[3] Some of Sir Robert Howard's songs were set to music. One of them, beginning, "O Charon, gentle Charon," is quoted as a popular air in one of Shadwell's plays.
[4] Rete Mirabile. Dryden.
[5] Sir Robert Howard's collection contains a translation of the Fourth Book of the Æneid, under the title of "The Loves of Dido and Æneas."
[6] Sir Robert also translated the Achilleis of Statius, an author whom Dryden seldom mentions without censuring his turgid and bombastic style of poetry. The story of this neglected epic turns on the juvenile adventures of Achilles.
[7] The annotations on the Achilleis.
[8] Sir Robert Howard's poems contain a "Panegyric to the King," concerning which he says, in the preliminary address to the reader, "I should be a little dissatisfied with myself to appear public in his praise just when he was visibly restoring to power, did not the reading of the Panegyric vindicate the writing of it, and, besides my affirmation, assure the reader, it was written when the king deserved the praise as much as now, but was separated farther from the power; which was about three years since, when I was prisoner in Windsor Castle, being the best diversion I could then find for my own condition, to think how great his virtues were for whom I suffered, though in so small a measure compared to his own, that I rather blush at it, than believe it meritorious."
[9] The volume begins with the "Poem to the King," and ends with a "Panegyric to General Monk."
Hic situs est Rufus qui pulso vindice quondam,
Imperium asseruit non sibi sed patriæ.Dryden.
[11] The author speaks the language of astrology, in which geniture signifies nativity.