[Lines 311, 312: Prismatic glass.--A glass prism by which
light is refracted, and the component rays, which are of different
colors being refracted at different angles show what is called a
spectrum or series of colored bars, in the order violet, indigo, blue,
green, yellow, orange, red.]
[Line 328: Fungoso--One of the characters in Ben Jonson's
_Every Man out of his Humor_ who assumed the dress and tried to
pass himself off for another.]
[Line 356: Alexandrine--A line of twelve syllables, so called
from a French poem on the Life of Alexander the Great, written in that
meter. The poet gives a remarkable example in the next line.]
[Line 361: Sir John Denham, a poet of the time of Charles I. (1615-1668).
His verse is characterized by considerable smoothness and ingenuity of
rhythm, with here and there a passage of some force--Edmund Waller
(1606-1687) is celebrated as one of the refiners of English poetry.
His rank among English poets, however, is very subordinate.]
[Line 366: Zephyr.--Zephyrus, the west wind personified by the
poets and made the most mild and gentle of the sylvan deities.]
[Lines 366-373: In this passage the poet obviously intended to make
"the sound seem an echo to the sense". The success of the attempt has
not been very complete except in the second two lines, expressing the
dash and roar of the waves, and in the last two, expressing the skimming,
continuous motion of Camilla. What he refers to is the onomatopoeia of
Homer and Virgil in the passages alluded to. Ajax, the son of
Telamon, was, next to Achilles, the bravest of all the Greeks in the
Trojan war. When the Greeks were challenged by Hector he was chosen
their champion and it was in their encounter that he seized a huge stone
and hurled it at Hector.
Thus rendered by Pope himself:
"Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock
Applied each nerve, and swinging round on high,
With force tempestuous let the ruin fly
The huge stone thundering through his buckler broke."
Camilla, queen of the Volsci, was brought up in the woods, and,
according to Virgil, was swifter than the winds. She led an army to
assist Turnus against Aeneas.
"Dura pan, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos.
Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
Gramina nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas;
Vel mare per medium fluctu suspensa tumenti,
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret aequore plantas."
_Aen_. vii 807-811.
Thus rendered by Dryden.
"Outstripped the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flew o'er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain;
She swept the seas, and as she skimmed along,
Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung"]
[Lines 374-381: This passage refers to Dryden's ode, _Alexander's
Feast_, or _The Power of Music_. Timotheus, mentioned in it, was
a musician of Boeotia, a favorite of Alexander's, not the great musician
Timotheus, who died before Alexander was born, unless, indeed, Dryden
have confused the two.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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