Note 280 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. (continued 2)
Reading edition
For the expression in the last half of this verse, Wakefield quotes Addison on sculpture in the letter from Italy,
Or teach their animated rocks to live.
And for the expression in the first half, he quotes Dryden's Religio Laici:
Or various atoms, interfering dance, Leaped into form.
Wakefield ascribes the origin of the phrase to the fable that the stones of Thebes moved into their places at the music of Amphion, and it is thus used by Waller in his poem upon his Majesty's Repairing of St. Paul's:
He like Amphion makes those quarries leap Into fair figures from a confused heap.