[402] 'Cicero:' grammatical disputes about the manner of pronouncing Cicero's name in Greek.--W.
[403] 'Freind--Alsop:' Dr Robert Freind, master of Westminster school, and canon of Christ-church--Dr Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the Horatian style.--P. W.
[404] 'Manilius or Solinus:' some critics having had it in their choice to comment either on Virgil or Manilius, Pliny or Solinus, have chosen the worse author, the more freely to display their critical capacity.--P. W.
[405] 'Suidas, Gellius, Stobaeus:' the first a dictionary-writer, a collector of impertinent facts and barbarous words; the second a minute critic; the third an author, who gave his common-place book to the public, where we happen to find much mince-meat of old books.--P. W.
[406] 'Divinity:' a word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature without a [Greek: Nous].--P. W.
[407] 'Petrify a genius:' those who have no genius, employed in works of imagination; those who have, in abstract sciences.--P. W.
[408] 'And hew the block off:' a notion of Aristotle, that there was originally in every block of marble a statue, which would appear on the removal of the superfluous parts.--P. W.
[409] 'Ajax' spectre:' see Homer Odyss. xi., where the ghost of Ajax turns sullenly from Ulysses the traveller, who had succeeded against him in the dispute for the arms of Achilles.--Scribl. W.
[410] 'The first came forwards:' this forwardness or pertness is the certain consequence, when the children of Dulness are spoiled by too great fondness of their parent.--W.
[411] 'As if he saw St James's:' reflecting on the disrespectful and indecent behaviour of several forward young persons in the presence, so offensive to all serious men, and to none more than the good Scriblerus.--P. W.
[412] 'Lily-silver'd vales:' Tube roses.--P.
[413] 'Lion of the deeps:' the winged Lion, the arms of Venice.--P. W.
[414] 'Greatly-daring dined:' it being, indeed, no small risk to eat through those extraordinary compositions, whose disguised ingredients are generally unknown to the guests, and highly inflammatory and unwholesome.--P. W.