the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commit
suicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified the
remainder of the oracle.]

[Footnote 25: Oedipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully,
instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are so
suited to his condition.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 26: In the first edition he had written

Which shall o'er long posterity prevail.

The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was
from Dryden's Virg. AEn. iii. 132:

And children's children shall the crown sustain.]

[Footnote 27: This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:

Put on that diadem besmeared with gore
Which from my father's head these fingers tore.]

[Footnote 28: Dryden's Virg. AEn. iii. 78:

Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth]

[Footnote 29: Pope uses "preventing" in the then common but now obsolete
sense of "anticipating."]

[Footnote 30: A river in the lower world.]

[Footnote 31: Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to
verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young
as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 32: The entrance to the infernal regions was said to be
through a cave in the Taenarian promontory, which formed the southern
extremity of Greece.]

[Footnote 33: Pope has judiciously tamed the bombast image "caligantes
animarum examine campos," "the plains darkened with a swarm of ghosts."
"Lucentes equos," he translates, "fair glories," omitting the image
entirely. To mount Atlas he has added an idea which makes the passage
more ridiculous than sublime. It is poorly expressed in the original; in
the translation it is ludicrous; "and shook the heavens _and gods he
bore_." There are many images which if indistinctly seen are sublime; if
particularised they become quite the contrary. However, the translation
is certainly wonderful, when the age of the author is considered. It
shows his powers of metrical language, at so early a period of his
poetical studies, though it is very unfaithful in particular
passages.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 34: Pope's acquaintance with Latin prosody, from his confined
education, was probably very small, or he would not have used Mal[=e]a,
instead of Mal[)e]a, with the line of Statius before him.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 35: "Well-known," because the Fury had before visited the
Theban palace to instigate th