L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much
base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his _Tristia_.
L. 73. _un tel foudre._ According to French grammars, _foudre_ is
generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative
sense, when it designates a man: _La foudre_ a éclaté. C'est _un foudre_
de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where _foudre_, poetic for
'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two
quotations from Corneille (_Hor._ IV. v. and _Héracl._ I. iv.), and as a
feminine noun in Bossuet, _Mar.-Thér._
L. 93. _Castor_, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux
died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the
prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the
two, so that they lived and died alternately.
Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode
of Nisus see _Aen._ ix.
L. 99. _Le Brun._ 'Son of the author of the poem _La Religion_, and
grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the
disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and
Spain.' (_Note of A. Chénier._)
L. 102. _leçons d'Ascra_, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra
in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem _Ascraeum carmen_, _Georg._ ii.
176.
L. 103. _Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais._ Chénier, in another
epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans
_les douze palais_ où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses
into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the
same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next
_paleys_ to abyde,' _Compl. Mars_, 53. See _N.E.D._ Brazais had written
a poem, _L'Année_, which never appeared in print.
L. 105. A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge,
qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.
L. 111. _tableaux fardés_. Counterfeit, spurious. See the obs. verb
_fard_ in _N.E.D._
L. 128. _L'ami religieux._ The following quotation (from the _N.E.D._)
may serve for an explanation: 'A man devoted to a man, Loyal,
_religious_ in love's hallowed vows.' Porter, _Angry wom. Abingd._
(Percy Soc.), 37.
L. 130. Bavius, a Latin poetaster; see Virgil, _Ecl._ iii, 90. Zoilus,
the detractor of Homer. Gacou, a French satiric poet of the seventeenth
century, the libellous detractor of Boileau and J.-B. Rousseau. Linière,
another French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the declared
enemy of Chapelain. (See Boileau, _Sat._ ix. 237.)
L. 147. Plutarch relates that Scipio would always take Lelius' advice,
which made him say that Lelius was the poet and Scipio the actor.
Plutarch, _An seni sit ger. resp._ xxvii.
L. 148. When Phocion, sentenced to death, was on the point of drinking
the hemlock, Nicocles besought the favour of drinking first, which
request his friend granted. Plutarch, _Phoc._ xxxvi.