[Footnote 117: Meaning, I apprehend, the star of the knights of the
Garter installed at Windsor.--WAKEFIELD.
The order was founded by Edward III., the builder of Windsor Castle,
which further connected it with Pope's subject. Denham had celebrated
the institution of the garter in Cooper's Hill, and Lord Lansdowne, in
his Progress of Beauty, "sung the honours" in a few despicable verses,
which certainly added no "lustre to the silver star."]
[Footnote 118: All the lines that follow were not added to the poem till
the year 1710 [1712]. What immediately followed this, and made the
conclusion, were these;
My humble muse in unambitious strains
Paints the green forests and the flow'ry plains;
Where I obscurely pass my careless days,
Pleased in the silent shade with empty praise,
Enough for me that to the list'ning swains
First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.--POPE.]
[Footnote 119: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, one of the first refiners
of the English poetry; famous in the time of Henry VIII. for his
sonnets, the scene of many of which is laid at Windsor.--POPE.]
[Footnote 120: The Fair Geraldine, the general object of Lord Surrey's
passionate sonnets, was one of the daughters of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl
of Kildare. In Warton's History of English Poetry, is a poem of the
elegiac kind, in which Surrey laments his imprisonment in Windsor
Castle.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 121: The Mira of Granville was the Countess of Newburgh.
Towards the end of her life Dr. King, of Oxford, wrote a very severe
satire against her, in three hooks, called The Toast.--WARTON.
She proved in her conduct to be the reverse of "heavenly." "Granville,"
says Johnson, "wrote verses to her before he was three-and-twenty, and
may be forgiven if he regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are
sometimes in too much haste to praise."]
[Footnote 122:
Not to recount those several kings, to whom
It gave a cradle, and to whom a tomb. Denham.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 123: Edward III. born here.--POPE.]
[Footnote 124: David Bruce, king of Scotland, taken prisoner at the
battle of Nevil's Cross, 1346, and John, king of France, captured at the
battle of Poitiers, 1356. "Monarchs chained" conveys the idea of a
rigorous imprisonment, and belies the chivalry, which was the pride of
Edward and the Black Prince. David, who was the brother-in-law of Edward
III., was subjected to so little constraint, that he was allowed to
visit Scotland, and confer with his people on the terms of his ransom.
John was received with royal honours in England, and during the whole of
his residence here was surrounded with regal luxury and state.]
[Footnote 125: Denham's Cooper's Hill:
----Great Edward, and thy greater son,
The lilies which his father wore, he won.
Edward III. claimed the crown of France by descent, and quartered the
French fleur-de-lis on his shield before the victories of the Black
Prince had made the assumption something more than an empty boast.]
[Footnote 126: Originally thus in the MS.
When brass decays, when trophies lie o'er-thrown,
And mould'ring into dust drops the proud stone,
From Windsor's roofs, &c.--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 127: He was a Neapolitan. Without much invention, and with
less taste, his exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out gods,
goddesses, kings, emperors, and triumphs, over those public surfaces on
which the eye never rests long enough to criticise,--I mean ceilings and
staircases. Charles II. consigned over Windsor to his pencil. He
executed most of the ceilings there, one whole side of St. George's
Hall, and the chapel. On the accession of James II., Verrio was again
employed at Windsor in Wolsey's Tomb-house.--HORACE WALPOLE.]
[Footnote 128: Pope had in his head this couplet of Halifax:
The wounded arm would furnish all their rooms,
And bleed for ever scarlet in the looms.--HOLT WHITE.]
[Footnote 129: Henry VI.--POPE.]
[Footnote 130: Edward IV.--POPE.]
[Footnote 131: The Land's End in Cornwall is called by Diodorus Siculus,
_Belerium promentorium_, perhaps from Bellerus, one of the Cornish
giants with which that country and the poems of old British bards were
once filled.--T. WARTON.]
[Footnote 132: Dryden's translation of the tenth Satire of Juvenal, ver.
236:
Whom Afric was not able to contain
Whose length runs level with th' Atlantic main.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 133: Dr. Chetwood's verses to Roscommon: