Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem
Stella micat. Ovid.—Pope.
Dryden, Æneis, v. 1092:
Descends, and draws behind a trail of light.—Wakefield.
[523] These two lines added, for the same reason, to keep in view the machinery of the poem.—Pope.
Dryden's Æneis, v. 691:
And as it flew
A train of following flames ascending drew;
Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way
Across the skies, as falling meteors play.
[524] The promenades in the Mall lasted till the middle of the reign of George III., and it would appear from this line that they were enlivened by music.—Croker.
[525] Rosamond's lake was a small oblong piece of water near the Pimlico Gate of St. James's Park. When it was done away with, about the middle of the last century, the public, unwilling to lose the romantic name, transferred it to the dirty pond in the Green Park, which has, in its turn, been filled up.—Croker.
[526] John Partridge was a ridiculous stargazer, who in his almanacks every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope, and the King of France, then at war with the English.—Pope.