o

Exegi monumentum aere perennius.

The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his
third book:

Me fabulosae Vulture in Apulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliae,
Ludo fatigatumque somno,
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texere; mirum quod foret omnibus--
Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
Lauroque, collataque myrto,
Non sine Dis animosus infans.

Which may be thus Englished:

While yet a child, I chanced to stray,
And in a desert sleeping lay;
The savage race withdrew, nor dared
To touch the muses' future bard;
But Cytherea's gentle dove
Myrtles and bays around me spread,
And crowned your infant poet's head
Sacred to music and to love.--POPE.

In addition to these passages, he had in his mind Hor. Epist. lib. i.
19, quoted by Wakefield:

Temperat Archilochi Musam pede mascula Sappho,
Temperat Alcaeus.]

[Footnote 88: Horace speaking, in his ode to Augustus, of the relative
glory of different families, says that the Julian star shone among all
the rest as the moon shines among the lesser lights. The star referred
to the comet which appeared for seven days the year after the death of
Julius Caesar, and which was supposed to indicate that he had become a
deity in the heavens. A star was sculptured in consequence on his statue
in the forum.]

[Footnote 89: Surely he might have selected for the basso rilievos about
the statue of Horace ornaments more manly and characteristical of his
genius.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 90: A very tame and lifeless verse indeed, alluding to the
treatise of Aristotle "concerning animals."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 91: Pope here refers to Aristotle's treatise on the Heavens.]

[Footnote 92: This beautiful attitude is copied from a statue in the
collection which Lady Pomfret presented to the University of
Oxford.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 93: Addison's translation of some lines from Sannazarius:

And thou whose rival tow'rs invade the skies.

[Footnote 94: Chaucer in a passage, not quoted by Pope, represents Fame
as enthroned upon "a seat imperial," which was formed of rubies.]

[Footnote 95:

Methoughte that she was so lite
That the length of a cubite
Was longer than she seemed to be;
But thus soon in a while she,
Herself tho wonderly straight,
That with her feet she carthe reight,
And with her head she t