Since Homer is placed by Chaucer upon a pillar of iron, he places Virgil upon iron tinned over, to indicate that the Æneis was based upon the Iliad and was both more polished and less vigorous. The sulphur upon which Claudian stands, is typical of the hell he described in his poem on the Rape of Proserpine. Ovid, the poet of love, is put upon a pillar of copper, because copper was the metal of Venus; and Lucan, like Homer, has a pillar of iron allotted to him because he celebrated in his Pharsalia the wars of Cæsar and Pompey, and, as Chaucer says, Iron Martes metal is, Which that god is of battaile.] [Footnote 81: Wakefield supposes that "modest majesty" was suggested by Milton's phrase, "modest pride," in Par. Lost, iv. 310.] [Footnote 82: For this expression Wakefield quotes Dryden, Æn. vi. 33. There too in living sculpture might be seen The mad affection of the Cretan queen.] [Footnote 83: The rhyme is dearly purchased by such an inexcusable inversion as "silver blight."] [Footnote 84: Pindar being seated in a chariot, alludes to the chariot races he celebrated in the Grecian games. The swans are emblems of poetry, their soaring posture intimates the sublimity and activity of his genius. Neptune presided over the Isthmian, and Jupiter over the Olympian games.--POPE.] [Footnote 85: A. Philips, Past. v. 95. He sinks into the cords with solemn pace, To give the swelling tones a bolder grace.--WAKEFIELD.] [Footnote 86: "Distorted," which is always used in an unfavourable sense, is a disparaging epithet by which to characterise the vehement eagerness of the champions. It is not clear who or what they "threaten," whether the horses or each other, and in either case there is nothing "great" in the image of a person uttering threats in a "distorted posture."] [Footnote 87: This expresses the mixed character of the odes of Horace: the second of these verses alludes to that line of his, Spiritum Graiæ tenuem camoenæ, as another which follows, to Exegi monumentum ære perennius. The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his third book: Me fabulosæ Vulture in Apulo Altricis extra limen Apuliæ, Ludo fatigatumque somno, Fronde nova puerum palumbes Texêre; mirum quod foret omnibus-- Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra Lauroque, collataque myrto, Non sine Dîs animosus infans. Which may be thus Englished: While yet a child, I chanced to stray, And in a desert sleeping lay; The savage race withdrew, nor dared To touch the muses' future bard; But Cytherea's gentle dove Myrtles and bays around me spread, And crowned your infant poet's head Sacred to music and to love.--POPE. In addition to these passages, he had in his mind Hor. Epist. lib. i. 19, quoted by Wakefield: Temperat Archilochi Musam pede mascula Sappho, Temperat Alcæus.]