Note 174 — No. XXI.
Reading edition
The ceremony of invocation (in didactic poems especially) is in some measure analogous to the custom of drinking toasts; the corporeal representatives of which are always supposed to be absent, and unconscious of the irrigation bestowed upon their names. Hence it is, that our Author addresses himself to the natives of an island who are not likely to hear, and who, if they did, would not understand him.