[116] What eye of taste ever beheld the dancing fawn or the immortal Canova’s dancing girl, and doubted of this power? Pindar long ago assigned this to sculpture, and was never censured for his poetic boldness:
Ἑργα δἑ ζωοἱσιν ερπὁν-
τεσσἱ θ' ομοἱα κἑλευθοι
Φἑρον.
Olym. vii. 95. Ed.
[117] Pope never felt with Eloisa, and, therefore, slighted his own affected effusions. He had little intense feeling himself, and all the passionate parts of the epistle are manifestly borrowed from Eloisa’s own Latin letters. Ed.
[118] It is still at Caen Wood. N.
[119] Spence.
[120] Earlier than this, viz. in 1688, Milton’s Paradise Lost had been published with great success by subscription, in folio, under the patronage of Mr. (afterwards lord) Somers. R.
[121] This may very well be doubted. The interference of the Dutch booksellers stimulated Lintot to publish cheap editions, the greater sale of which among the people probably produced his large profits. Ed.
[122] Spence.
[123] Spence.
[124] As this story was related by Pope himself, it was most probably true. Had it rested on any other authority, I should have suspected it to have been, borrowed from one of Poggio’s Tales. De Jannoto Vicecomite. J.B.
[125] On this point, see notes on Halifax’s life in this edition.