eks and Romans was that they were a more luxurious
race, and did not in the same degree "scorn delights, and live laborious
days" for the sake of producing immortal works.]

[Footnote 19:

For on that other side I sey
Of that hill which northward ley,
How it was written full of names
Of folke, that had afore great fames,
Of olde time, and yet they were
As fresh as men had written hem there
The self day, right or that houre
That I upon hem gan to poure:
But well I wiste what it made;
It was conserved with the shade
(All the writing that I sye)
Of the castle that stoode on high,
And stood eke in so cold a place,
That heate might it not deface.--POPE.]

[Footnote 20: Though a strict verisimilitude be not required in the
descriptions of this visionary and allegorical kind of poetry, which
admits of every wild object that fancy may present in a dream, and where
it is sufficient if the moral meaning atone for the improbability, yet
men are naturally so desirous of truth that a reader is generally
pleased, in such a case, with some excuse or allusion that seems to
reconcile the description to probability and nature. The simile here is
of that sort, and renders it not wholly unlikely that a rock of ice
should remain for ever by mentioning something like it in our northern
regions agreeing with the accounts of our modern travellers.--POPE.]

[Footnote 21: "Mountains _propping_ the sky" was one of those vicious
common-places of poetry which falsify natural appearances.]

[Footnote 22: A real lover of painting will not be contented with a
single view and examination of this beautiful winter-piece; but will
return to it again and again with fresh delight. The images are
distinct, and the epithets lively and appropriate, especially the words
"pale," "unfelt," "impassive," "incumbent," "gathered."--WARTON.]

[Footnote 23: This excellent line was perhaps suggested by a fine
couplet in Addison's translation of an extract from Silius Italicus:

Stiff with eternal ice, and hid in snow,
That fell a thousand centuries ago.]

[Footnote 24: Dryden's Hind and Panther:

Eternal house not built with mortal hands.]

[Footnote 25: The temple is described to be square, the four fronts with
open gates facing the different quarters of the world, as an intimation
that all nations of the earth may alike be received into it. The western
front is of Grecian architecture