61. In loose numbers, etc. Cf. Milton, L'All. 133:

and Horace, Od. iv. 2, 11:

62. Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs. Cf. P. L. ix. 1115:

64. Glory pursue. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton compares Homer, Il. v. 774:

Dugald Stewart (Philos. of Human Mind) says: "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression."

65. Freedom's holy flame. Cf. Akenside, Pleas. of Imag. i. 468: "Love's holy flame."

 

66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).

Delphi's steep. Cf. Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 178: "the steep of Delphos;" P. L. i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and Milton prefer the mediæval form Delphos to the more usual Delphi. Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end "in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun" (Smith's Anc. Geog.).

67. Isles, etc. Cf. Byron:

 

68. Ilissus. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens.

 

69. Mæander's amber waves. Cf. Milton, P. L. iii. 359: "Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" P. R. iii. 288: "There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 520: "Purior electro campum petit amnis." Callimachus (Cer. 29) has [Greek: alektrinon hudôr].

70. Ovid, Met. viii. 162, describes the Mæander thus:

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius (Geo. iii. 15):

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