At other times we reign by night alone,
And posting through the skies pursue the moon.
[407] A compliment to Queen Anne, whom he lavishly commends in his Windsor Forest.—Wakefield.
The angel in Addison's Rosamond, Act 3, says,
In hours of peace, unseen, unknown
I hover o'er the British throne.
[408] Sir T. Browne, Relig. Med. Part I. 31; "I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelations of spirits; for those noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth." The comparative inferiority of Pope's mimic subject is strongly felt when we bring the diminutive ideas into immediate contrast with their elevated originals.
[409] That is, her ear-drops set with brilliants.—Wakefield.
[410] To crisp in our earlier writers is a common word for curl, from the Latin crispo.—Wakefield.
[411] "This," says Warburton, in a manuscript note, "was a fine stroke of satire to insinuate that the lapdog is often the concern of the fair, superior to all the charities, as Milton calls them, of parental relation."
[412] Ovid, Met. xiii, 2: Clypei dominus septemplicis Ajax.—Warburton.
Sandys's Translation: