Aeneas was ever in Italy,' dated 'de Caen ce 20 Decembre 1663,' is given by Segrais in his Eneïde.

P. 173, l. 21. animamque in vulnere ponit. Georgic. iv., 1. 238 (animasque... ponunt) :

'Prone to Revenge, the Bees a wrathful Race,
When once provok'd assault th' Agressor's Face;
And through the purple Veins a passage find,

There fix their Stings and leave their Souls behind.'

Dryden.

P. 174, 1. 30. Priamus. In the first edition Atis. After 'Second Book,' the first edition reads, 'Atis then the favourite companion of Ascanius had a better right than he, though I know he was introduced by Virgil to do honour to the family from whom Julius Caesar was descended on the mother's side.' The correction is made in the third edition. I have not been able to find the reading of the second. P. 178, 1. 6. the author of the Dauphin's Virgil; Ruæus (Charles de La Rue); his edition of Virgil appeared in 1675; the passage recollected by Dryden here is 'Segresius in egregia Præfatione ad Gallicam Æneidos interpretationem.'

1. 17. Tasso. On the relations of the two characters, Godfrey and Rinaldo, see Tasso's own views in the Allegoria del Poema, printed in the first editions of the Jerusalem Delivered (1581); and Spenser's, in the Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh: 'In which I have followed all the antique Poets historicall: first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis ; then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of Aeneas; after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando; and lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, namely, that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other, named Politice, in his Godfredo.'

เ

P. 182, 1. 1o. invulnerable. Dryden had forgot, what he must certainly have known, that the fiction of Achilles being invulnerable, bears date long posterior to the days of Homer. In the Iliad he is actually wounded.' Scott.

1. 11. Bernardo Tasso, father of Torquato, wrote an epic poem on Amadis of Gaul (Amadigi), with a continuation (Floridante); he is frequently spoken of in his son's Discorsi. The pathetic story how he sacrificed his fame as a learned poet to save his honour as a courtier is told by Torquato Tasso in his Apologia, 1585; it is not irrelevant in the history of the dramatic and narrative Unities: Know, therefore, that my father being at the Court of Spain in the service of his master, the Prince of Salerno, was persuaded by the

great ones of that Court to make a poem of the fabulous story of Amadis; which in the judgement of many, and mine particularly, is the most beautiful of all that kind, and perhaps the most wholesome; because in sentiment and conduct it surpasses all, and in variety of incidents it yields to none, before or since composed. Having then accepted this advice, and being one who most completely understood the Art of Poetry, and especially that of Aristotle, he resolved to make a poem of one action, and framed his fable on the desperation of Amadis for the jealousy of Oriana, ending with the battle between Lisuarte and Cildadan, and many of the other more important things, befallen before or thereafter succeeding, he narrated in episodes or in digressions, as we call them. This was the design, which no master of the art could have made better or fairer. But in the end, not to lose the name of good courtier, he forbore to keep by force that of loftiest poet; and you shall hear in what manner.

'He was reading some books of the poem to the Prince, his master; and when he began to read, the rooms were full of gentlemen listening; but at last they were all withdrawn; from which thing he took argument that the Unity of Action was in itself little delightful, and not through want of art in himself; inasmuch as he had treated it in point of art beyond censure; and in this he was no whit deceived. But perhaps he would have been content with that which contented Antimachus of Colophon, to whom Plato was of more account than a multitude, if the Prince had not added his command to the general persuasion; wherefore he was bound to obey,

"But with heart grieving and a darken'd brow"; because he knew that with the unity of the fable his poem lost much of its perfection' (Prose di Torquato Tasso, ed. Guasti, Firenze, 1875, i. p. 319).

1. 28. God-smith. The word is used in a different sense in Absalom and Achitophel:

'Gods they had tried of every shape and size

That godsmiths could produce, or priests devise.'

1. 29. no warluck. Scottish superstitions were being studied

about this time by Pepys and others; compare Prior, Alma: 'The commentators on old Ari

stotle ('tis urg'd) in judgment vary;

They to their own conceits have brought

The image of his general thought,

Just as the melancholic eye

Sees fleets and armies in the sky;

And to the poor apprentice ear

The bells sound "Whittington, Lord Mayor."

