Note 14 — THE TEMPLE OF FAME.
Reading edition
Chaucer's third book of Fame:
It stood upon so high a rock, Higher standeth none in Spayne— What manner stone this rock was, For it was like a lymed glass, But that it shone full more clere; But of what congeled matere It was, I niste redily; But at the last espied I, And found that it was every dele, A rock of ice and not of stele.—Pope.
The temple of Fame is represented on a foundation of ice, to signify the brittle nature and precarious tenure, as well as the difficult attainment of that possession, according to the poet himself below, ver. 504:
So hard to gain, so easy to be lost.—Wakefield.
Having complained that it was contrary to the laws of sight to suppose that a prospect in sleep could be extended beyond the ordinary range of mortal vision, Dennis proceeds to contend that for a rock to be sustained in the air was contrary to the eternal laws of gravitation, "which," says Pope sarcastically, in a manuscript note, "no dream ought to be." The cavil of Dennis was as false in science as in criticism, for it is not more contrary to the laws of gravitation for a rock to be suspended in space than for the earth itself.