And heard thy everlasting yawn confess Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep, 351 Walk round and round, now prying here, now there, Thy choicer mists on this assembly shed, But Lord of an Otho, if I vouch it true; 360 Bless'd in one Niger, till he knows of two.' 370 REMARKS. Ver. 347. Annius,] The name taken from Annius the monk of Viterbo, famous for many impositions and forgeries of ancient manuscripts and inscriptions, which he was prompted to by mere vanity: but our Annius had a more substantial motive. Ver. 363. Attys and Cecrops.] The first king of Athens, of whom it is hard to suppose any coins are extant; but not so improbable as what follows, that there should be any of Mahomet, who forbade all images; and the story of whose pigeon was a monkish fable. Nevertheless, one of these Anniuses made a counterfeit medal of that impostor, now in the collection of a learned nobleman. Mummius o'erheard him; Mummius, fool-renown'd, Who like his Cheops stinks above the ground, Fierce as a startled adder, swell'd and said, Rattling an ancient sistrum at his head: 380 'Speak'st thou of Syrian princes? Traitor base! Mine, goddess! mine is all the horned race. True, he had wit, to make their value rise: From foolish Greeks to steal them, was as wise; More glorious yet, from barbarous hands to keep, When Sallee rovers chased him on the deep. Then taught by Hermes, and divinely bold, Down his own throat he risk'd the Grecian gold. Received each demi-god, with pious care, Deep in his entrails-I revered them there; I bought them, shrouded in that living shrine, And, at their second birth, they issue mine' REMARKS. Ver. 371. Mummius.] This name is not merely an allusion to the Mummius he was so fond of, but probably refer red to the Roman general of that name, who burned Corinth, and committed the curious statues to the captain of a ship, assuring him, that if they were lost or broken, he should procure others to be made in their stead;' by which it should seem (whatever may be pretended) that Mummius was no virtuoso. Ibid. Fool-renown'd,] A compound epithet in the Greek manner, renowned by fools, or renowned for making fools. Ver. 372. Cheops.] A king of Egypt whose body was certainly to be known, as being buried alone in his pyramid, and is therefore more genuine than any of the Cleopatras. This royal mummy, being stolen by a wild Arab, was purchased by the consul of Alexandria, and transmitted to the museum of Mummius; for proof of which he brings a passage in Sandy's Travels, where that accurate and learned voyager assures us that he saw the sepulchre empty, which agrees exactly, saith he, with the time of the theft above. mentioned. But he omits to observe that Herodotus tells the same thing of it in his time. Ver. 375. Speak'st thou of Syrian princes? &c.] The strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the History of the Syrian kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a 390 • Witness, great Ammon! by whose horns I swore,' Replied soft Annius, ' this our paunch before Still bears them faithful; and that thus I eat, Is to refund the medals with the meat. To prove me, goddess! clear of all design, Bid me with Pollio sup, as well as dine : There all the learn'd shall at the labour stand, And Douglas lend his soft, obstetric hand.' The goddess, smiling, seem'd to give consent; So back to Pollio, hand in hand they went. Then thick as locusts blackening all the ground, A tribe with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd, Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the power, A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower. But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal, 400 The first thus open'd: 'Hear thy suppliant's call, Great queen, and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flower, Suckled, and cheer'd, with air, and sun, and shower REMARKS. corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden borasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend the famous physician and antiquary Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour, without staying to inquire about the uneasy symptoms of the burthen he carried, first asked him, whether the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing so rare a treasure; he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense. Ver. 387. Witness great Ammon!] Jupiter Ammon is called to witness, as the father of Alexander, to whom those kings succeeded in the division of the Macedonian empire, and whose horns they wore on their medals. Ver. 394. Douglas.] A physician of great learning and no less taste; above all, curious in what related to Horace, of whom he collected every edition, translation, and comment, to the number of several hundred volumes. Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Such varied light in one promiscuous blaze? 410 He ceased, and wept. With innocence of men, The accused stood forth, and thus address'd the queen: 'Of all the enamell'd race, whose silvery wing 421 Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring, Or swims along the fluid atmosphere, Once brightest shined this child of heat and air. The rising game, and chased from flower to flower. It stopp'd, I stopp'd; it moved, I moved again. REMARKS. Ver. 409. And named it Caroline:] It is a compliment which the florists usually pay to princes and great persons, to give their names to the most curious flowers of their raising some have been very jealous of vindicating this hoour, but none more than that ambitious gardener at Hammersmith, who caused his favourite to be painted on his sign, with this inscription: This is my Queen Caroline, 'My sons!' she answer'd, 'both have done your parts: 440 Live happy both, and long promote our arts. The head that turns at superlunar things, 450 Poised with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. 'Be that my task,' replies a gloomy clerk, REMARKS. 460 Ver. 452. Wilkins' wings.] One of the first projectors of the Royal Society, who, among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the moon; which has put some volatile geniuses upon making wings for that purpose. Ver. 462. When moral evidence shall quite decay.] Alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians, in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions: according to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable that Julius Cæsar was in Gaul, or died in the senate-house. Sea Craig's Theologiæ Christiane Principia Mathematica. But, |
