120 NOTES. 



NOTE LVIII. VERSE 775. 

 What time the Pride of Bourbon urgd his way, 6cc. 

 Du Piles, and after him Dryden, call this Hero Louis XIII. 

 but the later French Editor, whom I have before quoted, 

 will needs have him to be the XlVth. His note is as follows : 

 " At the accefllon of Louis XIV. Du Frefnoy had been ten 

 years at Rome, therefore the epoch, marked by the Poet, 

 falls probably upon the firft years of that Prince ; that is to 

 fay, upon the years 1643 or 1644. The thunders which he 

 darts on the Alps, allude to the fuccefTes of our arms in the 

 Milanefe, and in Piedmont; and the Alcides, who is born again 

 in France for the defence of his country, is the conqueror of 

 Rocroy, the young Duke of Anguien, afterwards called Le 

 Grand Conde." I am apt to fufped: that all this fine criticifm 

 is falfe, though I do not think it worth while to controvert it. 

 Whether the Poet meant to compliment Louis XIII. or the 

 little boy that fucceeded him, (for he was only fix years old in. 

 the year 1644) he was guilty of grofs flattery. It is impoffible, 

 however, from the conftruclion of the fentence, that Lodovicus 

 Borbonidum Decus, & Gallicus Alcides, could mean any more 

 than one identical perfon; and confequently the Editor's notion 

 .concerning the Grand Conde is indifputably falfe. I have, 

 therefore, taken the whole paiTage in the fame fenfe that 

 Du Piles did ; and have alfo, like him, ufed the Poet's phrafe 

 of the Spanijh Lion in the concluding line, rather than that 

 of the Spanifh Geryon, to which Mr. Dryden has trans- 

 formed him : His reafon, I fuppofe, for doing this was, that 

 .the monfter Geryon was of Spanifh extraction, and the Ne- 

 mean Lion, which Hercules killed, was of Peloponnefus j but 

 we are told by Martial*, that there was a fountain in Spain 

 called Nemea, which, perhaps, led Frefnoy aftray in this 



paflage. 



* Avidam rigens Dircenna placabit firim 



Et Nemea quz vincit nives. Mart. lib. 5. Epig. 50. tie Hifp. lac, 



