No More Learning

72 --_A double bowl, i. e. _ a vessel with a cup at both ends, something
like the measures by which a halfpenny or pennyworth of nuts is
sold. See Buttmann, Lexic. p. 93 sq.

73 "Paradise Lost," i. 44.

"Him th' Almighty power
Hurl'd headlong flaming from th ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion"

74 The occasion on which Vulcan incurred Jove's displeasure was
this--After Hercules, had taken and pillaged Troy, Juno raised a
storm, which drove him to the island of Cos, having previously cast
Jove into a sleep, to prevent him aiding his son. Jove, in revenge,
fastened iron anvils to her feet, and hung her from the sky, and
Vulcan, attempting to relieve her, was kicked down from Olympus in
the manner described. The allegorists have gone mad in finding deep
explanations for this amusing fiction. See Heraclides, 'Ponticus,"
p. 463 sq. , ed Gale. The story is told by Homer himself in Book xv.
The Sinthians were a race of robbers, the ancient inhabitants of
Lemnos which island was ever after sacred to Vulcan.

"Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land
Men call'd him Mulciber, and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day and with the setting sun
Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, th' Aegean isle thus they relate. "

"Paradise Lost," i. 738

75 It is ingeniously observed by Grote, vol i p. 463, that "The gods
formed a sort of political community of their own which had its
hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for
power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora
of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals. "

76 Plato, Rep. iii. p. 437, was so scandalized at this deception of
Jupiter's, and at his other attacks on the character of the gods,
that he would fain sentence him to an honourable banishment. (See
Minucius Felix, Section 22. ) Coleridge, Introd. p. 154, well
observes, that the supreme father of gods and men had a full right
to employ a lying spirit to work out his ultimate will. Compare
"Paradise Lost," v. 646:

"And roseate dews disposed
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest. "

77 --_Dream_ ought to be spelt with a capital letter, being, I think,
evidently personified as the god of dreams.