[Footnote 65: A concise and masterly stroke, which at once sets before
us the mixture of character, which appears in that extraordinary man,
Julius Caesar.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 66: "In other illustrious men you will observe that each
possessed some one shining quality, which was the foundation of his
fame: in Epaminondas all the virtues are found united; force of body,
eloquence of expression, vigour of mind, contempt of riches, gentleness
of disposition, and, what is chiefly to be regarded, courage and conduct
in war."--Diodorus Siculus, lib. xv.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 67: Timoleon had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in
the battle between the Argives and Corinthians; but afterwards killed
him when he affected the tyranny, preferring his duty to his country to
all the obligations of blood.--POPE.
Pope followed the narrative of Diodorus. Plutarch says that Timoleon did
not strike the blow, but stood by weeping, and giving his passive
countenance to the assassins. Some of the Corinthians applauded, and
some execrated his conduct. He was soon overtaken with remorse, and
shunning the haunts of men he passed years in anguish of mind.]
[Footnote 68: This triplet was not in the first edition.]
[Footnote 69: In the first edition,
Here too the wise and good their honours claim,
Much-suff'ring heroes of less noisy fame.
Pope did not perceive that in the attempt to improve the poetry he had
introduced an inconsistency. He winds up the preceding group of patriots
with the "wise Aurelius," whom he celebrates as an example of "unbounded
virtue," and the "much-suffering heroes" could not be instances of "less
guilty fame" than a man whose virtue was unbounded. The classification
was probably suggested by Addison's Vision in the Tatler of the Three
Roads of Life, and having his original in his mind when he composed his
poem, Pope avoided the inconsistency which he subsequently imported into
the passage. "The persons," says Addison, "who travelled up this great
path, were such whose thoughts were bent upon doing eminent services to
mankind, or promoting the good of their country. On each side of this
great road were several paths. These were most of them covered walks,
and received into them men of retired virtue, who proposed to themselves
the same end of their journey, though they chose to make it in shade and
obscurity."]
[Footnote 70: The names which follow are inappropriate examples of "fair
virtue's _silent_ train." The first on the list spent his days in
promulgating his philosophy, and they were all energetic public
characters who made a stir in the world. When Pope originated the
expression, he must have been thinking of the unobtrusive virtues of
private life, and he probably added the illustrations later without
observing the incongruity.]
[Footnote 71: Aristides, who for his great integrity was distinguished
by the appellation of the Just. When his countrymen would have banished
him by the ostracism, where it was the custom for every man to sign the
name of the person he voted to exile in an oyster-shell, a peasant, who
could not write, came to Aristides to do it for him, who readily signed
his own name.--POPE.]
[Footnote 72: Who, when he was about to drink the hemlock, charged his
son to forgive his enemies, and not to revenge his death on those
Athenians who had decreed it.--WARTON.
He was condemned to death B. C. 317, at the age of 85, on the charge of
treason to his country. Mistrusting the ability of Athens to maintain
its independence, he connived at the dominion of the Macedonian kings.
Many of those who admit his integrity contend that his policy was
mistaken and unpatriotic. His party regained the ascendancy after his
death, honoured his remains with a public funeral, and erected a statue
of brass to his memory.]
[Footnote 73: Very unpoetically designated. Agis might as well have been
left out, if all that could be said of him was that he was "not the last
of Spartan names."--BOWLES.
Agis, king of Sparta, was celebrated for his attempt to restore the
ancient Spartan regulations. Especially he was anxious to resume the
excess of land possessed by the rich and divide it among the poor. He
failed in his design, and was dethroned, and beheaded. At his execution
one of the officers of justice shed tears. "Lament me not," said Agis;
"I am happier than my murderers."]
[Footnote 74: In the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Cato sided with
Pompey, and when the cause was lost, he stabbed himself in the bowels to
avoid being captured. He was found by his friends insensible, but alive,
and a physician began to sew up the wound. Cato recovered his
consciousness, pushed away the physician, tore open the wound, and
expired.]
[Footnote 75: A horrible spectre appeared to Brutus while he sat
meditating in his tent at night. "What art thou?" said Brutus, "and what
is thy business with me?" "I am thy evil genius," replied the spectre;
"thou wilt see me at Philippi." At Philippi the spectre rose up again
before him on the night preceding the battle in which he suffered a
total defeat. He destroyed himself in the night which followed.]
[Footnote 76: In the midst of the Temple, nearest the throne of Fame,
are placed the greatest names in learning of all antiquity. These are
described in such attitudes as express their different characters. The
columns on which they are raised are adorned with sculptures, taken from
the most striking subjects of their works, which sculpture bears a
resemblance, in its manner and character, to the manner and character of
their writings.--POPE.
This was a trite device, and is poorly applied in the present instance.
"The manner and character of the writings" of Homer, Virgil, Pindar,
Horace, Aristotle, and Cicero could hardly have been described in a
vaguer and more common-place way.]
