Dugald Stewart remarks upon this line: "I have sometimes thought that Gray had in view the two different effects of words already described; the effect of some in awakening the powers of conception and imagination; and that of others in exciting associated emotions." 111. "We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some of his choruses; above all in the last of _Caractacus_: 'Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread!' etc." (Gray). 113. _Wakes thee now_. Cf. _Elegy_, 48: "Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre." 115. "[Greek: Dios pros ornicha theion]. _Olymp._ ii. 159. Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise" (Gray). Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ v. 4, 42: "Like to an Eagle, in his kingly pride Soring through his wide Empire of the aire, To weather his brode sailes." Cowley, in his translation of Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, calls Pindar "the Theban swan" ("Dircaeum cycnum"): "Lo! how the obsequious wind and swelling air The Theban Swan does upward bear." 117. _Azure deep of air_. Cf. Euripides, _Med._ 1294: [Greek: es aitheros bathos]; and Lucretius, ii. 151: "Aëris in magnum fertur mare." Cowley has "Row through the trackless ocean of air;" and Shakes. (_T. of A._ iv. 2), "this sea of air." 118, 119. The MS. reads: "Yet when they first were open'd on the day Before his visionary eyes would run." D. Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) remarks that "Gray, in describing the infantine reveries of poetical genius, has fixed with exquisite judgment on that class of our conceptions which are derived from _visible_ objects." 120. _With orient hues_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ i. 546: "with orient colours waving." 122. The MS. has "Yet never can he fear a vulgar fate." 123. Cf. K. Philips: "Still shew'd how much the good outshone the great." We append, as a curiosity of criticism, Dr. Johnson's comments on this ode, from his _Lives of the Poets_. The Life of Gray has been called "the worst in the series," and perhaps this is the worst part of it:[4] "My process has now brought me to the _wonderful_ 'Wonder of Wonders,' the two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common-sense at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of 'The Progress of Poetry.'