[679] Shells.
[680] Athos was a mountain in Roumelia which the sculptor Dinocrates proposed to hew into a statue of Alexander. Our author refers to this; Byron has also an allusion to it in the twelfth canto of his “Don Juan.”
[681] The enemies of William III. often alluded to the livid colour of his countenance, and Boileau in his wretched Ode sur la prise de Namur also speaks of “Nassau blème.”
[682] The Prince of Orange ordered in 1672 the dykes in Holland to be opened to delay the advance of the French army; hence the allusion to “bogs.”
[683] William III. became the adopted son of the Dutch republic on the death of his father in 1666, and on the proposal of John de Witt. Frenchmen pretend he was far more dictatorial in Holland than in England, and accuse him of having behaved ungratefully towards de Witt, his so-called “nurse.”
[684] When William III. returned to the Hague (1690), several princes who had joined the League of Augsburg came to compliment him; it was even rumoured that the Elector of Bavaria had some time to wait before he could obtain an audience.
[685] In the original archonte, archon, the chief magistrate in ancient Athens.
[686] This seems to refer to the siege of Mons (1690), which William III. did not venture to raise.
[687] The Emperor of Germany.
[688] The arms of the house of Austria proper.