Thin airy shapes, that o'er the furrows rise,
A dreadful scene! and skim before his eyes.
[44] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
And sigils framed in planetary hours.
Dryden's Virgil, Æn. vii. 25:
That watched the moon and planetary hour.
[45] Confucius flourished about two thousand three hundred years ago, just before Pythagoras. He taught justice, obedience to parents, humility, and universal benevolence: and he practised these virtues when he was a first minister, and when he was reduced to poverty and exile.—Warton.
[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.
[47] The colossal statue of the celebrated Eastern tyrant is not very strongly imagined. The word "hold" is particularly feeble.—Warton.
[48] Virgil's giant Bitias, Æn. ix. 958, has in Dryden's translation, quoted by Wakefield, "a coat of double mail with scales of gold."
[49] Two flatter lines upon such a subject cannot well be imagined.—Bowles.