[L. 16.] Sans aller refers to me, the object in the principal clause. Sans que j'aille would be better syntax. But the prepositional infinitive was used in older French in a still more disconnected manner. 'Rends-le-moi sans te fouiller,' writes Molière, L'Avare I. iii., could easily be more explicit, with: 'without me or my searching you,' See Haase, § 85 D.
[Ll. 16-19.] See Boileau, Sat. ix. 221-5, who is here excellently satirized.
[L. 28.] An allusion to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. La Fontaine, Fab. III. xi.
[L. 41.] Non d'aller. An abrupt change in the construction. The meaning is: 'But it is not useful to go...'
[Ll. 47-60.] The germ of all this development is in a letter of Chénier to his friend de Pange: 'Tu sais combien mes muses sont vagabondes. Elles ne peuvent achever promptement un seul projet; elles en font marcher cent à la fois (a general marshalling his troops, ll. 49, 50). Elles font un pied à ce poème et une épaule à celui-là. Ils boitent tous et ils seront sur pieds tous ensemble (The image of the sculptor, ll. 51-6). Elles les couvent tous à la fois; ils sortiront tous à la fois' (the simile of incubation, ll. 57-60).
[L. 59.] Sauront. This use of savoir, as also that of pouvoir, so frequent in French, in sentences where the English translation is fain to omit them, is a French idiom, especially noticeable in the language of the seventeenth century. An Englishman cannot help being made aware of this feature when reading Molière, for instance.
[L. 71.] des traits. Whatever there is that is salient, striking, brilliant, in a literary composition, LITTRÉ says, s.v. 31°: fine touches.
[Ll. 73.] inspire. For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.
[Ll. 79-92.] Here the simile of the founder has displaced that of the potter in the letter quoted above: 'L'argile que j'avais amollie et humectée pour en faire un pot à l'eau, sous mon doigt capricieux, devient une tasse ou une théière.'
[L. 94.] Cf. La Fontaine, Épître à Mgr de Soissons.