eternity dost bind,
And art a written and a body'd mind;
To thee is ope the Juncto o' th' abysse,
And its conspiracy detected is;
Whilest their cabal thou to our sense dost show,
And in thy square paint'st what they threat below.
Now, my best Lilly, let's walk hand in hand,
And smile at this un-understanding land;
Let them their own dull counterfeits adore,
Their rainbow-cloaths admire, and no more.
Within one shade of thine more substance is,
Than all their varnish'd idol-mistresses:
Whilst great Vasari and Vermander shall
Interpret the deep mystery of all,
And I unto our modern Picts shall show,
What due renown to thy fair art they owe
In the delineated lives of those,
By whom this everlasting lawrel grows.
Then, if they will not gently apprehend,
Let one great blot give to their fame an end;
Whilst no poetick flower their herse doth dresse,
But perish they and their effigies.

<88.1> An allusion is, of course, intended to Pliny's
NATURAL HISTORY which, through Holland's translation,
became popular in England after 1601.

<88.2> i.e. in our globe.

<88.3> A term borrowed from the medical, or rather surgical,
vocabulary. "To couch a cataract" (i.e. in the eye) is to
remove it by surgical process.

<88.4> An allusion to Lely's pictures of Venus and Cupid.

<88.5> Falsely portrayed.

<88.6> A glimpse.

<88.7> Some picture by Lely, in which the painter introduced
a spring landscape, is meant. The poet feigns the copy of Nature
to be so close that one might suppose the Spring had set in
before the usual time. The canvass is removed, and the illusion
is dispelled. "Praesto, 'tis away," would be a preferable reading.

<88.8> i.e. if my appetite, &c. Lovelace's style is elliptical
to an almost unexampled degree.

<88.9> The same story, with variations, has been told over and
over again since the time of Zeuxis.

<88.10> Original edition has FILES.

<88.11> HAIR is here used in what has become quite an obsolete
sense. The meaning is outward form, nature, or character.
The word used to be by no means uncommon; but it is now,
as was before remarked, out of fashion; and, indeed, I do not think
that it is found even in any old writer used exactly in the way
in which Lovelace has employed it.

<88.12> Original reads TO.

<88.13> Charles V.

<88.14> Henry VIII.

<88.15> A story too well known to require repetition. The Earl
is not mentioned.--See Walpole's ANECDOTES OF PAINTING, ed. 1862,
p.71