since "wit" has a different meaning in the two lines: in 80, it means
_fancy,_ in 81, _judgment_.]

[Line 86: The winged courser.--Pegasus, a winged horse which
sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. As soon
as born he left the earth and flew up to heaven, or, according to Ovid,
took up his abode on Mount Helicon, and was always associated with the
Muses.]

[Line 94: Parnassus.--A mountain of Phocis, which received
its name from Parnassus, the son of Neptune, and was sacred to the
Muses, Apollo and Bacchus.]

[Line 97: Equal steps.--Steps equal to the undertaking.]

[Line 129: The Mantuan Muse--Virgil called Maro in the next
line (his full name being, Virgilius Publius Maro) born near Mantua,
70 B.C.]

[Lines 130-136: It is said that Virgil first intended to write a poem
on the Alban and Roman affairs which he found beyond his powers, and
then he imitated Homer:

Cum canerem reges et proelia Cynthius aurem
Vellit--_Virg. Ecl. VI_]

[Line 138: The Stagirite--Aristotle, born at the Greek town of
Stageira on the Strymonic Gulf (Gulf of Contessa, in Turkey) 384 B.C.,
whose treatises on Rhetoric and the Art of Poetry were the earliest
development of a Philosophy of Criticism and still continue to be