Chapter 2

Talia sæcla ... currite ...--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 17: This seems a palpable imitation of Callimachus, Hymn. Del. 214, but where our poet fell upon it I cannot discover.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 18: Virg. Ecl. iv. 18:

At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu, Errantes hederas passim cum baccare tellus, Mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho.-- Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores.

"_For thee, O child, shall the earth, without being tilled, produce her early offerings; winding ivy, mixed with Baccar, and Colocasia with smiling Acanthus. Thy cradle shall pour forth pleasing flowers about thee._"

Isaiah xxxv. 1. "_The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose._" Chap. lx. 13. "_The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary._"--POPE.]

[Footnote 19: This couplet has too much prettiness, and too modern an air.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 20: Isaiah xxxv. 2.--POPE. "_It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God._"]

[Footnote 21: An improper and burlesque image.--WARTON.

The line is too particular; it brings the image too close, and by exhibiting the action stronger than poetical propriety and sublimity required, destroys the intended effect. In images of this sort, the greatest care should be taken just to present the idea, but not to detail it,--otherwise it becomes, in the language of Shakespeare, like "ambition that o'er-leaps itself."--BOWLES.

Pope copied Dryden's translation of Virgil, Ecl. vi. 44, quoted by Wakefield;

And silver fauns and savage beasts advanced, And nodding forests to the numbers danced,]

[Footnote 22: Virg. Ecl. iv. 46:

Aggredere, ô magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores, Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum.

Ecl. v. 62:

Ipsi lætitia voces ad sidera jactan Intonsi montes, ipsæ jam carmina rupes, Ipsa sonant arbusta, Deus, deus ille, Menalca!

"_Oh come and receive the mighty honours: the time draws nigh, O beloved offspring of the gods, O great increase of Jove! The uncultivated mountains send shouts of joy to the stars, the very rocks sing in verse, the very shrubs cry out, A god, a god!_"

Isaiah xl. 3, 4. "_The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord! make straight in the desert a high way for our God! Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain._" Chap. xliv. 23. "_Break forth into singing, ye mountains! O forest, and every tree therein! for the Lord hath redeemed Israel._"--POPE.

The passage from Virgil, in which the shrubs are supposed to cry out "a god, a god," is not from the same Eclogue with the rest of Pope's extracts, and has no reference to the anticipated appearance of a ruler who should regenerate the world. The occasion of the shout is the presumed deification of one Daphnis who is dead.]

[Footnote 23: The repetition is in the true spirit of poetry, "Deus, deus ipse." The whole passage indeed is finely worked up from "lofty Lebanon" to the magnificent and powerful appeal, "Hark! a glad voice."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 24: This line is faulty, for the same reason as given in the remark on "nodding forests." The action is brought too near, and for that reason the image no longer appears grand.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 25: He seems to have had in his eye Cromwell's translation of Ovid, Amor, ii. 16:

Then, as you pass, let mountains homage pay And bow their tow'ring heads to smooth your way.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 26: Isaiah xlii. 18.--POPE. "_Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see._"]

[Footnote 27: The sense and language show, that by "visual ray," the poet meant the sight, or, as Milton calls it, indeed, something less boldly, "the visual nerve." And no critic would quarrel with the figure which calls the instrument of vision by the name of the cause. But though the term be just, nay noble, and even sublime, yet the expression of "thick films" is faulty, and he fell into it by a common neglect of the following rule of good writing, that when a figurative word is used, whatsoever is predicated of it ought not only to agree in terms to the thing to which the figure is applied, but likewise to that from which the figure is taken. "Thick films" agree only with the thing to which it is applied, namely, to the sight or eye; and not to that from which it is taken, namely, a ray of light coming to the eye. He should have said "thick clouds," which would have agreed with both. But these inaccuracies are not to be found in his later poems.--WARBURTON.

Concanen had previously made the same objection in his Supplement to the Profound, and Pope has written in the margin, "Milton," who uses "visual ray," Par. Lost, iii. 620, "visual nerve" xi. 415, and "visual beam," Samson Agonistes, ver. 163; but none of these passages support Pope's misapplication of the phrase "thick films" to rays of light.]

[Footnote 28: Isaiah xxxv. 5.--POPE. "_The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped._"]

[Footnote 29: Isaiah xxxv. 6.--POPE. "_Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing._"]

[Footnote 30: I wonder Dr. Warton had not here pointed out the force and the beauty of this most comprehensive and striking line.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 31: The verse, as first published, stood

He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes,

which was from Milton's Lycidas, ver. 181:

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

Steele having objected that Pope's line "in exalted and poetical spirit" was below the original, Isaiah xxv. 8,--"_The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces_,"--the poet altered his text without, perhaps, either injuring or improving it.]

[Footnote 32: Isaiah xxv. 8.--POPE. "_He will swallow up death in victory._"

The meaning of the original has been missed by Pope. The promise was not that men should cease to die, which would be the ease if Death was "bound in adamantine chains," but that death should lose its terrors through "the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel," and be welcomed as the passport to a blissful eternity.]

[Footnote 33: "He" is redundant.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 34: Isaiah xl. 11.--POPE. "_He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom._"]

[Footnote 35: He was betrayed into a little impropriety here, by not being aware that the "bosom," in classic use, commonly means the capacious flow of the eastern garments.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 36: Isaiah ix. 6.--POPE. "_His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace._"]

[Footnote 37: Isaiah ii. 4.--POPE. "_They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more._"]

[Footnote 38: The words "covered o'er" form an insipid termination of this verse.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 39: Mr. Steevens aptly quotes Virg. Æn. vi. 165:

Ære ciere viros. With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 40: Isaiah lxv. 21, 22.--POPE. "_And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat._"]

[Footnote 41: A line almost wholly borrowed from Dryden's Britannica Rediviva:

And finish what thy god-like sire begins--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 42: St. John iv. 37. "_One soweth, and another reapeth_."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 43: Isaiah xxxv. 1.--POPE. "_The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose._"]

[Footnote 44: Virg. Ecl. iv. 28:

Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista, Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva, Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.

"_The fields shall grow yellow with ripened ears, and the red grape shall hang upon the wild brambles, and the hard oak shall distil honey like dew._"

Isaiah xxxv. 7. "_The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: In the habitation where dragons lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes._" Chap. lv. ver. 13. "_Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree._"--POPE.]

[Footnote 45: Pope has been happy in introducing this circumstance.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 46: Isaiah xli. 19, and chap. lv. 13.--POPE. "_I will set in the desert the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together._"]

[Footnote 47: Virg. Ecl. iv. 21:

Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capelæ Ubera, nec magnos metuent armeuta leones.-- Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni Occidet.

"_The goats shall bear to the fold their udders distended with milk: nor shall the herds be afraid of the greatest lions. The serpent shall die, and the herb that conceals poison shall die._"

Isaiah xi. 6, 7, 8. "_The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the den of the cockatrice._"--POPE.]

[Footnote 48: The similarity of the rhymes in this couplet to those of the preceding is a blemish to this passage.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 49: Isaiah lxv. 25.--POPE. "_The lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat._"]

[Footnote 50: Pope's line may have been suggested by Ovid's description of the transformation of Cadmus and his wife into snakes. Of Cadmus it is said, Met. iv. 595, that

ille suæ lambebat conjugis ora;

and of husband and wife, when the change in both was complete, that

Nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem, nec vulnere lædunt.]

[Footnote 51: Originally,

And with their forky tongue and pointless sting shall play.

Wakefield conjectures that Pope altered the line from having learnt the erroneousness of the vulgar belief that the sting of the serpent is in its tail. The expression he substituted in the text is borrowed from Dryden's Palamon and Arcite, quoted by Wakefield:

And troops of lions innocently play.]

[Footnote 52: Salem is used for Jerusalem in Psalm lxxvi. 2.]

[Footnote 53: Isaiah lx. 1.--POPE. "_Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee._"]

[Footnote 54: The thoughts of Isaiah, which compose the latter part of the poem, are wonderfully elevated, and much above those general exclamations of Virgil, which make the loftiest parts of his Pollio:

Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo --toto surget gens aurea mundo! --incipient magni procedere menses! Aspice, venture lætentur ut omnia sæclo! &c.

The reader needs only to turn to the passages of Isaiah, here cited.--POPE.]

[Footnote 55: The open vowel _thy eyes_ is particularly offensive.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 56: Isaiah lx. 4.--POPE. "_Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side._"]

[Footnote 57: Isaiah lx. 3.--POPE. "_And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising._"]

[Footnote 58: Dryden in his Aureng-Zebe:

What sweet soe'er Sabæan springs disclose.--STEEVENS.

Saba, in Arabia, was noted for its aromatic products. Thus Milton, Par. Lost, iv. 161:

Sabæan odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest.]

[Footnote 59: Isaiah lx. 6.--POPE. "_All they from Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord._"]

[Footnote 60: Broome, in Pope's Miscellanies, p. 104:

A stream of glory, and a flood of day.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 61: Isaiah lx. 19, 20.--POPE. "_The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory._"]

[Footnote 62: Cynthia is an improper, because a classical word.--WARTON.

Sandys' Ovid:

Now waxing Phoebe filled her wained horns.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 63: Here is a remarkably fine effect of versification. The poet rises with his subject, and the correspondent periods seem to flow more copious and majestic with the grandeur and sublimity of the theme.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 64: This fine expression is borrowed from Dryden's Ode on Mrs. Killegrew:

Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, Since heaven's eternal year is thine.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 65: Isaiah li. 6, and chap. liv. 10.--POPE. "_The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, but my salvation shall be for ever.--For the mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee._"]

WINDSOR FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE, LORD LANDSDOWN.

BY MR. POPE.

Folio, 1713.

Non injussa cano: te nostræ. Vare, myricæ, Te nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est, Quam sibi quæ Vari præscripsit pagina nomen.--VIRG.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross-keys, in Fleet Street.

The work appeared before March 9, 1713, on which day Swift writes to Stella, "Mr. Pope has published a fine poem, called Windsor Forest. Read it." In his manuscript Pope says, "It was first printed in folio in ----. Again in folio the same year, and in octavo the next." It was included in the quarto of 1717, in the second edition of Lintot's Miscellany in 1714, and in the four succeeding editions of 1720, 1722, 1727 and 1732.

This poem was written at two different times. The first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals. The latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published.--POPE.

In 1713 Pope published Windsor Forest; of which part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his Pastorals; and the latter part was added afterwards: where the addition begins we are not told.[1] The lines relating to the Peace confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, who was then in high reputation and influence among the tories; and it is said, that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a politician. Reports like this are often spread with boldness very disproportionate to their evidence. Why should Addison receive any particular disturbance from the last lines of Windsor Forest? If contrariety of opinion could poison a politician, he would not live a day; and, as a poet, he must have felt Pope's force of genius much more from many other parts of his works. The pain that Addison might feel, it is not likely that he would confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, that Pope now thought himself his favourite.

The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill, with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The objection made by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts, terminating in the principal and original design. There is this want in most descriptive poems, because as the scenes, which they must exhibit successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which they are shown must, by necessity, be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last part than from the first. The attention, therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by diversity, such as this poem offers to its reader. But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged. The parts of Windsor Forest which deserve least praise are those which were added to enliven the stillness of the scene--the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of Lodona. Addison had, in his Campaign, derided the rivers, that "rise from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes;[2] and it is therefore strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural, but lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient. Nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin, or a rock an obdurate tyrant.--JOHNSON.

Descriptive poetry was by no means the shining talent of Pope. This assertion may be manifested by the few images introduced in the poem before us which are not equally applicable to any place whatsoever. Rural beauty in general, and not the peculiar beauties of the forest of Windsor, are here described. Nor are the sports of setting, shooting, and fishing, at all more appropriated. The stag-chase, that immediately follows, although some of the lines are incomparably good, is not so full, so animated, and so circumstantial, as that of Somerville.--WARTON.

Johnson remarks that this poem was written after the model of Denham's Cooper's Hill, with, perhaps, an eye on Waller's poem of the Park. Marvel has also written a poem on local scenery[3]--upon the hill and grove at Billborow, and another on Appleton House (now Nunappleton), in Yorkshire. Marvel abounds with conceits and false thoughts, but some of the descriptive touches are picturesque and beautiful. He sometimes observes little circumstances of rural nature with the eye and feeling of a true poet:

Then as I careless on the bed Of gelid strawberries do tread, And through the hazels thick espy The _hatching thrustle's shining eye_.

The last circumstance is new, highly poetical, and could only have been described by one who was a real lover of nature, and a witness of her beauties in her most solitary retirements. Before this descriptive poem on Windsor Forest, I do not recollect any other professed composition on local scenery, except the poems of the authors already mentioned. Denham's is certainly the best prior to Pope's: his description of London at a distance is sublime:[4]

Under his proud survey the city lies, And like a mist beneath a hill does rise, Whose state and wealth, the bus'ness and the crowd, Seems at this distance but a _darker cloud_.

Pope, by the expression of "majestic," has justly characterised the flow of Denham's couplets. It is extraordinary that Pope, who, by this expression, seems to have appreciated the general cast of harmony in Cooper's Hill, should have made his own cadences so regular and almost unvaried. Denham's couplets are often irregular, but the effect of the pauses in the following lines was obviously the result of a fine ear. The language truly suits the subject:

But his proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows, Whilst winds and storms his lofty forehead beat!

The occasional introduction of such passages should be managed with great care, but I appeal to any judge of poetry whether he does not feel the effect intended to be raised by the pauses of the lines just quoted?

