Note 116 — THE TEMPLE OF FAME.

Strokes of pleasantry and humour, and satirical reflections on the foibles of common life, are unsuited to so grave and majestic a poem. They appear as unnatural and out of place as one of the burlesque scenes of Heemskirk would do in a solemn landscape of Poussin. When I see such a line as

in the Temple of Fame, I lament as much to find it placed there as to see shops and sheds and cottages erected among the ruins of Diocletian's baths.—Warton.