[61] My worthy friend, the Bellman, had promised to supply an additional stanza, but the business of assisting the lamplighter, chimney-sweeper, etc., with complimentary verses for their worthy masters and mistresses, pressing on him at this season, he was obliged to decline it.
[62] Imitated from the introductory couplet to the 'Economy of Vegetation:'
'Stay your rude steps, whose throbbing breasts unfold
The legion friends of glory and of gold.'
This sentiment is here expanded into four lines.
[63] For the os-culation, or kissing of circles and other curves, see Huygens, who has veiled this delicate and inflammatory subject in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
[64] A curve supposed to resemble the sprig of ivy, from which it has its name, and therefore peculiarly adapted to poetry.
[65] Water has been supposed, by several of our philosophers, to be capable of the passion of love. Some later experiments appear to favour this idea. Water, when pressed by a moderate degree of heat, has been observed to simper, or simmer (as it is more usually called). The same does not hold true of any other element.
[66] Vide modern prints of nymphs and shepherds dancing to nothing at all.
[67] Imitated from the following genteel and sprightly lines in the first canto of the 'Loves of the Plants':