He who has not an eye to observe every external appearance that nature may exhibit in every change of season, and who cannot with a glance distinguish every diversity of every hue in her variety of beauties, must so far be deficient in one of the essential qualities of a poet. Here Pope, from infirmities and from physical causes, was particularly deficient. When he left his own laurel circus at Twickenham, he was lifted into his chariot or his barge; and with weak eyes and tottering strength, it is physically impossible he could be a descriptive bard. Where description has been introduced among his poems, as far as his observation could go, he excelled; more could not be expected. It is for this reason that his Windsor Forest, and his Pastorals, must ever appear so defective to a lover of nature. In his Windsor Forest he has description, incident, and history. The descriptive part is too general, and unappropriate; the incident, or story part, is such as only would have been adopted by a young man who had just read Ovid; but the historical part is very judiciously and skilfully blended, and the conclusion highly animated and poetical: nor can we be insensible to its more lofty tone of versification.--BOWLES.

Richardson transcribed the various readings of Windsor Forest into his copy of the quarto of 1717, and added this note:--"Altered from the first copy of the author's own hand, written out beautifully, as usual, for the perusal and criticism of his friends." The manuscript in Richardson's possession did not contain the entire work, but stopped at ver. 390. On the title-page of the manuscript was a memorandum by Pope, which says, "This poem was written just after the Pastorals, as appears by the last verse of it. That was in the year ----, when the author was ---- years of age. But the last hundred lines, including the celebration of the Peace, were added in the year ----, soon after the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht." Pope supplied the omitted dates in the octavo of 1736, where he ascribes the former part of Windsor Forest to 1704, and the latter part to 1710. The testimony of Pope carries little weight, and there is no subsidiary evidence to confirm the improbable statement that the larger portion of the poem was produced as early as 1704. The date he assigned to the remainder, in a note at ver. 1 of the edition of 1736, and again in a note on ver. 289, must have been a slip of the pen, or an error of the press. Warburton altered 1710 to 1713 in the first note, and left the mistake uncorrected in the second. The amended date was a fresh blunder, for it appears from the letters of Pope to Caryll on Nov. 29, and Dec. 5, 1712, that the new conclusion was then complete. Pope's memory deceived him when he stated that the end of the poem was written "soon after the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht." The treaty, as Mr. Croker remarks, was not signed till March 30, 1713, nor ratified till April 28, and Windsor Forest was published before March 9. The Peace had for some months been an accepted fact, and Pope did not wait for its formal ratification.

"Lord Lansdowne," said Pope to Spence, "insisted on my publishing my Windsor Forest, and the motto (_non injussa cano_) shows it."[5] Pope not only published, but composed Windsor Forest at the instigation of Lord Lansdowne, if the opening lines of the poem are to be believed. Trumbull, however, asserts that it was he who suggested the topic to Pope. "I should have commended his poem on Windsor Forest much more," wrote Sir William to Mr. Bridges, May 12, 1713, "if he had not served me a slippery trick; for you must know I had long since put him upon this subject, gave several hints, and at last, when he brought it, and read it, and made some little alterations, &c., not one word of putting in my name till I found it in print." The apparent discrepancy may be explained by the supposition that Trumbull proposed the earlier poem on the Forest, and Lord Lansdowne the subsequent celebration of the Peace. The poet tacked the new matter on to the old, and may have represented that he sang at the command of Granville, because the ultimate form which the work assumed was due to him.

Mrs. Delany, who was the niece of Lord Lansdowne, and lived with him in her youth, says, in her Autobiography, that he was a man of an open unsuspecting temper, that he had the greatest politeness and good-humour imaginable, that he was magnificent in his nature, and wasted his fortune to gratify his passion for display.[6] His predominant characteristics were amiability and vanity. His love of distinction incited him to become a dramatist, poet, and politician. He had aspirations without ability, and in none of these capacities did he exhibit any vigour of mind. His poetry was an imitation of Waller, "of whom," says Johnson, "he copied the faults, and very little more."[7] His plays reflect the worst qualities of the era of Charles II. In tragedy he thought that to be dull and stately was to be classical; in comedy that affected briskness of dialogue was liveliness, and indecent double meanings wit. He made no figure in politics, and owed his posts in the Harley administration to his wealth, family, and electioneering influence. His literature, aided by his hereditary advantages, sufficed to procure him a factitious fame while he lived, but his reputation was at an end the moment his works lost the lustre they derived from his social position.

Lord Lansdowne was at the zenith of his career when he persuaded Pope to eulogise the Peace. A measure in itself wise had been made subservient to the personal interests of the unprincipled faction in power. These intriguers could not carry on the war without the commanding genius of Marlborough, nor allow a political opponent to perpetuate his ascendancy by a fresh series of victories. Certain that they would be driven from office unless they could huddle up a peace, they were guilty of a treacherous connivance with the enemy, and a flagrant breach of faith towards their allies. They were compelled to grant terms to France which were the boast of her minister, Torcy, and which Bolingbroke confessed were not what policy or our successes required.[8] A man of more enlightened views might have justly urged that hard conditions, offensive to the pride of a great nation, were less calculated to ensure a lengthened peace than lenient demands, which allowed the consolation of an honourable retreat. No such plea was put forth by Bolingbroke. He always retained the vulgar idea that France ought to have been "humbled" and her "power reduced for generations to come." He lamented the moderation of the treaty, and threw the blame upon the want of union among the allies, which was itself occasioned by the knowledge that he and his colleagues had determined to sacrifice all other interests to their own.[9] There was a risk that a treaty which was thought inadequate by its authors would rouse universal indignation, and prove as fatal to their power as the continuance of the war. The Peace became the political test of the hour, and every artifice of prose and verse was employed to appease public opinion.

Pope did not stop with applauding the Peace; he denounced the Revolution. He afterwards professed a lofty superiority to party prejudices; but there were obvious reasons which might induce him to lay aside his usual caution at this crisis. The war was directed against Louis XIV., the champion of Roman Catholicism, and the Pretender. A general belief prevailed that the Protestant succession could only be secured by reducing the French king to helplessness, and that a Peace, on the other hand, which saved him and the Harley administration from ruin, would be propitious to the cause of tories, papists, and Jacobites. "They fancied," says Bolingbroke, "that the Peace was the period at which their millenary year would begin."[10] A young and sanguine poet may well have shared a conviction in which both sides concurred,--the ministerialists by their hopes, and the opposition by their fears. No sooner was the treaty concluded than it became apparent that the hopes and fears were exaggerated. The ministry was torn to pieces by intestine divisions; its supporters--a heterogeneous body, who had been loosely held together by a common enmity--were rapidly throwing off their allegiance; the good will, which had been founded upon large and vague expectations, was converted into hostility under total disappointment; and the failing health of the Queen rendered it probable that the accession of a whig sovereign would shortly complete the discomfiture of the faction. After the conclusion of the Peace, says Bolingbroke, "we saw nothing but increase of mortification, and nearer approaches to ruin."[11]

Having been too precipitate in casting in his lot with the tories, Pope hastened to qualify his rashness by conciliating the whigs, and undertook to furnish the Prologue to Addison's Cato. This play was brought out April 14, 1713, at the request of the opposition, who intended it for a remonstrance against the arbitrary projects imputed to the ministry. The tragedy was hurried upon the stage towards the close of the dramatic season, lest the salutary lesson should come too late to save the threatened constitution.[12] Pope told Spence that the manuscript was submitted to him by Addison, that he thought the action not sufficiently theatrical, and that he recommended the author to forego its performance. Shortly afterwards Addison went to him and said, "that some particular friends, whom he could not disoblige, insisted on its being acted." He protested that he had no party purpose in the play, commissioned Pope to convey this assurance to Oxford and Bolingbroke, sent them the tragedy along with the message, and obtained their encouragement. When a year and a half had elapsed, and the House of Hanover had succeeded to the English throne, Addison published in Nov. 1714, a copy of verses to the Princess of Wales, in which he took credit for the patriotism and daring of his muse in sending forth the play with the express design of defeating the machinations of the government.[13]

And boldly rising for Britannia's laws, Engaged great Cato in her country's cause.

Hurd, unwilling to condemn his hero, Addison, and accepting, without misgiving, the statement reported by Spence, exclaims, "How spotless must that man be, that, in passing through a court, had only contracted this slight stain, even in the opinion of so severe a censor and casuist as Mr. Pope."[14] But unless the conduct of Addison is misrepresented he must have been corrupt and contemptible. The party of which he was a prominent member urged the production of his play, at a momentous crisis, with a political object, and it would have been mean and treacherous to yield to their entreaties, and then privately assure the common enemy that nothing political was intended. The baseness would have been great indeed if, when the power passed over to the whigs, he triumphantly declared that he had pursued the very course he disavowed at the time, and thus endeavoured by a false boast to procure new credit and rewards. Either Addison was unscrupulous, or Pope fabricated the tale. Addison's version was published to the world: Pope's version was dropped into the ear of Spence. Addison made his claim when the circumstances were fresh, and when Pope, Bolingbroke, and Oxford were at hand to expose him: Pope told his story after the lapse of many years, when he had quarrelled with Addison, and the subject of his aspersions was in the grave. Addison has never been convicted of an untruthful word, or a dishonourable act: Pope's career was a labyrinth of deceit, and he abounded in audacious malignant inventions. These considerations are sufficient, but there is more direct evidence. "I have had lately," wrote Pope to Caryll, Feb. 1713, "the entertainment of reading Mr. Addison's tragedy of Cato. It drew tears from me in several parts of the fourth and fifth acts, where the beauty of virtue appears so charming, that I believe, if it comes upon the theatre, we shall enjoy that which Plato thought the greatest pleasure an exalted soul could be capable of, a view of virtue itself dressed in person, colour, and action. The emotion which the mind will feel from this character, and the sentiments of humanity which the distress of such a person as Cato will stir up in us, must necessarily fill an audience with so glorious a disposition and sovereign a love of virtue, that I question if any play has ever conduced so immediately to morals as this." Here is Pope prognosticating that Cato upon the stage will melt, delight, and animate the audience. He penned the words at the exact period when, according to his later assertion, he was admonishing Addison that the play was unsuited to the theatre, and he is self-convicted by the contradiction. One-half of his story was false, and renders the other half worthless.[15]

In the account which Pope gave to Caryll of the first night of Cato he said that "all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it a party play," and complained that "the prologue writer was clapped into a stanch whig, sore against his will, at almost every two lines."[16] He might be anxious to persuade his jacobite correspondent that he had not been abetting a whig manifesto, and might pretend that he was annoyed at the construction put upon the Prologue, but his verses were chiefly devoted to enforcing the political doctrine of the play, and he must deliberately have laid himself out to catch the applause of its friends. His management advanced his fortunes. Windsor Forest procured him the acquaintance and patronage of the tory leaders. Swift recommended the poem to Stella on March 9, 1713, and in November he was heard by Dr. Kennet "instructing a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, a papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them all subscribe, 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.'"[17] The other magnates of the faction joined with Swift in befriending him. In those heated times a Roman Catholic who had won over one party to his interests, by proclaiming his jacobite bias in verse, would naturally have fallen under the ban of their opponents; but his standing sponsor for the whig play, and the relations he maintained with whig authors, kept the whigs from renouncing him. To his art in attracting notice to his poetry through his politics, and in combining the suffrages of embittered political antagonists, he owed the unexampled success of the Homer subscription, which secured his pecuniary independence. He had served both masters by turns, though in unequal degrees, and then unreasonably complained to Caryll that some people called him a whig, and others called him a tory.[18] He disclaimed being either. He talked of his abhorrence of party violence, and propounded his principles in dark unmeaning generalities from which nothing can be gathered, except that he wished to avoid being held responsible for any opinions whatever. He did not take up the position that a purely literary undertaking was independent of politics. The moment the tory cause declined he pleaded his neutrality, and seemed to imagine that he could claim the support of all parties on the ground that he adhered to none. The less wary patron who bespoke Windsor Forest had to suffer for his jacobite zeal. He was arrested on Sept. 21, 1715, and remained in the Tower till Feb. 8, 1717. Bolingbroke and Oxford were impeached, and the selfish bargain they had brought about by dishonourable means, that they might prolong their rule, annihilated their power for ever.

"A person," says Warton, "of no small rank has informed me, that Mr. Addison was inexpressibly chagrined at the noble conclusion of Windsor Forest, both as a politician and as a poet,--as a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own Campaign, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry."[19] This is one of those plausible imputations which enemies propagate on the evidence of their own suspicions, and which therefore require to be substantiated by unexceptionable testimony. Warton had nothing better to adduce in support of the credibility of his informant than the irrelevant circumstance that he was "a person of no small rank." The description of the witness declares his incompetence. It is not pretended that the "person of no small rank" was intimate with Addison, or had any authentic means of ascertaining his sentiments, and they are certainly misrepresented by the assertion that he could not endure poetical panegyrics on a Peace he disapproved, for in the Spectator of Oct. 30, 1712, he wrote up Tickell's laudatory verses, and "hoped his poem would meet with such a reward from its patrons as so noble a performance deserved."[20] There is not a party word added to extenuate the praise; a tory might have endorsed the essay. Intolerance and "inexpressible chagrin" were not at any time characteristics of Addison.

Tickell's Prospect of Peace went through six editions, and to judge by the sale was more popular than Windsor Forest, which was published four months later. The greater success of the far inferior poem was doubtless owing to the eulogium in the Spectator. Pope joined in applauding Tickell's work. He said that it contained "several most poetical images, and fine pieces of painting," he specified certain "strokes of mastery," and he especially commended the versification.[21] His too liberal praise may have been influenced by the couplet in which Tickell exclaimed,

Like the young spreading laurel, Pope! thy name Shoots up with strength and rises into fame.

Nearly the whole of the poem is in an equally dreary style, and this dull mediocrity was not attained without numerous imitations of ancient and modern authors. The insipidity did not exclude extravagance; for both poetry and patriotism were thought to be displayed by a nonsensical exaggeration of British beauty, valour, and power.

