[278] If the restoration of learning consisted in recovering the works and reviving the spirit of the ancients, it had been in a great degree accomplished before the time of Erasmus.—Roscoe.
[279] Genius is here personified, and this person is said by Pope to have been "spread over the ruins of Rome." The poet has evidently mixed up genius considered as a quality of the remains of antiquity with genius considered as a presiding being.
[280] For the expression in the last half of this verse, Wakefield quotes Addison on sculpture in the letter from Italy,
Or teach their animated rocks to live.
And for the expression in the first half, he quotes Dryden's Religio Laici:
Or various atoms, interfering dance,
Leaped into form.
Wakefield ascribes the origin of the phrase to the fable that the stones of Thebes moved into their places at the music of Amphion, and it is thus used by Waller in his poem upon his Majesty's Repairing of St. Paul's:
He like Amphion makes those quarries leap
Into fair figures from a confused heap.
[281] Leo was not only an admirer of music, but a skilful performer, and we are informed by Pietro Aaron that "though he had acquired a consummate knowledge in most arts and sciences, he seemed to love, encourage, and exalt music more than any other." To sacred music he paid a more particular attention, and sought throughout Europe for the most celebrated performers, both vocal and instrumental.—Roscoe.
[282] M. Hieronymus Vida, an excellent Latin poet, who writ an Art of Poetry in verse. He flourished in the time of Leo X.—Pope.