[Footnote 52: Odin, or Woden, was the great legislator and hero of the Goths. They tell us of him, that, being subject to fits, he persuaded his followers, that during those trances he received inspirations, from whence he dictated his laws. He is said to have been the inventor of the Runic characters.--POPE.] [Footnote 53: Pope borrowed this idea from the passage he quotes at ver. 179, where Chaucer describes Statius as standing Upon an iron pillar strong That painted was, all endelong, With tigers' blood in every place.] [Footnote 54: These were the priests and poets of those people, so celebrated for their savage virtue. Those heroic barbarians accounted it a dishonour to die in their beds, and rushed on to certain death in the prospect of an after-life, and for the glory of a song from their bards in praise of their actions.--POPE. The opinion was general among the Goths that men who died natural deaths went into vast caves underground, all dark and miry, full of noisome creatures, and there for ever grovelled in stench and misery. On the contrary, all who died in battle went to the hall of Odin, their god of war, where they were entertained at infinite tables in perpetual feasts, carousing in bowls made of the skulls of the enemies they had slain.--SIR W. TEMPLE.] [Footnote 55: It shone lighter than a glass, And made well more than it was, To semen every thing, ywis, As kind of thinge Fames is.--POPE.] [Footnote 56: Addison's Vision: "On a sudden the trumpet sounded; the whole fabric shook, and the doors flew open."] [Footnote 57: Milton, Par. Lost, i. 717: The roof was fretted gold.--WAKEFIELD.] [Footnote 58: The exterior of Chaucer's House of Fame, Both the castle, and the tower And eke the hall, and every bower was of beryl, which Pope transfers to the inside of the building. Chaucer says of the interior that Every wall Of it, and floor, and roof, and all Was plated half a foote thick Of gold. This gold was covered, as grass clothes a meadow, with jewelled ornaments Fine, of the finest stones fair That men read in the Lapidaire.] [Footnote 59: Milton, Par. Lost, i. 726: From the arched roof Pendent by subtle magic many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed With Naptha and Asphaltus, yielded light As from a sky.--WAKEFIELD.] [Footnote 60: Addison's Vision: "A band of historians took their station at each door."] [Footnote 61: Alexander the Great. The tiara was the crown peculiar to the Asian princes. His desire to be thought the son of Jupiter Ammon, caused him to wear the horns of that god, and to represent the same upon his coins, which was continued by several of his successors.--POPE.] [Footnote 62: Dryden, Ode to St. Cecilia: A dragon's fiery form belied the god.--BOWLES.]