10. It is one of these which opens with the two sonorous lines—
Aesopi statuam ingentem posuere Attici Servumque aeterna collocarunt in basi,
which so powerfully affected the imagination of De Quincey.
11. In the poem as it has come down to us the refrain comes in at irregular intervals; but the most plausible reconstitution of a somewhat corrupt and disordered text makes it recur after every fourth line, thus making up the twenty-two stanzas mentioned in the title.