Windsor Forest is not free from flat passages, inflation of sentiment, and false and puerile thoughts. Pope mixed up in it the beauties of his manlier period with the vices of his early style. No writer clung more tenaciously to the lifeless phantoms of paganism, nor applied the hereditary common-places in a more servile manner. Liberty is "Britannia's goddess;" the sun is "Phoebus' fiery car;" the sea is "Neptune's self;" the harvest is "Ceres' gifts;" the orchard is "Pomona crowned with fruits;" the ground is "painted by blushing Flora; "and the flocks on the hills are attended by Pan. This last personage leaves his innocent pastoral employment to chase, with evil intentions, "a rural nymph" who calls on "Father Thames" for aid. Father Thames is deaf or indifferent, and Pan is about to clutch her when at her own request she is dissolved into a river. Before her transformation she was one of the "buskined virgins" of Diana, what time the goddess forsook "Cynthus' top" for Windsor, and was often seen roving there over the "airy wastes." There was no occasion now to envy "Arcadia the immortal huntress and her virgin train," since Windsor could boast

As bright a goddess, and as chaste a queen,

and the poet proceeds to complete the comparison between Diana and Queen Anne,--between the virgin huntress, and a prolific mother, who was ugly, corpulent, gouty, sluggish, a glutton and a tippler. Pope afterwards affected a disdain of royalty; he was ready enough to flatter it when he had his own ends to serve. He could not have devised a less felicitous compliment. Tickell's poem was specially praised in the Spectator for its freedom from the follies of "pagan theology." Addison laughed at the whole tiresome tribe of gods and goddesses, and, with good-humoured pleasantry, warned the versifiers, who were about to celebrate the Peace, against introducing "trifling antiquated fables unpardonable in a poet that was past sixteen." He laid stress upon the circumstance that in a panegyric, which should be distinguished for truth, "nothing could be more ridiculous than to have recourse to our Jupiters and Junos,"[22] and no incongruity of the kind could be more absurd than to couple Diana and Queen Anne. Windsor Forest was still in manuscript when Addison's essay appeared. Pope was not at the pains to re-cast his poem, but he must have recognised the force of the playful satire, and thenceforward he abjured mythological trash.

The passage on the death of Cowley exemplifies, in a short compass, the unskilful use to which Pope put the worn-out rags of antiquity:

O early lost! what tears the river shed, When the sad pomp along his banks was led! His drooping swans on ev'ry note expire, And on his willows hung each muse's lyre.

"The appropriate business of poetry," says Wordsworth, "her privilege, and her duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses and passions."[23] Since genuine emotions are often founded upon fancies, since thoughts are not always the true reflection of outward realities, poetasters, and even poets, have concluded that they might represent things neither as they are nor as they appear, might neglect nature altogether, and be unfaithful alike to the world of intelligence, and the world of matter. To this spurious class of invention belong the notions that a river, which had flowed for ages, was the tears of the river-god lamenting the newly-deceased Cowley, and that all the swans on the Thames died with grief on the day of his funeral. The mind refuses to admit such jejune and monstrous fictions among the illusions of imagination. The compound of mythological and biblical ideas in the fourth line has converted a pathetic incident in the Psalms into a cold and miserable conceit. The harp of the Jew was a reality; and when he wept over his captivity by the rivers of Babylon he hung up his harp in very truth because his broken spirit would not permit him to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. There is, on the contrary, only hollow pedantry in the pretence that non-existent muses hung up non-existent lyres on the willows of the Thames because Cowley was dead. The passage goes on in the same empty artificial strain:

Who now shall charm the shades, where Cowley strung His living harp, and lofty Denham sung? But hark! the groves rejoice, the forest rings! Are these revived?--or is it Granville sings?

It is an excellent remark of Bowles that there are some ideas which will only just bear touching. The earliest poems were sung, and singing became synonymous with poetical composition, but when a phrase, which is now a mere figure of speech, is expanded, and the groves are said to rejoice, and the forests to ring with the singing of Granville, the predominant effect produced by the metaphor is a sense of its falsity and grotesqueness. The picture called up is not that of a poet, but of a half-crazed opera singer. This sickly vein of counterfeit pastoral is continued, and we are told that the groves of Windsor are filled with the name of Mira, the subject of Lord Lansdowne's amatory verses, and that the Cupids tuned the lover's lyre in the shades.

The lines on Lord Lansdowne offend the more from the fulsomeness of the adulation. Pope said that "flattery turned his stomach,"[24] which meant that he could not endure his own vices in other people. He had emphatically satirised the sycophancy which estimated literary works by the rank of the author:

What woful stuff this madrigal would be In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought.[25]

The "sacred name" of Lansdowne imparted genius to verse which would have been "woful stuff" in Dennis or Welsted. When Pope, in later years, called him "Granville the polite" he characterised him correctly; when, in Windsor Forest, he exalted him to the rank of a transcendent poet, he said what he could not believe. He outraged candour in prose as well as in verse. He wrote a sycophantic letter to Lord Lansdowne, boasting his freedom from the insincerity of his "fellow scribblers" who composed panegyrics "at random, and persuaded the next vain creature they could find that it was his own likeness." Pope vowed he had erred in the opposite direction, and had forborne to praise Lord Lansdowne up to the height of his deserts out of deference to his modesty. "Whereas others are offended if they have not more than justice done them, you would be displeased if you had so much. Therefore I may safely do you as much injury in my word as you do yourself in your own thoughts. I am so vain as to think I have shown you a favour in sparing your modesty, and you cannot but make me some return for prejudicing the truth to gratify you."[26] Here was triple incense,--the original adulation, the protestation that it was inadequate, and the pretence that Lord Lansdowne, a man noted for vanity, was too modest to endure merited praise. Pope spoke more truth than he intended when he said that he had "prejudiced truth to gratify him."

"Who now reads Cowley?" asked Pope in 1737.[27] The panegyric in Windsor Forest was an anachronism, and he might have asked the same question in 1713. Never was an equal reputation more ephemeral. While Cowley lived, and for a few years afterwards, the most cultivated minds in the kingdom called him the "great Cowley," the "incomparable Cowley," the "divine Cowley." When he died, Denham said that Death had

Plucked the fairest, sweetest flow'r That in the Muses' garden grew.

The herd of readers vied with men of letters in applauding him, as was shown by the sale of his works, and is implied in the couplet of Oldham:

One likes my verses, and commends each line, And swears that Cowley's are but dull to mine.[28]

The wonder is not that he lost his pre-eminence, but that he ever obtained it. His poetry is a puzzle from its contradictory qualities. Some of his pieces have a gay facility which had not hitherto been rivalled, and the greater part are harsh, heavy and obscure. He loved to search for remote analogies, and his profusion of far-fetched similes are constantly of a kind which debase the subject they are intended to elevate and adorn. His language is incessantly pitched in a high, heroic key, and then sinks in the same, or the succeeding sentence, into the tamest, meanest phrases of colloquial prose. His verse in entire poems, as well as in single lilies and occasional passages, is remarkable for its tripping ease, and is more often rugged to such a degree that it is incredible how it could pass with him for verse at all. The faulty side in him predominates, and the general impression he leaves is that of dullness, laboured and negligent by turns. He did not owe the whole of his popularity to his real abilities, and the bad taste of his age. He was a conspicuous adherent of the Stuarts, and the cavaliers adopted his works out of compliment to his politics. The grand funeral procession, commemorated in Windsor Forest, was a tribute paid to him by a party, because he united the fame of a forward royalist to the celebrity of an author. In a generation when authors and royalists were both dissolute, his writings had at least the merit of being untainted by the prevailing vice. Pope, describing the infidelity and debauchery of the Restoration era, exclaims,

Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles's days, Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays.[29]

He might have remembered Milton if he overlooked Cowley, who was nevertheless a far greater poet than Roscommon. The one had gleams of genius, and the other had none. The contemporaries of Cowley had not been blind to the moral merits of his productions. "I cannot," says Sir John Denham, "but mention with honour my friend Mr. Cowley, who was the first who of late offered to redeem poesy from that slavery wherein this depraved age has prostituted her to all imaginable uncleanness."[30] His request in his will, that his compositions, printed and manuscript, should be collected by Dr. Sprat, was accompanied by a clause "beseeching him not to let any pass (if anything of that kind has escaped my pen) which may give the least offence in point of religion and good manners." His life was in keeping with his writings. Evelyn calls him that "incomparable poet, and virtuous man;" and Pepys heard Dr. Ward, the bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Bates, the well-known puritan, "mightily lamenting his death, as the best poet of our nation and as good a man."[31] The king was pleased to add his testimony, worthless if it had stood alone, and declared "that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England."[32]

"In Windsor Forest," says Bowles, "there is description, incident, and history." A few remarks may still be made on it under each of these heads. Wordsworth assigned to it the distinction, in conjunction with Lady Winchelsea's Nocturnal Reverie, of containing the only "new images of external nature" to be found "in the poetry of the period intervening between Paradise Lost and the Seasons."[33] He limited the praise to "a passage or two," and does not particularise the passages to which he alluded. He must chiefly have referred to the lines from ver. 111 to ver. 146; for the other happy "images of external nature" are borrowed. Pope had but a faint perception of latent and subtle beauties, and he usually kept to those general appearances which are obvious to all the world. His trees cast a shade, his streams murmur, his heath is purple, his harvests are yellow, and his skies blue. Living in the midst of English peasants he shows less familiarity with rural character than with rural scenes. Neither in his verse, nor his letters, is there anything to indicate that he had mixed, like Thomson, Cowper, and Wordsworth, with the cottagers around him, or had divined the noble qualities which are masked by a rustic exterior. His sympathies were contracted, and strange to say there is not one word in his voluminous writings on human kind which denotes that he had felt in the smallest degree the loveliness of children. His main interest was in men and women, whose names, for good or evil, were before the world, and in speaking of them he dwelt principally upon their foibles and misdeeds.

The censure of Warton is valid when he complains that Pope's account of field sports is deficient in characteristic details. He found a stag-chase in Cooper's Hill, which determined him to extend, while ho imitated, the plan of his original, and introduce hunting, fishing, shooting, and netting into Windsor Forest, though he was not a sportsman. The objection that his stag-chase is not as circumstantial as that of Somerville, is fairly answered by Johnson's remark, that the chase was the main subject of Somerville, and is only subsidiary with Pope. More, nevertheless, was required than a description of the impatience and galloping of the horses, and of the eagerness of the riders. Of this single topic one half was a translation from Statius. The fishing and shooting are superior to the hunt. The particulars are meagre, but there is mastery in the mode of representing them. The dying pheasant is painted in language as rich as its plumage, and the doves, the lapwing, the lark, and the wintry landscape, could not have been brought more vividly before the mind, or in fewer words. A gentle pathos intermingles with the whole. The portrait of the angler would have been perfect, in the single circumstance to which it is confined, if Pope had not said of him, "he hopes the scaly breed." Wakefield observed that "hope," used as an active verb, was intolerably affected, and he might have extended the remark to the use of "scaly breed" for fish.

The "story part" of Windsor Forest is a mosaic of translated scraps from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The fictions of heathen mythology, which had been repeated to satiety, which exhibited no invention, and had no charm for modern imaginations, are worse than an excrescence in the midst of English prospects, sports, and history. The bad effect does not stop with the puerilities themselves, but they communicate an air of weakness and unreality to the general texture of the work.

The well-merited praise which Bowles bestowed upon "the historical part" of the poem is inapplicable to the ill drawn character of William the Conqueror. Pope saw in him only a devastator and a tyrant. He had not caught a glimpse of the robust will, and masculine genius, which conquered and consolidated a great country. The vigour, daring, and sagacity which tempered the grosser traits in the mind of William are suppressed, and the masterly warrior and statesman is reduced to an inglorious spoiler of peasants, and hunter of deer. The advantages which accrued to England from the conquest itself were unknown to Pope, who fancied that its principal result was to destroy agriculture, and impoverish the people. He was not aware that it introduced a more advanced civilisation, imparted new energy to a backward stagnant population, opened up to them a vista of grander views, and repaid transitory suffering by vast and permanent benefits.

A fourth element in Windsor Forest is not noticed by Bowles. Pope considered that the "reflections upon life and political institutions" were the distinguishing excellence of Cooper's Hill. He emulated in this respect his master's merits, surpassed him in polish of style, and fell below him in strength of thought. Hunting the hare suggests to Pope this poor and false conclusion:

Beasts urged by us their fellow beasts pursue, And learn of man each other to undo.

How much more weighty is the sentiment expressed by Denham, when the stag endeavours to take refuge in the herd:

The herd, unkindly wise, Or chases him from thence, or from him flies; Like a declining statesman, left forlorn To his friends' pity, and pursuers' scorn, With shame remembers, while himself was one Of the same herd, himself the same had done.

The terse satire upon Henry VIII. is a still better specimen of Denham's moralisings. As he surveys the prospect round Cooper's Hill he is reminded of the dissolution of the monasteries, by the sight of the place where once stood a chapel which had shared the fate of its parent abbey. This rouses his indignation, and he thus proceeds:

Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous dire offence, What crime could any Christian king incense To such a rage? Was't luxury or lust? Was _he_ so temperate, so chaste, so just? Were these their crimes?--they were his own much more; But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor, Who having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own. Thus he the church at once protects and spoils: But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.

The last couplet is a contrast between the destroying energy of Henry VIII., and the impotence of his book against Luther.

Windsor Forest has rather more variety in its versification than is usual with Pope. The poem opens with one of those breaks in the metre which were incessant in the older rhymsters, and which were gradually abjured by their successors.

Thy forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats, At once the monarch's and the muse's seats, Invite my lays.

This use of the full stop commonly required that the sense should be carried on without a pause from the preceding line, whereas the theory spread that the close of the sense should coincide with the close of the rhymed sound, or in other words that the full stop should be always at the end of the couplet. To keep the rhyme predominant there was an increasing tendency to have at least the pause of a comma, even after the final word of the first line of the couplet. Thus from a license, which, as Prior says, "was found too dissolute and wild, and came very often too near prose," the writers of heroics arrived at a system which "produced too frequent an identity in the sound, and brought every couplet to the point of an epigram."[34] Denham, according to Johnson, was the chief reformer who "taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets,"[35] but he retained much of the primitive freedom, and Prior says that to Dryden belongs the credit of perfecting the innovation, and the blame of pushing it to excess. Pope went further than Dryden. When once the change had commenced there was a constant movement towards uniformity till the utmost verge was reached, and a fresh reaction began. Bowles, with his fine ear, was a zealous advocate for diversified harmony, and tuneful strength. He felt that an occasional break, managed with skill, adds dignity to the couplet, while the toning down of the final syllables, by sometimes running one verse into another, is a grateful antidote to the cloying monotony of emphatic rhymes. Imperfect rhymes offend from the impression they give of imperfect art, but perfect rhymes softened by the continuous flow of the pronunciation, are a relief to the ear. As the rhymed sound should be diminished at intervals, so, at intervals, it may be advantageously increased by the introduction of triplets. Dryden often used them with admirable effect;[36] Pope employed them sparingly, and they were almost entirely laid aside by his immediate imitators. With them the taste for numerous verse was extinct.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Johnson was mistaken. Pope states in a note that the addition commenced at ver. 291.]

[Footnote 2:

When actions, unadorned, are faint and weak, Cities and countries must be taught to speak; Gods may descend in factions from the skies, And rivers from their oozy beds arise.]

[Footnote 3: "Denham," says Johnson, "seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation."]

[Footnote 4: Critics differ. "Nothing," says Warton, "can be colder and more prosaic than the manner in which Denham has spoken of the distant prospect of London and St. Paul's."]

[Footnote 5: Singer's Spence, p. 153.]

[Footnote 6: Autobiography of Mrs. Delany, vol. i. p. 20, 82.]

[Footnote 7: Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 307.]

[Footnote 8: Mémoires, Col. Michaud, 3rd Series, tom. viii. p. 731; Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 315, Philadelphia, 1841.]

[Footnote 9: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 315, 317, 320. "The sole question," says Bolingbroke, "is, who caused this disunion?--and that will be easily decided by every impartial man, who informs himself carefully of the public anecdotes of that time. If the private anecdotes were to be laid open as well as those, and I think it almost time they should, the whole monstrous scene would appear, and shock the eye of every honest man." The prediction has been fulfilled, and the vaunting prophet consigned to infamy through the evidence he invoked.]

[Footnote 10: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. i. p. 123.]

[Footnote 11: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. i. p. 124.]

[Footnote 12: Gibber's Apology, 4th ed. vol. ii. p. 11.]

[Footnote 13: Warburton's Pope, ed. 1760, vol. iv. p. 172; Spence, p. 148.]

[Footnote 14: Hurd's Addison, vol. i. p. 299.]

[Footnote 15: Pope related, perhaps truly, that Addison objected to the phrase "Britons _arise_!" in the Prologue to Cato, and said, "it would be called stirring the people to rebellion." Warburton holds this incident to be a proof that Addison "was exceedingly afraid of party imputations throughout the carriage of the whole affair," as if, because he did not wish to be considered an instigator to rebellion, it followed that he shrunk from seeming an advocate for whig principles.]

[Footnote 16: Pope to Caryll, April 30, 1713.]

[Footnote 17: Scott's Life of Swift, p. 139.]

[Footnote 18: Pope to Caryll, May 1, 1714.]

[Footnote 19: Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 29.]

[Footnote 20: Spectator, No. 523.]

[Footnote 21: Pope to Caryll, Nov. 29, 1712.]

[Footnote 22: Spectator, No. 523, Oct. 30, 1712.]

[Footnote 23: Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1836, vol. iii. p. 316.]

[Footnote 24: Epilogue to the Satires; Dialog. 2, ver. 182.]

[Footnote 25: Essay on Criticism, ver. 418.]

[Footnote 26: Pope to Lord Lansdowne, Jan. 10, 1712 [13].]

[Footnote 27: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 75.]

[Footnote 28: Oldham's Elegies.]

[Footnote 29: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 213.]

[Footnote 30: A Version of the Psalms: Preface.]

[Footnote 31: Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 27; Pepys's Diary, 4th ed., vol. iii. p. 219.]

[Footnote 32: Account of the Life of Cowley, prefixed to his works, ed. 1688]

[Footnote 33: Wordsworth's Works, vol. iii. p. 333.]

[Footnote 34: Prior's Preface to Solomon.]

[Footnote 35: Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 77.]

[Footnote 36: Dryden maintains, in his Dedication to the Æneis, that the triplet, conjoined with the Alexandrine, is "the _magna charta_ of heroic poetry." "Besides," he says, "the majesty which it gives, it confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would languish if it were lengthened into four." Johnson, while granting that the variety arising from triplets was desirable, wished that there should "be some stated mode of admitting them," in order to prevent their coming upon the reader by surprise, and to keep up the constancy of metrical laws. Such a rule would introduce a new species of monotony, and do away with the benefit which principally recommended triplets to Dryden. Ideas which were not enough for four lines, and over-much for two, would not recur at stages fixed beforehand. Swift thought triplets and Alexandrines "a corruption," and boasted that he had "banished them" by a triplet in his City Shower. "I absolutely," he adds, "did prevail with Mr. Pope, and Gay, and Dr. Young, and one or two more to reject them. Mr. Pope never used them till he translated Homer, which was too long a work to be so very exact in; and I think in one or two of his last poems he has, out of laziness, done the same thing, though very seldom." Swift was mistaken in his assertion that Pope never used triplets till he translated the Iliad. They occur in the Essay on Criticism, the Temple of Fame, and other pieces, and not only did these works appear before the Homer, but they appeared after the triplet in the City Shower, which Swift flattered himself had banished all triplets from poetry. Nor had he any need to persuade Young and Gay to reject them if they had been exploded by his triplet of 1710, for it was two or three years later before either Young or Gray printed their first rhymes. They contained, however, triplets in spite of his City Shower, which had none of the effect he imagined. It merely proved, what no one doubted, that a metre proper to serious subjects was ludicrous in a burlesque. Swift's dislike to triplets and Alexandrines was a prejudice, and he did not pretend to offer any reason for his decree.]

WINDSOR FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.[1]

