[516] Dryden's Alexander's Feast:
A present deity! they shout around:
A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.—Steevens.
[517] Vide Ariosto, Canto xxxiv.—Pope.
From the catalogue which follows it appears that, by "all things lost on earth," Pope meant only such things as, in his opinion, were hypocritical, foolish, and frivolous. These mounted to the lunar sphere when they had finished their course here below,—a career very short in instances like the "tears of heirs," and, perhaps, very long in instances like the butterflies preserved in the cabinets of collectors.
[518] Apparently Pope had the erroneous idea that distinguished soldiers were men of dull and ponderous minds.
[519] The alms would not be "lost on earth," however unprofitable they might be to the alms-givers, from whom they had been extorted by fear instead of proceeding from a benevolent disposition.
[520] Dryden's Œdipus, act 2:
The smiles of courtiers, and the harlot's tears,
The tradesman's oaths, and mourning of an heir,
Are truths, to what priests tell.—Holt White.
[521] Denham, in Cooper's Hill, gave him a hint:
their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.—Wakefield.