9 I have endeavoured to give some intelligible sense to these lines; but the absence of syntax in the original, as it now stands, makes it necessary to guess at the meaning as best one may.
11 "But in them nature's copy's not eterne." - Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.
14 Sermone tenus: i.e., the exertion (so to speak) needed to do such mighty works only extended to the uttering of a speech; no more was requisite. See for a similar allusion to the contrast between the making of other things and the making of man, the Genesis, 30-39.
16 i.e., from the solid mass of earth. See Gen. i. 9, 10.
"Immemor ille Dei temere committere tale!
Non ultra monitum quidquam contingeret."Whether I have hit the sense here I know not. In this and in other passages I have punctuated for myself.