Thy forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats, At once the monarch's and the muse's seats,[2] Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids! Unlock your springs, and open all your shades.[3] Granville commands; your aid, O muses, bring! 5 What muse for Granville can refuse to sing?[4] The groves of Eden, vanished now so long, Live in description,[5] and look green in song: These, were my breast inspired with equal flame,[6] Like them in beauty, should be like in fame.[7] 10 Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water, seem to strive again; Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused:[8] Where order in variety we see, 15 And where, though all things differ, all agree.[9] Here waving groves a chequered scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.[10] 20 There, interspersed in lawns and opening glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades. Here in full light the russet plains extend: There wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend. Ev'n the wild heath displays her purple dyes,[11] 25 And 'midst the desert fruitful fields arise, That crowned with tufted trees[12] and springing corn, Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn. Let India boast her plants, nor envy we The weeping amber, or the balmy tree,[13] 30 While by our oaks the precious loads are borne, And realms commanded which those trees adorn. Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight, Though gods assembled grace his tow'ring height,[14] Than what more humble mountains offer here, 35 Where, in their blessings, all those gods appear.[15] See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,[16] Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground, Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand; 40 Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains, And peace and plenty tell, a STUART reigns. Not thus the land appeared in ages past, A dreary desert and a gloomy waste,[17] To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,[18] 45 And kings more furious and severe than they;[19] Who claimed the skies, dispeopled air and floods, The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:[20] Cities laid waste, they stormed the dens and caves, (For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves.)[21] 50 What could be free, when lawless beasts obeyed,[22] And ev'n the elements[23] a tyrant swayed? In vain kind seasons swelled the teeming grain, Soft show'rs distilled, and suns grew warm in vain; The swain with tears his frustrate labour yields,[24] 55 And famished dies amidst his ripened fields.[25] What wonder then, a beast or subject slain[26] Were equal crimes in a despotic reign? Both doomed alike, for sportive tyrants bled, But while the subject starved, the beast was fed. 60 Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man: Our haughty Norman boasts that barb'rous name, And makes his trembling slaves the royal game. The fields are ravished from th' industrious swains, 65 From men their cities, and from gods their fanes:[27] The levelled towns[28] with weeds lie covered o'er;[29] The hollow winds through naked temples roar;[30] Round broken columns clasping ivy twined; O'er heaps of ruin stalked the stately hind;[31] 70 The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires, And savage howlings[32] fill the sacred choirs.[33] Awed by his nobles, by his commons curst, Th' oppressor ruled tyrannic where he durst,[34] Stretched o'er the poor and church his iron rod, 75 And served alike his vassals and his God.[35] Whom ev'n the Saxon spared, and bloody Dane, The wanton victims of his sport remain. But see, the man, who spacious regions gave A waste for beasts, himself denied a grave![36] 80 Stretched on the lawn[37] his second hope survey,[38] At once the chaser, and at once the prey:[39] Lo Rufus, tugging at the deadly dart, Bleeds in the forest like a wounded hart.[40] Succeeding monarchs heard the subject's cries, 85 Nor saw displeased the peaceful cottage rise.[41] Then gath'ring flocks on unknown[42] mountains fed, O'er sandy wilds were yellow harvests spread, The forest wondered at th' unusual grain,[43] And secret transport touched the conscious swain.[44] 90 Fair Liberty, Britannia's goddess, rears Her cheerful head, and leads the golden years.[45] Ye vig'rous swains! while youth ferments your blood, And purer spirits swell the sprightly flood,[46] 95 Now range the hills, the gameful[47] woods beset, Wind the shrill horn, or spread the waving net. When milder autumn summer's heat succeeds,[48] And in the new-shorn field the partridge feeds, Before his lord the ready spaniel bounds, Panting with hope, he tries the furrowed grounds; 100 But when the tainted gales the game betray, Couched close he lies, and meditates the prey;[49] Secure they trust th' unfaithful field beset, Till hov'ring o'er them sweeps the swelling net. Thus (if small things we may with great compare)[50] 105 When Albion sends her eager sons to war, Some thoughtless town, with ease and plenty blest,[51] Near, and more near, the closing lines invest; Sudden they seize th' amazed, defenceless prize, And high in air Britannia's standard flies. 110 See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings:[52] Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes,[53] 115 His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings,[54] and breast that flames with gold? Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky, The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny.[55] 120 To plains with well-breathed beagles we repair, And trace the mazes of the circling hare: Beasts, urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue, And learn of man each other to undo.[56] With slaught'ring guns th' unwearied fowler roves, 125 When frosts have whitened all the naked groves;[57] Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade,[58] And lonely woodcocks haunt the wat'ry glade. He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye;[59] Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky: 130 Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clam'rous lapwings feel the leaden death: Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air.[60] In genial spring, beneath the quiv'ring shade, 135 Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead, The patient fisher takes his silent stand, Intent, his angle trembling in his hand:[61] With looks unmoved, he hopes[62] the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed. 140 Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes[63] rolled, The yellow carp, in scales bedropped with gold,[64] Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, 145 And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.[65] Now Cancer glows with Phoebus' fiery car:[66] The youth rush eager to the sylvan war,[67] Swarm o'er the lawns, the forest walks surround, Rouse the fleet hart, and cheer the opening hound. 150 Th' impatient courser pants in ev'ry vein, And pawing, seems to beat the distant plain. Hills, vales, and floods appear already crossed, And ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost.[68] See the bold youth strain up the threat'ning[69] steep, 155 Rush through the thickets, down the valleys sweep, Hang o'er their coursers' heads with eager speed, And earth rolls back beneath the flying steed.[70] Let old Arcadia boast her ample plain, Th' immortal huntress, and her virgin-train; 160 Nor envy, Windsor! since thy shades have seen As bright a goddess, and as chaste a queen;[71] Whose care, like hers, protects the sylvan reign,[72] The earth's fair light, and empress of the main.[73] Here too, 'tis sung, of old Diana strayed, 165 And Cynthus' top forsook for Windsor shade: Here was she seen o'er airy wastes to rove, Seek the clear spring, or haunt the pathless grove;[74] Here armed with silver bows, in early dawn, Her buskined virgins traced the dewy lawn. 170 Above the rest a rural nymph was famed,[75] Thy offspring, Thames! the fair Lodona named; (Lodona's fate, in long oblivion cast, The muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last.) Scarce could the goddess from her nymph be known, 175 But by the crescent and the golden zone.[76] She scorned the praise of beauty, and the care; A belt her waist, a fillet binds her hair;[77] A painted quiver on her shoulder sounds,[78] And with her dart the flying deer she wounds. 180 It chanced, as eager of the chace, the maid Beyond the forest's verdant limits strayed, Pan saw and loved, and burning with desire[79] Pursued her flight, her flight increased his fire. Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly, 185 When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky; Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves, When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves,[80] As from the god she flew with furious pace, Or as the god, more furious urged the chace.[81] 190 Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears; Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears; And now his shadow reached her as she run,[82] His shadow lengthened by the setting sun; And now his shorter breath, with sultry air, 195 Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.[83] In vain on father Thames she calls for aid, Nor could Diana help her injured maid. Faint, breathless, thus she prayed, nor prayed in vain; "Ah Cynthia! ah--though banished from thy train, 200 Let me, O let me, to the shades repair, My natives shades--there weep, and murmur there." She said, and melting as in tears she lay, In a soft, silver stream dissolved away. The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps, 205 For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps; Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore,[84] And bathes the forest where she ranged before. In her chaste current oft the goddess laves, And with celestial tears augments the waves.[85] 210 Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies[86] The headlong mountains and the downward skies,[87] The wat'ry landscape of the pendant woods, And absent[88] trees that tremble in the floods; In the clear azure gleam the flocks are seen, 215 And floating forests paint the waves with green, Through the fair scene roll slow the ling'ring streams, Then foaming pour along, and rush into the Thames. Thou too, great father of the British floods! With joyful pride survey'st our lofty woods; 220 Where tow'ring oaks their growing[89] honours rear, And future navies on thy shores appear. Not Neptune's self from all his[90] streams receives A wealthier tribute than to thine he gives. No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,[91] 225 No lake so gentle, and no spring so clear. Nor Po[92] so swells the fabling poet's lays,[93] While led along the skies his current strays,[94] As thine,[95] which visits Windsor's famed abodes, To grace the mansion of our earthly gods: 230 Nor all his stars above a lustre show, Like the bright beauties on thy banks below;[96] Where Jove, subdued by mortal passion still, Might change Olympus for a nobler hill. Happy the man whom this bright court approves,[97] 235 His sov'reign favours, and his country loves:[98] Happy next him, who to these shades retires, Whom nature charms, and whom the muse inspires: Whom humbler joys of home-felt quiet please, Successive study, exercise, and ease. 240 He gathers health from herbs the forest yields, And of their fragrant physic spoils the fields: With chemic art exalts the min'ral pow'rs, And draws the aromatic souls of flow'rs: Now marks the course of rolling orbs on high; 245 O'er figured worlds now travels with his eye; Of ancient writ unlocks the learned store, Consults the dead, and lives past ages o'er: Or wand'ring thoughtful in the silent wood, Attends the duties of the wise and good,[99] 250 T' observe a mean, be to himself a friend, To follow nature, and regard his end;[100] Or looks on heav'n with more than mortal eyes, Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies, Amid her kindred stars familiar roam, 255 Survey the region, and confess her home! Such was the life great Scipio once admired, Thus Atticus, and Trumbull thus retired. Ye sacred Nine! that all my soul possess, Whose raptures fire me, and whose visions bless,[101] 260 Bear me, oh bear me to sequestered scenes, The bow'ry mazes, and surrounding greens;[102] To Thames's banks which fragrant breezes fill, Or where ye Muses sport on Cooper's Hill. On Cooper's Hill eternal wreaths shall grow 265 While lasts the mountain,[103] or while Thames shall flow. I seem through consecrated walks to rove,[104] I hear soft music die along the grove: Led by the sound, I roam from shade to shade, By god-like poets venerable made:[105] 270 Here his first lays[106] majestic[107] Denham sung; There the last numbers flowed from Cowley's tongue.[108] O early lost![109] what tears the river shed,[110] When the sad pomp along his banks was led![111] His drooping swans on ev'ry note expire,[112] 275 And on his willows hung each muse's lyre.[113] Since fate relentless stopped their heav'nly voice, No more the forests ring, or groves rejoice; Who now shall charm the shades, where Cowley strung His living[114] harp, and lofty Denham sung? 280 But hark! the groves rejoice, the forest rings! Are these reviv'd? or is it Granville sings![115] 'Tis yours, my lord, to bless our soft retreats, And call the muses to their ancient seats; To paint anew the flow'ry sylvan scenes, 285 To crown the forests with immortal greens, Make Windsor-hills in lofty numbers rise, And lift her turrets nearer to the skies; To sing those honours you deserve to wear,[116] And add new lustre to her silver star.[117] 290 Here[118] noble Surrey[119] felt the sacred rage, Surrey, the Granville of a former age: Matchless his pen, victorious was his lance, Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance: In the same shades the Cupids tuned his lyre 295 To the same notes of love, and soft desire: Fair Geraldine,[120] bright object of his vow, Then filled the groves, as heavenly Mira now.[121] Oh would'st thou sing what heroes Windsor bore, What kings first breathed upon her winding shore, 300 Or raise old warriors, whose adored remains In weeping vaults her hallowed earth contains![122] With Edward's acts adorn the shining page,[123] Stretch his long triumphs down through ev'ry age, Draw monarchs chained,[124] and Crecy's glorious field, 305 The lilies[125] blazing on the regal shield:[126] Then, from her roofs when Verrio's[127] colours fall, And leave inanimate the naked wall, Still in thy song should vanquished France appear, And bleed for ever under Britain's spear.[128] 310 Let softer strains ill-fated Henry[129] mourn, And palms eternal flourish round his urn. Here o'er the martyr-king the marble weeps, And, fast beside him, once-feared Edward[130] sleeps: Whom not th' extended Albion could contain, 315 From old Belerium[131] to the northern main,[132] The grave unites; where ev'n the great find rest, And blended lie th' oppressor and th' oppressed! Make sacred Charles's tomb for ever known,[133] (Obscure the place, and uninscribed the stone)[134] 320 Oh fact accurst! what tears has Albion shed,[135] Heav'ns, what new wounds! and how her old have bled! She saw her sons with purple death expire, Her sacred domes involved in rolling fire,[136] A dreadful series of intestine wars, 325 Inglorious triumphs and dishonest scars.[137] At length great ANNA said--"Let discord cease!"[138] She said, the world obeyed, and all was peace! In that blest moment, from his oozy bed Old father Thames advanced his rev'rend head;[139] 330 His tresses dropped with dews,[140] and o'er the stream[141] His shining horns[142] diffused a golden gleam; Graved on his urn, appeared the moon that guides His swelling waters, and alternate tides; The figured streams in waves of silver rolled, 335 And on their banks Augusta[143] rose in gold. Around his throne the sea-born brothers[144] stood, Who swell with tributary urns his flood: First the famed authors of his ancient name,[145] The winding Isis and the fruitful Thame;[146] 340 The Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned;[147] The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned;[148] Cole, whose dark streams his flow'ry islands lave; And chalky Wey,[149] that rolls a milky wave: The blue, transparent Vandalis[150] appears; 345 The gulphy Lee his sedgy tresses rears;[151] And sullen Mole, that hides his diving flood;[152] And silent Darent, stained with Danish blood.[153] High in the midst, upon his urn reclined, (His sea-green mantle waving with the wind)[154] 350 The god appeared: he turned his azure eyes Where Windsor-domes and pompous turrets rise; Then bowed and spoke;[155] the winds forget to roar, And the hushed waves glide softly to the shore.[156] "Hail, sacred Peace! hail, long-expected days, 355 That Thames's glory to the stars shall raise! Though Tiber's streams immortal Rome behold, Though foaming Hermus swells with tides of gold,[157] From heav'n itself though sevenfold Nilus flows, And harvests on a hundred realms bestows,[158] 360 These now no more shall be the muse's themes, Lost in my fame, as in the sea their streams. Let Volga's banks with iron squadrons shine,[159] And groves of lances glitter on the Rhine; Let barb'rous Ganges arm a servile train; 365 Be mine the blessings of a peaceful reign. No more my sons shall dye with British blood Red Iber's sands, or Ister's foaming flood:[160] Safe on my shore each unmolested swain Shall tend the flocks, or reap the bearded grain; 370 The shady empire shall retain no trace[161] Of war or blood, but in the sylvan chace; The trumpet sleep while cheerful horns are blown, And arms employed on birds and beasts alone.[162] Behold! th' ascending villas on my side, 375 Project long shadows o'er the crystal tide; Behold! Augusta's glitt'ring spires increase, And temples rise,[163] the beauteous works of peace. I see, I see, where two fair cities bend Their ample bow, a new Whitehall ascend![164] 380 There mighty nations shall inquire their doom, The world's great oracle in times to come;[165] There kings shall sue, and suppliant states be seen Once more to bend before a British Queen.[166] Thy trees, fair Windsor![167] now shall leave their woods,[168] And half thy forests rush into thy floods,[169] 386 Bear Britain's thunder, and her cross[170] display, To the bright regions of the rising day;[171] Tempt icy seas,[172] where scarce the waters roll, Where clearer flames glow round the frozen pole; 390 Or under southern skies exalt[173] their sails, Led by new stars, and borne by spicy gales![174] For me the balm shall bleed, and amber flow, The coral redden, and the ruby glow, The pearly shell its lucid globe infold, 395 And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold.[175] The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind,[176] Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,[177] Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide;[178] 400 Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold, And the new world launch forth to seek the old. Then ships of uncouth form shall stem the tide, And feathered people crowd my wealthy side, And naked youths[179] and painted chiefs admire[180] 405 Our speech, our colour, and our strange attire. Oh stretch thy reign, fair Peace! from shore to shore, Till conquest cease, and slav'ry be no more; Till the freed Indians in their native groves Reap their own fruits, and woo their sable loves, 410 Peru once more a race of kings behold, And other Mexicos be roofed with gold.[181] Exiled by thee from earth to deepest hell, In brazen bonds,[182] shall barb'rous Discord dwell: Gigantic Pride, pale Terror, gloomy Care, 415 And mad Ambition shall attend her there: There purple Vengeance bathed in gore retires, Her weapons blunted, and extinct her fires: There hateful Envy her own snakes shall feel, And Persecution mourn her broken wheel: 420 There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,[183] And gasping Furies thirst for blood in vain." Here cease thy flight, nor with unhallowed lays Touch the fair fame of Albion's golden days: The thoughts of gods let Granville's verse recite, 425 And bring the scenes of opening fate to light.[184] My humble muse, in unambitious strains, Paints the green forests and the flow'ry plains,[185] Where Peace descending bids her olive spring, And scatters blessings from her dove-like wing. 430 Ev'n I more sweetly pass my careless days, Pleased in the silent shade with empty praise; Enough for me, that to the list'ning swains First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.[186]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Notwithstanding the many praises lavished on this celebrated nobleman as a poet, by Dryden, by Addison, by Bolingbroke, by our Author, and others, yet candid criticism must oblige us to confess, that he was but a feeble imitator of the feeblest parts of Waller. After having been secretary at war, 1710, controller and treasurer to the household, and of her majesty's privy council, and created a peer, 1711, he was seized as a suspected person, at the accession of George I., and confined in the Tower. Whatever may be thought of Lord Lansdowne as a poet, his character as a man was highly valuable. His conversation was most pleasing and polite; his affability, and universal benevolence, and gentleness, captivating; he was a firm friend and a sincere lover of his country. This is the character I received of him from his near relation, the late excellent Mrs. Delany.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 2: Thus Hopkins, in his History of Love:

Ye woods and wilds, serene and blest retreats, At once the lovers' and the Muses' seats To you I fly.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 3: Originally thus:

Chaste goddess of the woods, Nymphs of the vales, and Naïads of the flood, Lead me through arching bow'rs, and glimin'ring glades, Unlock your springs.--POPE.

Dryden's Virgil, Geor. ii. 245:

Once more unlock for thee the sacred spring.

Æn. x. 241:

Now, sacred sisters, open all your spring.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 4: Neget quis carmina Gallo? Virg.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 5: Evidently suggested by Waller:

Of the first Paradise there's nothing found, Yet the description lasts.--HOLT WHITE.

Addison's Letter from Italy:

Sometimes misguided by the tuneful throng, I look for streams immortalised in song, That lost in silence and oblivion lie; Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry; Yet run for ever by the muse's skill, And in the smooth description murmur still.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 6: There is an inaccuracy in making the flame equal to a grove. It might have been Milton's flame.--WARTON.

Addison's Letter from Italy:

O, could the muse my ravished breast inspire With warmth like yours, and raise an equal fire.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 7: This is borrowed from the lines, quoted by Bowles, in which Denham alludes to the founder of Windsor Castle being as doubtful as was the birth-place of Homer:

Like him in birth, thou should'st be like in fame, As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame.]

[Footnote 8: From Waller:

As in old chaos heav'n with earth confused, And stars with rocks together crushed and bruised.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 9: Evidently from Cooper's Hill:

Here Nature, whether more intent to please Us, or herself, with strange varieties, Wisely she knew the harmony of things, As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. Such was the discord which did first disperse Form, order, beauty through the universe.--WARTON.

[Footnote 10: There is a levity in this comparison which appears to me unseasonable, and but ill according with the serene dignity of the subject.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 11: Originally thus:

Why should I sing our better suns or air, Whose vital draughts prevent the leech's care, While through fresh fields th' enlivening odours breathe, Or spread with vernal blooms the purple heath?--POPE.

The first couplet of the lines in Pope's note, was from Dryden's epistle to his kinsman:

He scapes the best, who, nature to repair, Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.]

[Footnote 12: Milton's Allegro, ver. 78:

Bosomed high in tufted trees.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 13: Milton, Par. Lost, iv. 248:

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms.

This fancy was borrowed from the ancients. According to Ovid (Met. x. 500), Myrrha, changed into a tree, weeps myrrh, and the sisters of Phæton (Met. ii. 364), transformed into poplars, shed tears which harden in the sun, and turn into amber.]

[Footnote 14: This fabulous mixture of stale images, Olympus and the Gods, is, in my opinion, extremely puerile, especially in a description of real scenery. Pan, Pomona, and the rest, mere representative substitutions, give no offence.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 15: The making the hills nobler than Olympus with all its gods, because the gods appeared "in their blessings" on the humbler mountains of Windsor, is a thought only to be excused in a very young writer.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 16: The word "crowned" is exceptionable; it makes Pan crowned with flocks.--WARTON.

Pope, in his manuscript, has underscored "Pan with flocks," and "crowned," and set a mark against the line, as if he had detected, and intended to remove, the defect.]

[Footnote 17: Dryden's Translations from Ovid:

A dismal desert, and a silent waste.

Pope weakened the line in varying it. "Dreary desert" and "gloomy waste" are synonymous, but "silent" adds a distinct idea to "dismal."]

[Footnote 18: The Forest Laws.--POPE.

The killing a deer, boar, or hare, was punished with the loss of the delinquent's eyes.--WARTON.

Thierry believes that the forest laws had a more serious object than to secure for the king a monopoly of sport. The chief intention was to keep the newly conquered Saxons from going armed under the pretext that they were in pursuit of game. Hence the penalty was of a nature to incapacitate the offender for military service.]

