In the early editions: