[Footnote 3: The poets of antiquity were thought to receive inspired
dreams by sleeping on the poetic mountains.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 4: The pause and words are evidently from Dryden, a greater
harmonist, if I may say so, than Pope:
The lovely shrubs and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 5: Alluding to Isaiah vi. 6, 7. "Then flew one of the
Seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and
said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips." Milton had already made the same
allusion to Isaiah, at the close of his Hymn on the Nativity:
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his sacred altar touched with hallowed fire.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 6: Rapt, that is, carried forwards from the present scene of
things into a distant period, from the Latin _rapio_.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 7: The poet wrongly uses "begun," instead of the past,
began.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 8: Virg. Ecl. iv. 6:
Jam redit et Virge, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.--
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.--
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.
"_Now the Virgin returns, now the kingdom of Saturn returns, now a new
progeny is sent down from high heaven. By means of thee, whatever
reliques of our crimes remain, shall be wiped away, and free the world
from perpetual fears. He shall govern the earth in peace, with the
virtues of his father._"
Isaiah vii. 14. "_Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son._" Ch.
ix. ver. 6, 7. "_Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,--the
Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government, and of his peace,
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom,
to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice, for ever
and ever._"--POPE.
By "the virgin" Virgil meant Astraea, or Justice, who is said by the
poets to have been driven from earth by the wickedness of
mankind.--PROFESSOR MARTYN.]
[Footnote 9: Isaiah xi. i.--POPE. "_And there shall come forth a rod out
of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots._"]
[Footnote 10: Pope lowers the comparison when he follows it out into
details, and likens the endowments of the Messiah to leaves, and his
head to the top of a tree on which the dove descends.]
[Footnote 11: Isaiah xlv. 8.--POPE. "_Drop down, ye heavens, from above,
and let the skies pour down righteousness._"]
[Footnote 12: Dryden's Don Sebastian: