Swift hated mathematics and lost no opportunity of deriding mathematicians: see for example Gulliver's Travels, Part III. Chap. II.
P. 17, l. 8. the materials altogether extracted, &c. Cf. Descartes, Discours de la Méthode, end of first chapter.
P. 17, l. 9. I am glad, &c. The bee's answer bears some resemblance to the following passage in Temple's Essay on Poetry (T. iii. 417): "[Bees] must range through fields as well as gardens, choose such flowers as they please, and by properties and scents they only know and distinguish: they must work up their cells with admirable art, extract their honey with infinite labour, and sever it from the wax with such distinction and choice as belongs to none but themselves to perform or to judge."
P. 19, l. 8. Æsop. Bentley had shown that the Fables attributed to Æsop were spurious. Cf. p. xxix. of Introduction.
P. 19, l. 14. he tried all his arts, &c.. Cf. Georg. IV., 440-2.
P. 21, l. 6. For anything else of genuine. Cf. Temple's Essay, pp. 75-6 of Appendix.
P. 22, l. 6. consults, consultations. Cf. Paradise Lost, Book I., last line.
P. 22, l. II. the horse are the epic poets.
P. 22, l. 14. Cowley, author among other works of certain Pindaric Odes, which Swift in his youth admired and imitated. According to the well-known story (related in Johnson's Life of Swift) it was on reading one of Swift's Pindaric Odes that Dryden exclaimed "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet!", whence arose, according to the same story, Swift's unending hatred of Dryden.