[Footnote 19: This is in imitation of Waller:

Prove all a desert! and none there make stay But savage beasts, or men as wild as they.--WAKEFIELD.

Sir William Temple says of the forests on the continent that they

give a shade To savage beasts who on the weaker prey, Or human savages more wild than they.

Wakefield remarks that there is an inaccuracy in Pope's couplet, since the "savage laws" to which the pronoun "they" in part refers, were the mode in which the severity of the king displayed itself.]

[Footnote 20: The representation is erroneous. The "air, floods, and wilds" were not "dispeopled." The forest laws occasioned an increase in the quantity of game, which was preserved more carefully when it became the property of the privileged few, and was no longer liable to be exterminated by the many. Pope is not consistent with himself, for he afterwards complains that "while the subject starved the _beast_ was _fed_."]

[Footnote 21: Originally thus in the MS.:

From towns laid waste, to dens and caves they ran (For who first stooped to be a slave was man).--WARBURTON.

The conceit is childish, because dens and caves are the residence of these brutes at all times, and therefore their retreat to these places constitutes no argument of their aversion to slavery. And the following couplet is by no means worthy of the poet.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 22: According to this doctrine no nation can lie free in which lawless beasts are subjugated by man.]

[Footnote 23: Pope puts "the elements" for the creatures which inhabited them.]

[Footnote 24: In the first edition it was,

The swain with tears to beasts his labour yields,

which defined the poet's idea more clearly. He changed the expression to avoid the recurrence of the same word when he introduced "beast" into the next couplet.]

[Footnote 25: Addison's Letter from Italy:

The poor inhabitant beholds in vain The reddening orange, and the swelling grain: Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines: Starves, in the midst of nature's bounty curst, And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst.--HOLT WHITE.

This passage, which describes the misery entailed upon the Italian peasants by an oppressive government, plainly suggested the lines of Pope. The death from thirst, which Addison adds to the death from starvation, is too great an exaggeration. Water could always be had.]

[Footnote 26:

No wonder savages or subjects slain-- But subjects starved, while savages were fed.

It was originally thus, but the word "savages" is not properly applied to beasts, but to men; which occasioned the alteration.--POPE.]

[Footnote 27: Translated from

Templa adimit divis, fora civibus, arva colonis,

an old monkish writer, I forget who.--POPE.]

[Footnote 28: Alluding to the destruction made in the New Forest, and the tyrannies exercised there by William I.--POPE.

I have the authority of three or four of our best antiquarians to say, that the common tradition of villages and parishes, within the compass of thirty miles, being destroyed, in the New Forest, is absolutely groundless, no traces or vestiges of such being to be discovered, nor any other parish named in Doomsday Book, but what now remains.--WARTON.

The argument from Doomsday Book is of no weight if, as Lingard asserts, the New Forest was formed before the registration took place. William was an eager sportsman. "He loved the beasts of chase," says the Saxon chronicle, "as if he had been their father," and the source of his love was the pleasure he took in killing them. His hunting grounds, however, were ample without the New Forest, and Thierry thinks that his motive in forming it may have been political. The wooded district, denuded of a hostile population, and stretching to the sea, would have afforded shelter to the Normans in the event of a reverse, and enabled them to disembark in safety.]

[Footnote 29: Addison's Campaign:

O'er prostrate towns and palaces they pass, Now covered o'er with weeds, and hid in grass.]

[Footnote 30: Donne, in his second Satire,

When winds in our ruined abbeys roar.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 31: It is a blemish in this fine passage that a couplet in the past tense should be interposed for the sake of the rhyme, in the midst of a description in the present tense.]

[Footnote 32: Originally:

And wolves with howling fill, &c.

The author thought this an error, wolves not being common in England at the time of the Conqueror.--POPE.]

[Footnote 33: "The temples," "broken columns," and "choirs," of the poet, suppose a much statelier architecture than belonged to the rude village churches of the Saxons. With the same exaggeration the hamlets which stood on the site of the New Forest are converted by Pope into "cities," and "towns."]

[Footnote 34: William did not confine his oppression to the weak and succumb to the strong. The statement that he was "awed by his nobles" is opposed to the contemporary testimony of the Saxon chronicle. "No man," says the writer, "durst do anything against his will; he had earls in his bonds who had done against his will, and at last he did not spare his own brother, Odo; him he set in prison." "His rich men moaned," says the chronicler again, "and the poor men murmured, but he was so hard that he recked not the hatred of them all."]

[Footnote 35: The language is too strong. "When his power or interest was concerned," says Lingard, "William listened to no suggestions but those of ambition or avarice, but on other occasions he displayed a strong sense of religion, and a profound respect for its institutions." While resisting ecclesiastical usurpation, and depriving individuals who were disaffected or incompetent, of their preferment, he upheld the church and its dignitaries, and left both in a more exalted position than he found them.]

[Footnote 36: It is incorrect to say that William was denied a grave. As his body was about to be lowered into the vault in the church of St. Stephen, which he had founded at Caen, a person named Fitz-Arthur forbade the burial, on the plea that the land had been taken by violence from his father, but the prelates having paid him sixty shillings on the spot, and promised him further compensation, the ceremony was allowed to proceed.]

[Footnote 37: "An open space between woods," is Johnson's definition of "lawn," which is the meaning here, and at ver. 21 and 149. The term has since been appropriated to the dressed green-sward in gardens.]

[Footnote 38: Richard, second son of William the Conqueror.--POPE.

Richard is said by some to have been killed by a stag in the New Forest, by others to have been crushed against a tree by his horse.]

[Footnote 39: This verse is taken from one of Denham's in his translation of the Second Æneis:

At once the taker, and at once the prey.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 40: The oak under which Rufus was shot, was standing till within these few years.--BOWLES.

A stone pillar now marks the spot.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 41: In the New Forest, where the cottages had been swept away by William. "Succeeding monarchs" did not, as Pope implies, suffer encroachments on the forest out of pity for their subjects. The concession was extorted. Some of the provisions of Magna Charta were directed against the increase of the royal forests and against the "evil customs" maintained with respect to them.]

[Footnote 42: Mountains hitherto unknown to the flocks, who were now for the first time permitted to feed there.]

[Footnote 43:

Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma. Virg.--WARBURTON.

Virgil is treating of grafts, and says that the parent stock, when the slips grow, wonders at leaves and fruit not its own. Here the imagination keeps pace with the description, but stops short before the notion that the trees in the forest wondered to behold the crops of corn.]

[Footnote 44: He doubtless had in his eye, Vir. Æn. i. 506:

Latonæ tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus.--WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's translation:

And feeds with secret joy her silent breast.

In Virgil the silent exultation is felt by a mother, who, in an assembly of nymphs, marks the superior beauty of her goddess daughter. There was not the same reason why the swain should keep secret the transport he felt at the sight of wheat fields.]

[Footnote 45: Originally:

O may no more a foreign master's rage, With wrongs yet legal, curse a future age! Still spread, fair liberty! thy heav'nly wings, Breathe plenty on the fields, and fragrance on the springs.--POPE.

The last couplet was suggested by Addison's Letter to Lord Halifax:

O Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright, Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.]

[Footnote 46: Addison's Campaign:

Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood.

[Footnote 47: "Thickest woods" till Warburton's edition. The epithet "gameful," to express that the woods were full of game, seems to be peculiar to Pope.]

[Footnote 48: Originally:

When yellow autumn summer's heat succeeds, And into wine the purple harvest bleeds, The partridge feeding in the new-shorn fields, Both morning sports and evening pleasures yields.--POPE.

Richardson transcribes from the margin of Pope's MS. "Qu. if allowable to describe the season by a circumstance not proper to our climate, the vintage?" And the line which speaks of the making of wine was no doubt altered to obviate this objection.]

[Footnote 49: Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo:

Watchful to betray With inward rage he meditates his prey.--HOLT WHITE.]

[Footnote 50: From Virgil, Geo. iv. 176:

si parra licet componere magnis.

If little things with great we may compare. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 51: It stood thus in the first editions:

Pleased in the general's sight, the host lie down Sudden before some unsuspecting town; The young, the old, one instant make our prize, And o'er their captive heads Britannia's standard flies.--WARBURTON.

Pope, as Wakefield observes, has joined together in the simile in the text the inconsistent notions of a town surprised, and a town taken by the regular approaches of a siege. "The passage," adds Wakefield, "as it originally stood was free from this heterogeneous intermixture, and by a little polish might have been made superior to the present reading."]

[Footnote 52: Richardson gives a more descriptive line from the manuscript:

Exults in air and plies his whistling wings.

The poet doubtless substituted the later version, because the expression "whirring pheasant" conveyed the same idea as "whistling wings."]

[Footnote 53: This fine apostrophe was probably suggested by that of Virgil on the ox dying of the plague:

Now what avails his well-deserving toil. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 54: Steevens quotes Pictæque volucres. Virg. Painted birds. Dryden.--BOWLES.

Pope probably took the phrase from Paradise Lost, where the birds are described as spreading "their painted wings." In transferring the expression he overlooked the fact that the wings are not the part of the pheasant to which the epithet "painted" is especially applicable.]

[Footnote 55: Originally thus:

When hoary-winter clothes the years in white, The woods and fields to pleasing toils invite.--POPE.]

[Footnote 56: The reflection is misplaced; for dogs by nature chase hares, and man avails himself of their instinctive propensities.]

[Footnote 57: Originally:

O'er rustling leaves around the naked groves.--WARBURTON.

This is a better line.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 58: Wakefield understood Pope to mean that the trees shaded the doves, and he objected that leafless trees could not properly be said to overshadow. Steevens pointed out that it was the doves, on the contrary, which overshadowed the trees, by alighting on them in flocks. The ambiguity was caused by Pope's bad and inveterate habit of putting the accusative case before the verb.]

[Footnote 59:

The fowler lifts his levelled tube on high.--POPE.

He owed the line in the text to Dryden's Virgil, Geor. ii. 774.

And bends his bow, and levels with his eyes.

"Tube" is an affected term for a gun, but the word is adopted by Cowper and Campbell. Thomson, in his lines on partridge-shooting, was not afraid to call the gun by its own name, and yet is more poetical than Cowper, Campbell, or Pope:

the gun Glanced just and sudden from the fowler's eye, O'ertakes their sounding pinions.

The last expression is nobly descriptive.]

[Footnote 60:

Præcipites altá vitam sub nube relinquunt. Virg.--WARBURTON.

So before Pope, Philips in his Cider:

----they leave their little lives above the clouds.--STEEVENS.

[Footnote 61: It is singular, that in a poem on a forest, the majestic oak, the deer, and many other interesting and characteristic circumstances, should be all thrown in the distant ground, whilst objects much less appropriate, the fisher, the fowler, &c. are brought forward.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 62: The active use of the word hope, though authorised by Dryden, appears to my taste intolerably harsh and affected.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 63: "Volume," except in its application to books, now carries with it an idea of magnitude. In Pope's day it was still used in its strictly etymological sense. When Milton, in his personification of Sin (Par. Lost, ii. 651), says that she

ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast,

"voluminous" is the synonym for "many a scaly fold," and not for the conjoint epithet "vast."]

[Footnote 64: Wakefield points out that Pope borrowed the language from Lauderdale's translation of the fourth Georgic, where he says of the bees that they are "bedropped with gold," or from Milton's description of the fish, which

sporting with quick glance Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold.]

[Footnote 65: "The wat'ry plain" from the _campi liquentes_ of Virgil, is an expression of Dryden's in his translation of Ovid, Met. i., and elsewhere. Drayton in his Polyolbion has the tyrant pike.--WAKEFIELD.

"The luce, or pike," says Walton, "is the tyrant of the fresh waters."]

[Footnote 66: Originally thus:

But when bright Phoebus from the twins invites Our active genius to more free delights, With springing day we range the lawns around.--POPE.]

[Footnote 67: "Sylvan _war_," is an expression borrowed from writers who described the chase of ferocious beasts,--the lion, tiger, and boar. The language is inapplicable to the pursuit of such timid creatures as the hare, deer, and fox.]

[Footnote 68: Translated from Statius.

Stare adeo miserum est, pereunt vestigia mille Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum.

These lines Mr. Dryden, in his preface to his translation of Fresnoy's Art of Painting, calls wonderfully fine, and says "they would cost him an hour, if he had the leisure, to translate them, there is so much of beauty in the original," which was the reason, I suppose, why Mr. Pope tried his strength with them.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 69: "Threatening" is an inappropriate epithet for the sloping hills up which the hunters rode in the neighbourhood of Windsor.]

[Footnote 70: Instead of this couplet, Pope had written in his early manuscript,

They stretch, they sweat, they glow, they shout around; Heav'n trembles, roar the mountains, thunders all the ground.

He was betrayed into this bombast, which his better taste rejected, by the attempt to carry on the hyperbolical strain of Statius.]

[Footnote 71: Queen Anne.--WARBURTON.

Congreve's Prologue to the Queen:

For never was in Rome nor Athens seen So fair a circle, and so bright a queen.]

[Footnote 72: This use of the word "reign" for the territory ruled over, instead of for the sway of the ruler, was always uncommon, and is now obsolete. Queen Anne is mentioned in connection with the chase and the "immortal huntress," because her favourite diversion before she grew unwieldy and inactive, was to follow the hounds in her chaise.]

[Footnote 73: Better in the manuscript:

And rules the boundless empire of the main.

By the alteration Pope increased the compliment to Anne by making her the light of the earth as well as mistress of the forest and the sea. Wakefield thinks that this application to the queen of the offices of Diana as goddess of the woods, the luminary of the night, and the chief agent in the production of the tides, is happily conceived, but the moon and the monarch were "the light of the earth "and "empress of the main" in such different senses, that the line is a trivial play upon words.]