The conjurer thus explains his scheme,
Thus spirits walk, and prophets dream;
North Britons thus have second-sight;

And Germans, free from gun-shot, fight.'

P. 184, 1. 12. a kind of St. Swithin hero. Cf. Perrault, Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes en ce qui regarde la Poésie, 1692 (this is the third volume of the series of four, completed in 1696), p. 135 (L'Abbé loquitur): 'Cependant puisque Virgile y a trouvé son compte, je veux bien qu'il l'appelle Père tant qu'il luy plaira; mais je ne puis souffrir qu'il le fasse pleurer à tout moment. Il pleure en voyant les tableaux qui représentent les avantures du siége de Troye; non seulement en jettant quelques pleurs, comme le pouvoit permettre l'amour tendre de la patrie, mais en se noyant le visage d'un fleuve de larmes, et en pleurant à trois reprises sur le mesme sujet, ce qui ne convient point à une douleur de cette nature. Il pleure en quittant Aceste, en perdant Palinure, en voyant Didon dans les enfers, où cette tendresse excessive ne sied point à un Heros. Mais ce qui est absolument insupportable, c'est la crainte qui le saisit en tous rencontres. Il tremble de peur, et ses membres sont glacez de froid, en voyant une tempeste. La peur le penetre jusques dans la moüelle des os, lorsqu'il voit les Dieux qu'il avoit apportez de Troye qui luy parlent la nuit. La mesme peur luy court encore dans les os, en arrachant les branches dont il dégouta du sang. Cette manière de trembler en toutes sortes d'occasions ne me semble point héroïque, ny convenir au fondateur de l'Empire Romain et au Père de tous les Cesars.'

1. 13. One of these censors. Dryden was thinking (with grief) of St. Évremond, Réflexions sur nos Traducteurs, 1673: 'Vous remarquerez encore que toutes ces lamentations commencent presque aussitôt que la tempête. Les vents soufflent impétueusement, l'air s'obscurcit; il tonne, il éclaire, les vagues deviennent grosses et furieuses; voilà ce qui arrive dans tous les orages. Il n'y a jusque-là ni mât qui se rompe, ni voiles qui se déchirent, ni rames brisées, ni gouvernail perdu, ni ouverture par où l'eau puisse entrer dans le navire; et c'était là du moins qu'il fallait attendre à se désoler: car il y a mille jeunes gens en Angleterre, et autant de femmes en Hollande, qui s'étonnent à peine où le héros témoigne son désespoir.'

1. 30. Mr. Moyle; see p. 138, and note.

P. 186, 1. 10. Sir Robert Howard. The old quarrel of 1668 seems to have been appeased by this time.

P. 187, 1. 32. Dr. Cudworth (1617-1688). Author of the True Intellectual System of the Universe, 1678. See Dr. Tulloch's Rational Theology in England.

P. 189, 1. 14. his two translators. See below, note on p. 220, 1. 20.
P. 190, 1. 8. presented; i. e. gave him a present.

P. 191, 1. 14. Dares Phrygius. Read Dictys Cretensis, iii.

p. 15.

1. 15. slain cowardly; i. e. in a cowardly manner by Achilles; Dictys tells how Hector, with a small company of retainers, was caught in an ambush at the ford, when going to meet Penthesilea.

1. 18. Rinaldo. The objection that Rinaldo was not historical was made in Tasso's lifetime, and answered by him in a letter of February, 1585: 'Di Reginaldo si fa nell' istoria menzione.'

P. 192, 1. 30. Sir Henry Wotton : 'An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' See his Life by Izaak Walton.

P. 193, l. 1. One who imitates Boccalini. Trajano Boccalini (15561613) began the publication of his Ragguagli di Parnasso, News of Parnassus, in 1612, at Venice; the book was translated into English by Henry Cary, Earl of Monmouth, in 1656 (Advertisements from Parnassus in two Centuries, with the Politick Touchstone .). It has left some traces in English Literature, e. g. in the story of the critic presented with the chaff for his pains in sifting (Spectator, No. 291), and in the more famous case of the Laconian sentenced to read the History of Guicciardini. See Mestica, Trajano Boccalini e la letteratura critica e politica del seicento, 1878. There were many imitators of Boccalini, but for this one it is perhaps unnecessary to make researches.

