"Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feather'd cincture."
64. _Glory pursue_. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb
after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton
compares Homer, _Il._ v. 774:
[Greek: hêchi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton êde Skamandros.]
Dugald Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) says: "I cannot help
remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this
exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as
to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time
to produce its proper impression."
65. _Freedom's holy flame_. Cf. Akenside, _Pleas. of Imag._ i. 468:
"Love's holy flame."
[Illustration: THE VALE OF TEMPE.]
66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to
England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or
of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in
Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian
writers; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after
the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has
subsisted ever since" (Gray).
_Delphi's steep_. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 178: "the steep of
Delphos;" _P. L._ i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and
Milton prefer the mediæval form _Delphos_ to the more usual _Delphi_.
Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end
"in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak
named the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced
the rays of the sun" (Smith's _Anc. Geog._).