[Line 216: The Pierian spring--A fountain in Pieria, a district round
Mount Olympus and the native country of the Muses.]

[Line 248: And even thine, O Rome.--The dome of St Peter's
Church, designed by Michael Angelo.]

[Line 267: La Mancha's Knight.--Don Quixote, a fictitious
Spanish knight, the hero of a book written (1605) by Cervantes, a
Spanish writer.]

[Line 270: Dennis, the son of a saddler in London, born 1657,
was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom
Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of _Cato_,
for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis.
Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be
written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled _The
Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D._ Dennis replied
to it by his _Character of Mr. Pope_. Ultimately Pope gave him a
place in his _Dunciad_, and wrote a prologue for his benefit.]

[Line 308: On content.--On trust, a common use of the word in
Pope's time.]

[Lines 311, 312: Prismatic glass.--A glass prism by which
light is refracted, and the component rays, which are of different
colors being refracted at different angles show what is called a
spectrum or series of colored bars, in the order violet, indigo, blue,
green, yellow, orange, red.]

[Line 328: Fungoso--One of the characters in Ben Jonson's