John Dryden - The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18

The punctuation throughout this piece is so inaccurate, and the paragraphs so strangely divided, that it must have been printed from a copy very carelessly written. In the present passage, we find Rafiany , instead of Rufinus . Malone.

A. D. 312. He suffered for favouring the Arians. Malone.

A. D. 415. He was minister of Caphargamala, and pretended to have been instructed by a dream of the burial place of the proto-martyr Stephen, Gamaliel, and other saints. See Gibbon’s History , vol. iii. p. 97.

Several other persons of this name, besides those here mentioned, are enumerated by Fabricius. Bibl. Græc. iv. 508.

Dr Franklin seems disposed to fix on the year 90.

Procurator principis . Under Marcus Aurelius.

See Juv. sat. i. 44.; vii. 148.; xv. 111. Quintil. lib. x. cap. 3.

Dr Jasper Mayne, who published a translation of some select dialogues of Lucian, in folio, in 1664.

I follow Mr Malone in reading might ; the printed copy has must .

This is a gross mistake, 180 years intervening between the death of Aurelius and the reign of Julian.

Nicolas Perrot, Sieur d’Ablancourt, whose translation of the Dialogues of Lucian into French was first published at Paris in 1634. His continuation of the true history of Lucian is very much in the tone of the original.

This observation had been made by Gilbertas Cognatus, and by Thomas Hickes, in his Life of Lucian, printed in 1634. Malone.

Entitled “Philopatris.” The Christian religion, and its mysteries, are ridiculed in this piece with very little ceremony.

Gesner has written a long Latin essay upon this point, which is subjoined to the third volume of Lucian’s works, in the 4to edition of Hemsterhucius.

I follow Mr Malone in reading eclectic for elective .

The best judges have condemned Εταιρικοι Διαλογοι, or “Dialogues of the Harlots,” as not being genuine. They are at any rate gross and devoid of humour.

I presume a cant phrase for a graft from that garden of knowledge.