While yet a child, I chanced to stray,
And in a desert sleeping lay;
The savage race withdrew, nor dared
To touch the muses' future bard;
But Cytherea's gentle dove
Myrtles and bays around me spread,
And crowned your infant poet's head
Sacred to music and to love.—Pope.
In addition to these passages, he had in his mind Hor. Epist. lib. i. 19, quoted by Wakefield:
Temperat Archilochi Musam pede mascula Sappho,
Temperat Alcæus.
[88] Horace speaking, in his ode to Augustus, of the relative glory of different families, says that the Julian star shone among all the rest as the moon shines among the lesser lights. The star referred to the comet which appeared for seven days the year after the death of Julius Cæsar, and which was supposed to indicate that he had become a deity in the heavens. A star was sculptured in consequence on his statue in the forum.
[89] Surely he might have selected for the basso rilievos about the statue of Horace ornaments more manly and characteristical of his genius.—Warton.
[90] A very tame and lifeless verse indeed, alluding to the treatise of Aristotle "concerning animals."—Wakefield.
[91] Pope here refers to Aristotle's treatise on the Heavens.
[92] This beautiful attitude is copied from a statue in the collection which Lady Pomfret presented to the University of Oxford.—Warton.
[93] Addison's translation of some lines from Sannazarius:
And thou whose rival tow'rs invade the skies.