[Footnote 77:
From the dees many a pillere,
Of metal that shone not full clere, &c.
Upon a pillere saw I stonde
That was of lede and iron fine,
Him of the sect Saturnine,
The Ebraike Josephus the old, &c.
Upon an iron piller strong,
That painted was all endelong,
With tigers' blood in every place,
The Tholosan that highte Stace,
That bare of Thebes up the fame, &c.--POPE.]
[Footnote 78:
Full wonder hye on a pillere
Of iron, he the great Omer,
And with him Dares and Titus, &c.--POPE.]
[Footnote 79: Pope has selected from Homer only three subjects as the
most interesting: Diomed wounding Venus, Hector slaying Patroclus, and
the same Hector dragged along at the wheels of Achilles' chariot. Are
these the most affecting and striking incidents of the Iliad? But it is
highly worth remarking, that this very incident of dragging the body of
Hector thrice round the walls of Troy, is absolutely not mentioned by
Homer. Heyne thinks that Virgil, for he first mentioned it, adopted the
circumstance from some Greek tragedy on the subject.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 80:
There saw I stand on a pillere
That was of tinned iron cleere,
The Latin poete Virgyle,
That hath bore up of a great while
The fame of pious AEneas.
And next him on a pillere was
Of copper, Venus' clerk Ovide,
That hath y-sowen wondrous wide
The great God of Love's name--
Tho saw I on a pillere by
Of iron wrought full sternely,
The greate poet Dan Lucan,
That on his shoulders bore up than
As high as that I mighte see,
The fame of Julius and Pompee.
And next him on a pillere stoode
Of sulphur, like as he were woode,
Dan Claudian, sothe for to tell,
That bare up all the fame of hell, &c.--POPE.
Since Homer is placed by Chaucer upon a pillar of iron, he places Virgil
upon iron tinned over, to indicate that the AEneis 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 Caesar 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, AEn. 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 Graiae tenuem camoenae,
as another which follows, to
Exegi monumentum aere perennius.
The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his
third book:
Me fabulosae Vulture in Apulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliae,
Ludo fatigatumque somno,
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texere; mirum quod foret omnibus--
Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
Lauroque, collataque myrto,
Non sine Dis 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 Alcaeus.]
[Footnote 88: Horace speaking, in his ode to Augustus, of the relative
glory of different families, says that the Julian star shone among all
the rest as the moon shines among the lesser lights. The star referred
to the comet which appeared for seven days the year after the death of
Julius Caesar, and which was supposed to indicate that he had become a
deity in the heavens. A star was sculptured in consequence on his statue
in the forum.]
[Footnote 89: Surely he might have selected for the basso rilievos about
the statue of Horace ornaments more manly and characteristical of his
genius.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 90: A very tame and lifeless verse indeed, alluding to the
treatise of Aristotle "concerning animals."--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 91: Pope here refers to Aristotle's treatise on the Heavens.]
[Footnote 92: This beautiful attitude is copied from a statue in the
collection which Lady Pomfret presented to the University of
Oxford.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 93: Addison's translation of some lines from Sannazarius:
And thou whose rival tow'rs invade the skies.
[Footnote 94: Chaucer in a passage, not quoted by Pope, represents Fame
as enthroned upon "a seat imperial," which was formed of rubies.]
[Footnote 95:
Methoughte that she was so lite
That the length of a cubite
Was longer than she seemed to be;
But thus soon in a while she,
Herself tho wonderly straight,
That with her feet she carthe reight,
And with her head she touched heaven.--POPE.]
[Footnote 96: This notion of the enlargement of the temple is also from
Chaucer, who says that it became in length, breadth, and height, a
thousand times bigger than it was at first.]
[Footnote 97: The corresponding passage in Chaucer is not quoted by
Pope, who translated from their common original, Virg. AEn. iv. 181:
Cui quot sunt corpore plumae,
Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu,
Tot lunguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris.]
[Footnote 98:
I heard about her throne y-sung
That all the palays walles rung;
So sung the mighty Muse, she
That cleped is Calliope,
And her eighte sisters eke.--POPE.
Pope should have continued the extract; for his next four lines were
prompted by the succeeding four in Chaucer:
And evermore eternally
They sing of Fame as tho heard I;
"Heried be thou and thy name
Goddess of renown or fame."
"Heried" means praised.]
[Footnote 99:
I heard a noise approchen blive,
That fared as bees done in a hive,
Against their time of out flying;
Right such a manere murmering,
For all the world it seemed me.
Tho gan I look about and see
That there came entring into th' hall,
A right great company withal;
And that of sundry regions,
Of all kind of conditions, &c.--POPE.]
[Footnote 100: This description is varied with improvements from Dryden,
AEneis, vi. 958.
About the boughs an airy nation flew
Thick as the humming bees that hunt the golden dew:
The winged army roams the field around,
The rivers and the rocks remurmer to the sound.--WAKEFIELD.