[Footnote 74: In the last edition published in Pope's lifetime, the four previous lines, with the variation of "sunny heaths" for "airy wastes," were printed in a note, and their place in the text was supplied by a single couplet:

Here, as old bards have sung, Diana strayed, Bathed in the springs, or sought the cooling shade.

Wakefield suggests that Pope rejected this latter line, as not being suited to the prevailing character of the English climate, but at ver. 209 he represents the goddess as often "laving" in the Lodona, and to bathe and luxuriate in shade are surely common enough in England.]

[Footnote 75: Dr. Warton says, "that Johnson seems to have passed too severe a censure on this episode of Lodona; and that a tale in a descriptive poem has a good effect." Johnson does not object to a tale in a descriptive poem. He objects only to the triteness of such a tale as this.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 76: Dryden's Translations from Ovid:

The nicest eye did no distinction know, But that the goddess bore a golden bow.]

[Footnote 77:

Nec positu variare comas; uni fibula vestem, Vitta coercuerat neglectos alba capillos. Ovid.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 78: This thought of the quiver sounding is found both in Homer and Virgil.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope remembered Dryden's translation of Virgil, Æneis, xi. 968:

Diana's arms upon her shoulder sounds.

And xi. 1140:

A gilded quiver from his shoulder sounds.]

[Footnote 79: Dryden's Æneis, xii. 108:

The lover gazed, and burning with desire, The more he looked the more he fed the fire.]

[Footnote 80:

Ut fugere accipitrem penna trepidante columbæ, Ut solet accipiter trepidas agitare columbas. Ovid, Met. lib. v.--WARBURTON.

Sandys' translation:

As trembling doves the eager hawks eschew; As eager hawks the trembling dovers pursue.]

[Footnote 81: In the first edition:

As from the god with fearful speed she flew, As did the god with equal speed pursue.

[Footnote 82: Wakefield remarks that Pope, yielding to the exigencies of rhyme, has put "run" for "ran."]

[Footnote 83:

Sol erat a tergo: vidi præcedere longam Ante pedes umbram; nisi timor illa videbat. Sed certe sonituque pedum terrebar; et ingens Crinales vittas afflabat anhelitus oris. Ovid, Met. lib. v.--WARBURTON.

Sandys, whom our bard manifestly consulted, renders thus:

The sun was at our backs; before my feet I saw his shadow, or my fear did see't. Howere his sounding steps, and thick-drawn breath That fanned my hair, affrighted me to death.--WAKEFIELD.

Not only is the story of Lodona copied from the transformation of Arethusa into a stream, but nearly all the particulars are taken from different passages in Ovid, of which Warburton has furnished a sufficient specimen.]

[Footnote 84: The river Loddon.--POPE.]

[Footnote 85: The idea of "augmenting the waves with tears" was very common among the earliest English poets, but perhaps the most ridiculous use ever made of this combination, was by Shakespeare:

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears.--BOWLES.

Dryden's translation of the first book of Ovid's Art of Love:

Her briny tears augment the briny flood.]

[Footnote 86: These six lines were added after the first writing of this poem.--POPE.

And in truth they are but puerile and redundant.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 87: Eve, looking into the fountain, in Dryden's State of Innocence, Act ii.:

What's here? another firmament below Spread wide, and other trees that downward grow.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 88: The epithet "absent," employed to denote that the trees were only a reflection in the water, is more perplexing than descriptive, particularly as the "absent trees" are distinguished from the "pendant woods," which must equally have been absent.]

[Footnote 89: In every edition before Warburton's it was "spreading honours." Pope probably considered that "rear," which denoted an upward direction, could not be consistently conjoined with "spreading." For "shores," improperly applied in the next line to a river, all the editions before 1736 had "banks."]

[Footnote 90: "Her" appears for the first time in the edition of Warburton in the place of "his," and is now the accepted reading, but it is manifestly a misprint, since "her" has no antecedent. The couplet is obscure. Pope could hardly intend to assert that the flow of the tide poured as much water into the Thames as all the other rivers of the world discharged into the ocean, and he probably meant that all the navigable rivers of the globe did not send more commerce to the sea than came from the sea up the Thames. Even in this case it was a wild, without being a poetical, exaggeration.]

[Footnote 91: In the first edition:

No seas so rich, so full no streams appear.

The epithets "clear," "gentle," "full," which Pope applies to the Thames, show that he had in his mind the celebrated passage in Cooper's Hill:

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'er-flowing full.]

[Footnote 92: The ancients gave the name of the terrestrial Eridanus or Po, to a constellation which has somewhat the form of a winding river. Pope copied Denham:

Heav'n her Eridanus no more shall boast, Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents lost, By nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, To shine amongst the stars and bathe the gods.]

[Footnote 93: Very ill expressed, especially the rivers swelling the lays.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 94: The original readings were beyond all competition preferable both in strength and beauty:

Not fabled Po more swells the poet's lays While through the skies his shining current strays.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 95: In saying that the Po did not swell the lays of the poet in the same degree as the Thames, Pope more especially alluded to the celebrated description of the latter in Cooper's Hill.]

[Footnote 96: In the earlier editions,

Nor all his stars a brighter lustre show, Than the fair nymphs that gild thy shore below.

The MS. goes on thus:

Whose pow'rful charms enamoured gods may move To quit for this the radiant court above; And force great Jove, if Jove's a lover still, To change Olympus, &c.]

[Footnote 97: Originally:

Happy the man, who to these shades retires, But doubly happy, if the muse inspires! Blest whom the sweets of home-felt quiet please; But far more blest, who study joins with ease.--POPE.

The turn of this passage manifestly proves that our poet had in view that incomparable encomium of Virgil's second Georgic on philosophy and a country life.--WAKEFIELD.

In addition to the imitation of the second Georgic, and the translation of lines in Horace and Lucan, Pope adopted hints, as Warton has remarked, from Philips's Cider:

He to his labour hies Gladsome, intent on somewhat that may ease Unhealthy mortals, and with curious search Examines all the properties of herbs, Fossils and minerals, &c. or else his thoughts Are exercised with speculations deep, Of good, and just, and meet, and th' wholesome rules Of temperance, and ought that may improve The moral life; &c.]

[Footnote 98: Lord Lansdowne.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 99: This is taken from Horace's epistle to Tibullus:

An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres, Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?--WAKEFIELD.

Pope remembered Creech's translation of the passage:

Or dost thou gravely walk the healthy wood, Considering what befits the wise and good.]

[Footnote 100:

----servare modum, finemque tenere, Naturamque sequi. Lucan.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 101: Dryden's Virgil, Geor. ii. 673:

Ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fired, My soul is ravished, and my brain inspired.--WAKEFIELD.

Addison in his Letter from Italy has the expression "fired with a thousand raptures."]

[Footnote 102:

O, qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra! Virg.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 103: Cooper's Hill is the elevation, not deserving the name of mountain, just over Egham and Runnymede.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 104: It stood thus in the MS.

Methinks around your hold scenes I rove, And hear your music echoing through the grove: With transport visit each inspiring shade, By god-like poets venerable made.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 105: From Philips's Cider, ii. 6:

or what Unrivalled authors by their presence made For ever venerable.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 106: By "first lays," Pope means Cooper's Hill, but Denham had previously written the Sophy, a tragedy, and translated the second book of the Æneid.]

[Footnote 107: Dryden says of the Cooper's Hill, "it is a poem which for _majesty_ of style is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing." From hence, no doubt, Pope took the word "majestic."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 108: Mr. Cowley died at Chertsey, on the borders of the Forest, and was from thence conveyed to Westminster.--POPE.

Pope told Spence that Cowley was killed by a fever brought on by lying out all night in the fields. He had got drunk, in company with his friend Dean Sprat, at the house of a neighbour, and they lost their way in the attempt to walk home. Sprat had long before related that Cowley caught his last illness in the "meadows," but says it was caused "by staying too long amongst his labourers in the heat of the summer." The drunkenness, and the lying out all night, appear to have been the embellishments of scandal.]

[Footnote 109: Cowley died July 28, 1667, in the 49th year of his age. Pope's "O early lost!" is copied from the "O early ripe!" of Dryden in his lines to the Memory of Oldham.]

[Footnote 110: Oldham's Imitation of Moschus:

This, Thames, ah! this, is now thy second loss For which in tears thy weeping current flows.]

[Footnote 111: On the margin of his manuscript Pope wrote the passage of Virgil which he imitated:

quæ, Tiberine, videbis Funera, cum tumulum præterlabere recentem.

The "pomp" was not a poetical exaggeration. Evelyn, who attended the funeral, says that Cowley's body was "conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses, near a hundred coaches of noblemen, and persons of quality following."]

[Footnote 112: Originally:

What sighs, what murmurs, filled the vocal shore! His tuneful swans were heard to sing no more.--POPE.]

[Footnote 113: We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. Psalm cxxxvii. 2.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope says that "_each_ muse" hung up her lyre because Cowley was thought to excel in many departments of verse. "He was beloved," said Dr. Felton, "by every muse he courted, and has rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy." Dr. Sprat entitled his poem on him an "Ode to the English Ovid, Anacreon, Pindar, and Virgil."]

[Footnote 114: Warton mentions, that "living lyre" is used by Cowley.]

[Footnote 115: This couplet was a triplet in the manuscript with the following middle line:

What bard, what angel, tunes the warbling strings?

It is surprising that Pope did not feel the bathos of the expression, "'Tis yours, my lord," introduced into the midst of the high-flown adulation.]

[Footnote 116: Philips:

And paint those honours thou art sure to wear.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 117: Meaning, I apprehend, the star of the knights of the Garter installed at Windsor.--WAKEFIELD.

The order was founded by Edward III., the builder of Windsor Castle, which further connected it with Pope's subject. Denham had celebrated the institution of the garter in Cooper's Hill, and Lord Lansdowne, in his Progress of Beauty, "sung the honours" in a few despicable verses, which certainly added no "lustre to the silver star."]

[Footnote 118: All the lines that follow were not added to the poem till the year 1710 [1712]. What immediately followed this, and made the conclusion, were these;

My humble muse in unambitious strains Paints the green forests and the flow'ry plains; Where I obscurely pass my careless days, Pleased in the silent shade with empty praise, Enough for me that to the list'ning swains First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.--POPE.]

[Footnote 119: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, one of the first refiners of the English poetry; famous in the time of Henry VIII. for his sonnets, the scene of many of which is laid at Windsor.--POPE.]

[Footnote 120: The Fair Geraldine, the general object of Lord Surrey's passionate sonnets, was one of the daughters of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare. In Warton's History of English Poetry, is a poem of the elegiac kind, in which Surrey laments his imprisonment in Windsor Castle.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 121: The Mira of Granville was the Countess of Newburgh. Towards the end of her life Dr. King, of Oxford, wrote a very severe satire against her, in three hooks, called The Toast.--WARTON.

She proved in her conduct to be the reverse of "heavenly." "Granville," says Johnson, "wrote verses to her before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much haste to praise."]

[Footnote 122:

Not to recount those several kings, to whom It gave a cradle, and to whom a tomb. Denham.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 123: Edward III. born here.--POPE.]

[Footnote 124: David Bruce, king of Scotland, taken prisoner at the battle of Nevil's Cross, 1346, and John, king of France, captured at the battle of Poitiers, 1356. "Monarchs chained" conveys the idea of a rigorous imprisonment, and belies the chivalry, which was the pride of Edward and the Black Prince. David, who was the brother-in-law of Edward III., was subjected to so little constraint, that he was allowed to visit Scotland, and confer with his people on the terms of his ransom. John was received with royal honours in England, and during the whole of his residence here was surrounded with regal luxury and state.]

[Footnote 125: Denham's Cooper's Hill:

----Great Edward, and thy greater son, The lilies which his father wore, he won.

Edward III. claimed the crown of France by descent, and quartered the French fleur-de-lis on his shield before the victories of the Black Prince had made the assumption something more than an empty boast.]

[Footnote 126: Originally thus in the MS.

When brass decays, when trophies lie o'er-thrown, And mould'ring into dust drops the proud stone, From Windsor's roofs, &c.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 127: He was a Neapolitan. Without much invention, and with less taste, his exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out gods, goddesses, kings, emperors, and triumphs, over those public surfaces on which the eye never rests long enough to criticise,--I mean ceilings and staircases. Charles II. consigned over Windsor to his pencil. He executed most of the ceilings there, one whole side of St. George's Hall, and the chapel. On the accession of James II., Verrio was again employed at Windsor in Wolsey's Tomb-house.--HORACE WALPOLE.]

[Footnote 128: Pope had in his head this couplet of Halifax:

The wounded arm would furnish all their rooms, And bleed for ever scarlet in the looms.--HOLT WHITE.]

[Footnote 129: Henry VI.--POPE.]

[Footnote 130: Edward IV.--POPE.]

[Footnote 131: The Land's End in Cornwall is called by Diodorus Siculus, _Belerium promentorium_, perhaps from Bellerus, one of the Cornish giants with which that country and the poems of old British bards were once filled.--T. WARTON.]

[Footnote 132: Dryden's translation of the tenth Satire of Juvenal, ver. 236:

Whom Afric was not able to contain Whose length runs level with th' Atlantic main.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 133: Dr. Chetwood's verses to Roscommon:

Make warlike James's peaceful virtues known.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 134: Charles I. was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The precise spot was a matter of doubt till an accidental aperture was made in 1813 into the vault of Henry VIII., when a lead coffin was discovered bearing the inscription "King Charles, 1648." It was opened in the presence of the Regent; and the corpse was in a sufficient state of preservation to enable the spectators to recognise the likeness of the countenance to Vandyke's portraits of the king, and to ascertain that the head had been severed from the body.]

[Footnote 135: Originally thus in the MS.

