[74] Mr. Higgins does not mean to deny that Solomon was really King of Judæa. The epithet fabled applies to that empire over the Genii, which the retrospective generosity of the Arabian fabulists has bestowed upon this monarch.
[75] It was under this shape that Venus was worshipped in Phœnicia. Mr. Higgins thinks it was the Venus Urania, or Celestial Venus; in allusion to which, he supposes that the Phœnician grocers first introduced the practice of preserving sugar-loaves in blue or sky-coloured paper. He also believes that the conical form of the original grenadiers' caps was typical of the loves of Mars and Venus.
[76] The doctrine of mathematics. Pope calls her mad Mathesis.—Vide Johnson's Dictionary.
[77] The harmony and imagery of these lines are imperfectly imitated from the following exquisite passage in the Economy of Vegetation:
'Gnomes, as you now dissect, with hammers fine,
The granite rock, the noduled flint calcine;
Grind with strong arm the circling Chertz betwixt,
Your pure ka—o—lins and Pe—tunt—ses mixt.'
Canto 2, line 297.
[78] This line affords a striking instance of the sound conveying an echo to the sense. I would defy the most unfeeling reader to repeat it over without accompanying it by some corresponding gesture imitative of the action described.