[L. 62.] Cynthie, Cynthia, Propertius' mistress.
[L. 64.] See Virgil, Ecl. x.
[L. 66.] Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his Tristia.
[L. 73.] un tel foudre. According to French grammars, foudre is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: La foudre a éclaté. C'est un foudre de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where foudre, poetic for 'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (Hor. IV. v. and Héracl. I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, Mar.-Thér.
[L. 93.] Castor, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.
[Ll. 95, 96.] Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see Aen. ix.
[L. 99.] Le Brun. 'Son of the author of the poem La Religion, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.' (Note of A. Chénier.)
[L. 102.] leçons d'Ascra, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem Ascraeum carmen, Georg. ii. 176.
[L. 103.] Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais. Chénier, in another epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans les douze palais où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next paleys to abyde,' Compl. Mars, 53. See N.E.D. Brazais had written a poem, L'Année, which never appeared in print.
[L. 105.] A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge, qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.