[480] Sir George Brown. He was angry that the poet should make him talk nothing but nonsense: and in truth one could not well blame him.—Warburton.
This is one instance out of many in which Pope took unwarrantable liberties with private character. Spence had been told that the description "was the very picture of the man."
[481] A cane diversified with darker spots.—Wakefield.
The "nice conduct" of canes is ridiculed by Addison in No. 103 of the Tatler. A man of fashion, with "a cane very curiously clouded, and a blue ribbon to hang it on his wrist," protests that the "knocking it upon his shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it on his mouth are such great reliefs to him in conversation that he does not know how to be good company without it." A second beau is warned that his cane must be forfeited if "he walks with it under his arm, brandishes it in the air, or hangs it on a button."
[482] In allusion to Achilles's oath in Homer, Il. i.—Pope.
But by this scepter solemnly I swear
Which never more green leaf or growing branch shall bear.
Dryden's Trans.—Wakefield.
[483] Dryden's Æn. i. 770:
If yet he lives and draws this vital air.
[484] Borrowed from Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Granville:
The long contended honours of the field.—Holt White.