No More Learning

69 --_Crown'd, i. e. _ filled to the brim. The custom of adorning goblets
with flowers was of later date.

70 --_He spoke,_ &c. "When a friend inquired of Phidias what pattern he
had formed his Olympian Jupiter, he is said to have answered by
repeating the lines of the first Iliad in which the poet represents
the majesty of the god in the most sublime terms; thereby signifying
that the genius of Homer had inspired him with it. Those who beheld
this statue are said to have been so struck with it as to have asked
whether Jupiter had descended from heaven to show himself to
Phidias, or whether Phidias had been carried thither to contemplate
the god. "-- "Elgin Marbles," vol. xii p. 124.

71 "So was his will
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath,
That shook heav'n's whole circumference, confirm'd. "

"Paradise Lost" ii. 351.

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.