He was assisted by another passage in Dryden's Flower and Leaf:
Thick as the college of the bees in May,
When swarming o'er the dusky fields they fly,
Now to the flow'rs, and intercept the sky.]
[Footnote 101: So in Chaucer all degrees, "poor and rich" fall down on
their knees before Fame and beg her to grant them their petition.]
[Footnote 102: "The tattling quality of age which, as Sir William
Davenant says, is always narrative." Dryden's Dedication of
Juvenal.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 103:
And some of them she granted sone,
And some she warned well and fair,
And some she granted the contrair--
Right as her sister dame Fortune
Is wont to serven in commune.--POPE.
Chaucer and Pope describe Fame as bestowing reputation upon some, and
traducing others, when their deserts were equal, but neither Pope nor
Chaucer touch upon the truth that the same person is commonly both
lauded and denounced. This is finely expressed by Milton, Samson
Agonistes, ver. 971:--
Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.]
[Footnote 104: The idea is from Chaucer:
They hadde good fame each deserved
Although they were diversely served.
Besides the passage in Chaucer, Pope evidently recalled Creech's
translation of Juvenal, Sat. xiii. 132.
ev'ry age relates
That equal crimes have met unequal fates;
That sins alike, unlike rewards have found,
And whilst this villain's crucified the other's crowned.]
[Footnote 105: In Chaucer, Fame sends for Eolus, who comes with two
trumpets, a golden trumpet, from which he gives forth praises, and a
black trumpet of brass, from which he sends forth blasts of slander. In
Pope the golden trumpet is blown by the muses, and the trump of slander
sounds without the mention of any agent.]
[Footnote 106:
Tho came the thirde companye,
And gan up to the dees to hye,
And down on knees they fell anone,
And saiden: We ben everichone
Folke that han full truely
Deserved fame rightfully,
And prayen you it might be knowe
Right as it is, and forthe blowe.
I grant, quoth she, for now me list
That your good works shall be wist.
And yet ye shall have better loos,
Right in despite of all your foos,
Than worthy is, and that anone.
Let now (quoth she) thy trumpe gone--
And certes all the breath that went
Out of his trumpes mouthe smel'd
As men a pot of baume held
Among a basket full of roses.--POPE.]
[Footnote 107: Prior, Carmen Seculare:
In comely rank call ev'ry merit forth,
Imprint on ev'ry act its standard worth.]
[Footnote 108: The whole tribe of the "good and just," who obtain any
fame at all, are said by Pope to get more than they deserve. For this
notion there is certainly no foundation, unless he meant that the fact
of desiring reputation deprived virtue of the title to it.]
[Footnote 109:
Therewithal there came anone
Another huge companye,
Of good folke--
What did this Eolus, but he
Took out his black trump of brass,
That fouler than the devil was:
And gan this trumpe for to blowe,
As all the world should overthrowe.
Throughout every regione
Went this foule trumpes soune,
As swift as pellet out of gunne,
When fire is in the powder runne.
And such a smoke gan oute wende,
Out of the foule trumpes ende, &c.--POPE.]
[Footnote 110: In his account of the reception given by Fame to her
various suppliants, Pope is detailing the manner in which praise and
blame are dispensed in this world, and it is a departure from reality to
consign the entire race of conquerors to oblivion. However little they
may deserve fame, they at least obtain it. The inconsistency is the more
glaring that when he describes the temple in the opening of the poem, he
tells us that,
Within stood heroes, who through loud alarms,
In bloody fields pursued renown in arms.
[Footnote 111:
I saw anone the fifth route,
That to this lady gan loute,
And down on knees anone to fall,
And to her they besoughten all,
To hiden their good workes eke,
And said, they yeven not a leke
For no fame ne such renowne;
For they for contemplacyoune,
And Goddes love hadde ywrought,
Ne of fame would they ought.--POPE.]
[Footnote 112:
What, quoth she, and be ye wood?
And wene ye for to do good,
And for to have of it no fame?
Have ye despite to have my name?
Nay, ye shall lien everichone:
Blowe they trump, and that anone
(Quoth she) thou Eolus yhote,
And ring these folkes works be note,
That all the world may of it hear;
And he gan blow their loos so cleare,
In his golden clarioune,
Through the world went the soune,
All so kenely, and eke so soft,
That their fame was blowen aloft.--POPE.
Pope makes everybody obtain fame who seeks to avoid it, which is absurd.
Chaucer keeps to truth. The first company came,
And saiden, Certes, lady bright,
We have done well with all out might,
But we ne kepen have for fame,
Hide our workes and our name.
"I grant you all your asking," she replies; "let your works be dead."
The second company arrive immediately afterwards, and prefer the same
request in the lines versified by Pope, when Fame, with her usual
capriciousness, refuses their prayer, and orders Eolus to sound their
praises.]
[Footnote 113: An obvious imitation of a well-known verse in Denham: