[L. 71.] Des hommes immortels, Corneille and Racine.
[L. 73.] instruits. The s of instruits should be deleted.
[L. 92.] pour nord. Nord here stands for étoile du nord or étoile polaire. 'Perdre la tramontane (the Mediterranean name of the Pole Star), la boussole, le nord,' are familiar expressions, meaning 'to be puzzled, not to know which way to turn, to lose one's head.'
[L. 95.] du plus lointain Nérée. Poetical for Océan. Nereus, an ancient sea-god. Cf. une Cybèle neuve below, p. 91, l. 133.
[L. 100.] Horace, Ep. ad Pis., 156.
[L. 130.] Bailly, a French astronomer (1736-1793). He wrote an Histoire de l'Astronomie.
[Ll. 133.] Une Cybèle. Poetical for the earth, like Nérèe the sea, p. 90, l. 95.
[L. 138.] Cusco was once the capital of Peru. This shows that Chénier was then meditating the poem L'Amérique, of which he wrote only fragments.
[L. 143.] Négligeât. In colloquial French this would be, 'Pensez-vous que leur main négligerait...?' In the same way, 'je ne pense pas qu'il vienne' or 'pensez-vous qu'il vienne' would be '... qu'il viendra.'
[L. 163.] All the following passage is imitated from Petronius, Satyr, v.