the Gorgon, Medusa.]

[Footnote 35: This figure of Hercules is drawn with an eye to the
position of the famous statue of Farnese.--POPE.

It were to be wished that our author, whose knowledge and taste of the
fine arts were unquestionable, had taken more pains in describing so
famous a statue as that of the Farnesian Hercules; for he has omitted
the characteristical excellencies of this famous piece of Grecian
workmanship; namely, the uncommon breadth of the shoulders, the
knottiness and spaciousness of the chest, the firmness and protuberance
of the muscles in each limb, particularly the legs, and the majestic
vastness of the whole figure, undoubtedly designed by the artist to give
a full idea of strength, as the Venus de Medicis of beauty. To mention
the Hesperian apples, which the artist flung backwards, and almost
concealed as an inconsiderable object, and which therefore scarcely
appear in the statue, was below the notice of Pope.--WARTON.

Addison's Vision: "At the upper end sat Hercules, leaning an arm upon
his club."]

[Footnote 36: The pause at the word "strikes" renders the verse finely
descriptive of the circumstance. Milton, in Par. Lost, xi. 491, has
attempted this beauty with success:

And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 37: Milton, Par. Lost, i. 710:

a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 38: "Trees," says Dennis, "starting from their roots, a
mountain rolling into a wall, and a town rising like an exhalation are
things that are not to be shown in sculpture." This objection, that
"motion is represented as exhibited by sculpture," is said by Johnson,
"to be the most reasonable of Dennis' remarks," but Dennis neutralised
his own criticism when he added, that "sculpture can indeed show posture
and position, and from posture and position we may conclude that the
objects are in motion."]

[Footnote 39: Wakefield quotes from Milton (Par. Lost, ii. 4), the
expression, "barbaric pearl and gold," and from Addison's translation of
the second book of Ovid's Met. the line in which it is said that the
palace of the sun

With burnished gold and flaming jewels blazed.

[Footnote 40: Cyrus was the beginning of the Persian, as Ninus was of
the Assyrian monarchy.--POPE.]

[Footnote 41: The Magi and Chaldaeans (the chief of whom was Zoroaster)
employed their studies upon magic and astrology, which