[Footnote 84: Pindar being seated in a chariot, alludes to the chariot races he celebrated in the Grecian games. The swans are emblems of poetry, their soaring posture intimates the sublimity and activity of his genius. Neptune presided over the Isthmian, and Jupiter over the Olympian games.--POPE.]
He sinks into the cords with solemn pace, To give the swelling tones a bolder grace.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 86: "Distorted," which is always used in an unfavourable sense, is a disparaging epithet by which to characterise the vehement eagerness of the champions. It is not clear who or what they "threaten," whether the horses or each other, and in either case there is nothing "great" in the image of a person uttering threats in a "distorted posture."]
[Footnote 87: This expresses the mixed character of the odes of Horace: the second of these verses alludes to that line of his,
The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his third book:
Me fabulosæ Vulture in Apulo Altricis extra limen Apuliæ, Ludo fatigatumque somno, Fronde nova puerum palumbes Texêre; mirum quod foret omnibus-- Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra Lauroque, collataque myrto, Non sine Dîs animosus infans.
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 Alcæus.]
[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 Cæsar, 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.]