P. 194, 1. 24. splendid miracles. Speciosa miracula. Hor., A. P.

144.

1. 32. Tasso, in one of his Discourses; i. e. in the second, Dell' Arte Poetica, 1587: 'Ma sì come in Didone confuse di tanto spazio l'ordine de' tempi, per aver occasione di mescolare fra la severità dell' altre materie i piacevolissimi ragionamenti d' amore, e per assegnare un' alta ed ereditaria cagione della inimicizia fra Romani e Cartaginesi,' &c.

P. 195, 1. 26. Nec pars ulla magis. Trist. ii. 535.

P. 197, 1. 26. so strange. 'Mr. Malone here reads so strong; but strange here seems to signify alarming, or startling.'-SCOTT.

P. 198, 1. 15. Quid prohibetis. Ovid, Metam. vi. 349.

1. 22. Odysseis. The form is common, sometimes with mark of diæresis, Odysseïs (Dennis, Letters, 1695, p. 138); as a singular noun it goes along with Ilias here; so also in Spenser's Letter, quoted above in the note to p. 178. The spelling Odysses is also found, which sometimes seems to be plural (the Odysseys), going along with the Iliads. So Hobbes, 'the Iliads and Odysses of Homer,' 1676. Sometimes, however, it is singular, as in Pope's Essay on Homer (1715), p. 32, 'while the Iliad and Odysses remain.'

P. 199, 1. 26. There is a kind of invention in the imitation of Raphael.

Compare p. 200, 1. 5: 'for the draughts of both were taken from the ideas they had of Nature.' This is a repetition of the views already expounded in the Parallel of Poetry and Painting.

P. 202, 1. 1. Another French critic, whom I will not name. St. Évremond again, Sur les Poëmes des Anciens, 1685: 'Quelquefois les comparaisons nous tirent des objets qui nous occupent le plus, par la vaine image d'un autre objet, qui fait mal à propos une diversion.' Perrault is more emphatic on the subject of long-tailed similes: see the Spectator, No. 303. But Dryden had not the same reason for showing respect to Perrault. In the Character of M. St. Évremont Dryden had already made his complaint openly: 'It is true that as I am a religious admirer of Virgil I could wish that he had not discovered our father's nakedness'; he had also made more concessions to the adversary with regard to Aeneas than he was ready to confirm in 1697.

1. 13. similitudes . . . are not for tragedy. See vol. i. p. 223, l. 31, and note. Similes are, however, kept by Addison in his Cato, at the end of almost every Act, and 'So have I seen' remained a formula at any rate till Fielding's Tragedy of Tragedies.

1. 28. Perhaps meaning the allegory in Aen. iv. 175–188. P. 204, 1. 4. Pontanus. His edition of Virgil in fol., Augsburg, 1599.

1. 9. Junius and Tremellius. Commentators on the Scripture, mentioned by our author in the Religio Laici, where, speaking of Dickenson's translation of Père Simon's Critical History of the Old Testament, he calls it

"A treasure which if country curates buy,

They Junius and Tremellius may defy." SCOTT.

Emanuel Tremellius, 1510-1580, a converted Jew of Ferrara, turned Protestant and became Professor of Hebrew at Sedan. Franciscus Junius (or Du Jon), 1545-1602, was associated with Tremellius in a Latin translation of the Bible; he was the father of Francis Junius, the philologist, and grandfather of Isaac Vossius.

1. 35. Ronsard. Préface sur la Franciade. Le poëme héroïque, qui est tout guerrier, comprend seulement les actions d'une année entière, et semble que Virgile y ait failly, selon que luy-mesme l'escrit :

"Annuus exactis completur mensibus orbis

Ex quo relliquias divinique ossa parentis
Condidimus terra."

Il y avoit desja un an passé quand il fit les jeux funèbres de son père en Sicile, et toutefois il n'aborda de long temps après en Italie.'

P. 208, 1. 22. these cant words. Compare Ben Jonson's dissertation