Oh fact accurst! oh sacrilegious brood, Sworn to rebellion, principled in blood! Since that dire morn what tears has Albion shed, Gods! what new wounds, &c.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 136: To say that the plague in London, and its consumption by fire, were judgments inflicted by heaven for the murder of Charles I., is a very extraordinary stretch of tory principles indeed.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 137: This couplet is directed at the Revolution, considered by Pope, in common with all jacobites, to be a like public calamity with the plague and the fire of London.--CROKER.

Pope had in his mind, when he wrote the couplet, Creech's Hor., Ode xxxv. lib. 1.

I blush at the dishonest show, I die to see the wounds and scars, Those glories of our civil wars.]

[Footnote 138: Thus in the MS.

Till Anna rose, and bade the Furies cease; _Let there be peace_--she said, and all was _peace_.--WARBURTON.

It may be presumed that Pope varied the couplet from perceiving the impropriety of a parody on the fiat of the Creator.]

[Footnote 139: Dryden's Annus Mirabilis:

Old Father Thames raised up his rev'rend head.

And again, at the conclusion of his Threnodia Augustalis:

While, starting from his oozy bed, Th' asserted ocean rears his rev'rend head.--WAKEFIELD.

The gods of rivers are invariably represented as old men.]

[Footnote 140: Spenser of Father Thames:

his beard all gray Dewed with silver drops that trickled down alway.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 141: Between verse 330 and 331, originally stood these lines;

From shore to shore exulting shouts he heard, O'er all his banks a lambent light appeared, With sparkling flames heav'n's glowing concave shone, Fictitious stars, and glories not her own. He saw, and gently rose above the stream His shining horns diffused a golden gleam: With pearl and gold his tow'ry front was drest, The tributes of the distant East and West.--POPE.]

[Footnote 142: Horns were a classical attribute of rivers,--not I think, according to the common view, as a mark of dignity, but as a symbolical expression of the fact that the principal streams, like the ocean itself, are formed from a confluence of tributaries.--CROKER.

Pope's personification of the Thames is the echo of Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian, describing the deity of the Eridanus:

His head above the floods he gently reared, And as he rose his golden horns appeared, That on the forehead shone divinely bright And o'er the banks diffused a yellow light: Beneath his arm an urn supported lies With stars embellished, and fictitious skies.]

[Footnote 143: Augusta was the name which the Romans at one period gave to London. The representation of the god attended by

All little rivers, which owe vassalage To him, as to their lord, and tribute pay,

and the accompanying enumeration of the subsidiary streams, is closely imitated from the Faery Queen. Pope professes to describe the river-gods who stood round the throne of Father Thames, but he has confounded the river-gods with the rivers, and some of his epithets,--"winding Isis," "blue transparent Vandalis," "gulphy Lee,"--are not applicable to persons.]

[Footnote 144: The river-gods were said to be the children of Oceanus and Tethys, but in the earlier mythology, Oceanus was himself a _river_ (not a sea), surrounding the earth, and the lesser rivers were his progeny.]

[Footnote 145: The Tamesis. It was a common but erroneous notion, that the appellation was formed from appending the name Isis to Thame.]

[Footnote 146: Warton observes that Pope has here copied and equalled the description of rivers in Spenser, Drayton, and Milton. The description is beautiful, but in some points it is deficient. "Winding Isis" and "fruitful Thame" are ill designated. No peculiar and visible image is added to the character of the streams, either interesting from beauty, or incidental circumstances. Most rivers wind and may be called fruitful, as well as the Isis and Thame. The latter part of the description is much more masterly, as every river has its distinctive mark, and that mark is picturesque. It may be said, however, that all the epithets, in a description of this sort, cannot be equally significant, but surely something more striking should have been given as circumstantially characteristic of such rivers as the Isis and Thames, than that they were "winding" and "fruitful," or of the Kennet that it was renowned for "silver eels."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 147: Drayton:

The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned.--BOWLES.

The Kennet is not linked by Pope to any poetical association when he simply says that it is "renowned for silver eels," but Spenser brings a delightful picture before the eye when he speaks of the

still Darent in whose waters clean Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.]

[Footnote 148: Addison:

Where silver lakes with verdant shadows crowned.]

[Footnote 149: Several of Pope's epithets are borrowed, although he has not always coupled them with the same streams to which they are applied in his originals. For "Kennet swift" Milton has "Severn swift," and for "chalky Wey" Spenser has "chalky Kennet."]

[Footnote 150: The Wandle.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 151: Milton has "gulphy Dun" and "sedgy Lee," and Pope combined the characteristics. The remainder of the couplet is from Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian:

Her dropping locks the silver Tessin rears, The blue transparent Adda next appears.]

[Footnote 152: Milton's Vacation Exercise:

Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath.--WAKEFIELD.

The Mole at particular spots, called the swallows, sinks through crevices in the chalk, and during dry seasons, when there is not sufficient water to till both the subterranean and the upper channel, the bed of the river is laid bare in parts of its course. The stream sometimes entirely disappears from Burford-bridge to the neighbourhood of Thorncroft-bridge, a distance of nearly three miles.]

[Footnote 153: Drayton:

And the old Lee brags of the Danish blood.--BOWLES.

Pope's epithet "silent" was suggested by "the still Darent" of Spenser, and the same poet had said of the Eden that it was

----stained with blood of many a band Of Scots and English.]

[Footnote 154: Addison's translation of an extract from Ovid:

While thus she rested on her arm reclined, The hoary willows waving with the wind.]

[Footnote 155: The river god bowing respectfully to his human audience, before he commenced his speech, is a ludicrous idea, into which Pope was seduced by his courtly desire to represent even the deities as doing homage to Queen Anne.]

[Footnote 156: So Dryden, Æneis, x. 156:

The winds their breath restrain, And the hushed waves lie flatted on the main.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope's lines are compiled from the passage quoted by Wakefield and a couplet in the Court Prospect of Hopkins:

Unrolling waves steal softly to the shore, They know their sovereign and they fear to roar.]

[Footnote 157: The Hermus is characterised by Virgil as "turbid with gold." The property was more usually ascribed to its tributary, the Pactolus, but there was no gold in either.]

[Footnote 158: An undoubted imitation, I think, of Dr. Bathurst's verses on Selden:

As when old Nilus, who with bounteous flows Waters a hundred nations as he goes, Scattering rich harvests, keeps his sacred head Amidst the clouds still undiscovered.

Homer denominates the Nile, whose sources were unknown, a river that falls from Jupiter or heaven. And our countryman calls it sevenfold, as Ovid before him _septemfluus_, and Catullus still earlier _septemgeminus_, from the seven mouths by which its waters are discharged into the Mediterranean.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 159: Originally thus in the MS.

Let Venice boast her tow'rs amidst the main, Where the rough Adrian swells and roars in vain; Here not a town, but spacious realms shall have A sure foundation on the rolling wave.--WARBURTON.

This he altered with his usual discernment, on account of the mean conceit in the equivocal use of the word "foundation."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 160: This alludes to General Stanhope's campaigns on the Ebro, and the Duke of Marlborough's on the Danube.--CROKER.

In saying that British blood should no more dye foreign lands, Pope meant to furnish an argument for the Peace by intimating that the war was kept up, at the sacrifice of English life, for the benefit of other nations.]

[Footnote 161: In the manuscript:

O'er all the Forests shall appear no trace.

[Footnote 162: And certainly sufficient ferocity is displayed even in these amusements. Cowley says,

And all his malice, all his craft is shown In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone.

His commentator, Dr. Hurd, remarks in a spirit that endears him to the reader, "Innocent, he means, in comparison with wars on his own kind."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 163: The fifty new churches.--POPE.]

[Footnote 164: This seems imitated from Hopkins' Court Prospect:

As far as fair Augusta's buildings reach, Bent, like a bow, along a peaceful beach.--WAKEFIELD.

Cowley's Somerset House:

And here, behold, in a long bending row, How two joint cities make one glorious bow.

Whitehall is just above that circular sweep of the Thames in the midst of which the cities of London and Westminster unite. Pope wrote in the belief that the magnificent design of Inigo Jones for the palace at Whitehall would one day be executed.]

[Footnote 165: Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian on the imperial palace at Rome:

Thither the kingdoms and the nations come, In supplicating crowds to learn their doom. To Delphi less th' inquiring worlds repair.]

[Footnote 166: "Once more," as in the renowned reign of Elizabeth.--HOLT WHITE.

After holding out a prospect of perpetual peace, Pope conjures up a future vision of "sueing kings," and "suppliant states," which are the consequences of war and victory.]

[Footnote 167: This return to the trees of Windsor Forest, his original subject, is masterly and judicious; and the whole speech of Thames is highly animated and poetical,--forcible and rich in diction, as it is copious and noble in imagery.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 168: Originally thus:

Now shall our fleets the bloody cross display To the rich regions of the rising day, Or those green isles, where headlong Titan steeps His hissing axle in th' Atlantic deeps: Tempt icy seas, &c.--POPE.

The original lines were rejected, probably as too nearly resembling a passage in Comus:

And the gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 169: Pope has written "if obscure?" against this line in the manuscript. It is plain he meant that the trees were converted into ships, but the language is extravagant.]

[Footnote 170: The red cross upon the Union Jack.]

[Footnote 171: Waller's verses on Tea:

To the fair region where the sun does rise.]

[Footnote 172: "To tempt the sea" is a classical expression, significant of hazard and resolution. Dryden's Iliad:

What now remains But that once more we tempt the wat'ry plains.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 173: "Exalt" is an inefficient and prosaic word.--WAKEFIELD.

The word is certainly not "prosaic," for no one in prose would talk of exalting a sail, but it is "inefficient," just because it is one of those deviations from common speech, which sound affected.]

[Footnote 174: The whole passage seems a grand improvement from Philips' Cider, book ii.:

uncontroll'd The British navy, through the ocean vast, Shall wave her double cross t' extremest climes Terrific, and return with od'rous spoils Of Araby well fraught, or Indus' wealth, Pearl and barbaric gold.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope also drew upon Addison's lines to William III.:

Where'er the waves in restless errors roll, The sea lies open now to either pole: Now may we safely use the northern gales, And in the polar circle spread our sails: Or deep in southern climes, secure from wars, New lands explore, and sail by other stars; Fetch uncontrolled each labour of the sun, And make the product of the world our own.

Towards the close of 1712 Tickell published his poem on the Prospect of Peace. "The description," Pope wrote to Caryll, "of the several parts of the world in regard to our trade has interfered with some lines of my own in Windsor Forest, though written before I saw his. I transcribe both, and desire your sincere judgment whether I ought not to strike out mine, either as they seem too like his, or as they are inferior." The close resemblance arose from their having copied a common original. The couplet of Pope on the West India islands, which he subsequently omitted, has no counterpart in Tickell, because it was not derived from the passage in Addison.]

[Footnote 175: In poetical philosophy the crude material from which jewels and the precious metals were formed, was supposed to be ripened into maturity by the sun. Tickell has the same idea:

Here nearer suns prepare the ripening gem, And here the ore, &c.]

[Footnote 176: This was suggested by a couplet of Denham's on the same subject in his Cooper's Hill:

Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, But free and common as the sea or wind.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 177: A wish that London may be made a FREE PORT.--POPE.]

[Footnote 178: This resembles Waller in his panegyric on Cromwell:

While by your valour and your bounteous mind, Nations, divided by the sea, are joined.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 179: Better in the first edition, "Whose naked youth," and in the Miscellanies better still, "While naked youth."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 180: "Admire" was formerly applied to anything which excited surprise, whether the surprise was coupled with commendation or censure, or was simply a sentiment of wonder. Thus Milton, using the word in this last sense, says, Par. Lost, i. 690:

Let none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane.

"Admire" has the same signification in Windsor Forest. Pope means that the savages would be astonished at "our speech, our colour, and our strange attire," and not that they would admire them in our present laudatory sense of the term, which would be contrary to the fact. "A fair complexion," says Adam Smith, "is a shocking deformity upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are a beauty."]

[Footnote 181: As Peru was particularly famous for its long succession of Incas, and Mexico for many magnificent works of massy gold, there is great propriety in fixing the restoration of the grandeur of each to that object for which each was once so remarkable.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 182: Rage in Virgil is bound in "brazen bonds," and Envy is tormented by "the snakes of Ixion." These coincidences are specified by Wakefield.]

[Footnote 183: Sir J. Beaumont's Bosworth Field:

Beneath her feet pale envy bites her chain, And snaky discord whets her sting in vain.]

[Footnote 184: Hor., Ode iii. lib. 3:

Quo, Musa, tendis? desine pervicax Referre sermones Deorum et Magna modis tenuare parvis.--WARBURTON.

Addison's translation of Horace's Ode:

But hold, my muse, forbear thy tow'ring flight Nor bring the secrets of the gods to light.

Pope says that he will not presume "to touch on Albion's golden days," and "bring the scenes of opening fate to light," oblivious that the speech which Father Thames has just delivered is entirely made up of these two topics. As might be inferred from their feebleness, the lines from ver. 426 formed part of the original Windsor Forest, with the exception of the couplet beginning "Where Peace descending," which is of another order of poetry. The second line is exquisite.]

[Footnote 185: He adopted one or two hints, and especially the turn of the compliment to Lord Lansdowne, from the conclusion of Addison's Letter to Lord Halifax:

But I've already troubled you too long, Nor dare attempt a more adventurous song. My humble verse demands a softer theme, A painted meadow, or a purling stream: Unfit for heroes; whom immortal lays And lines like Virgil's, or like yours, should praise.]

[Footnote 186: It is observable that our author finishes this poem with the first line of his Pastorals, as Virgil closed his Georgics with the first line of his Eclogues. The preceding couplet scarcely rises to mediocrity, and seems modelled from Dryden's version of the passage imitated:

Whilst I at Naples pass my peaceful days, Affecting studies of less noisy praise.--WAKEFIELD.

The conclusion is feeble and flat. The whole should have ended with the speech of Thames.--WARTON.]

END OF VOL. I.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.