]

[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