The Works of Alexander Pope Part 36

[Footnote 5: That admirable term "relenting" might probably be furnished by Ogilby at the beginning of the first Georgic:

And harder glebe relents with vernal winds.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 6: Dryden's Flower and Leaf:

Cares I had none to keep me from my rest, For love had never entered in my breast.]

[Footnote 7: Morning dreams were thought the most significant. Thus Dryden, in his version of the Tale of the Nun's Priest:

Believe me, madam, morning dreams foreshow Th' events of things, and future weal or woe.]

[Footnote 8: Cowley, in his Complaint:

In a deep vision's intellectual scene;

and Mrs. Singer's Vision:

No wild uncouth chimeras intervene To break the perfect intellectual scene.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 9: Dryden, Ovid, Met. xii.:

Full in the midst of this created s.p.a.ce, Betwixt heav'n, earth, and skies, there stands a place Confining on all three.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 10: This verse was formed from a very fine one in Paradise Lost, vii. 242:

And earth self-balanced on her center hung.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 11: Addison's translation of a pa.s.sage from Ausonius:

And intermingled temples rise between.]

[Footnote 12: These verses are hinted from the following of Chaucer, book ii.:

Tho beheld I fields and plains, And now hills, and now mountains, Now valeys, and now forestes, And now unnethes great bestes, Now riveres, now citees, Now townes, and now great trees, Now shippes sayling in the sea.--POPE.

Dennis objected to Pope's version that "if the whole creation was open to his eyes" he must be too high "to discern such minute objects as ships and trees." But the imagination in dreams conjures up appearances which are beyond the compa.s.s of the waking powers, and it is therefore strictly natural to represent events as pa.s.sing in visions, which would be unnatural in actual life. Added to this, Pope had before him Ovid's description of the house of Fame, which is endued with the property of enabling the beholder to distinguish the smallest objects however remote:

Unde quod est usquam, quamvis regionibus absit, Inspicitur.

Or as Sandys translates it,

Where all that's done, though far removed, appears.]

[Footnote 13: Dryden's translation of Ovid's Met. book xii.:

Confused and chiding, like the hollow roar Of tides, receding from th' insulted sh.o.r.e; Or like the broken thunder heard from far When Jove at distance drives the rolling war.

This is more poetically expressed than the same image in our author.

Dryden's lines are superior to the original.--WARTON.

Pope copied Dryden's translation of Ovid, and for this reason did not quote the parallel pa.s.sage from Chaucer's second book of the House of Fame, where the eagle, when they come within hearing of the swell of indistinct voices, holds a colloquy with the poet on the phenomenon:

"And what sound is it like?" quoth he.

"Peter! beating of the sea,"

Quoth I, "against the rockes hollow, When tempest doth the shippes swallow, Or elles like the last humbling After the clap of a thundring."

"Peter" is an exclamation; and the sense is, "By St. Peter it is like the beating of the sea against the hollow rocks." In Pope's poem no cause is a.s.signed for the "wild promiscuous sound." In Chaucer it is produced by the confluence of the talk upon earth, every word of which is conveyed to the House of Fame.]

[Footnote 14: Chaucer's third book of Fame:

It stood upon so high a rock, Higher standeth none in Spayne-- What manner stone this rock was, For it was like a lymed gla.s.s, But that it shone full more clere; But of what congeled matere It was, I niste redily; But at the last espied I, And found that it was every dele, A rock of ice and not of stele.--POPE.

The temple of Fame is represented on a foundation of ice, to signify the brittle nature and precarious tenure, as well as the difficult attainment of that possession, according to the poet himself below, ver.

504:

So hard to gain, so easy to be lost.--WAKEFIELD.

Having complained that it was contrary to the laws of sight to suppose that a prospect in sleep could be extended beyond the ordinary range of mortal vision, Dennis proceeds to contend that for a rock to be sustained in the air was contrary to the eternal laws of gravitation, "which," says Pope sarcastically, in a ma.n.u.script note, "no dream ought to be." The cavil of Dennis was as false in science as in criticism, for it is not more contrary to the laws of gravitation for a rock to be suspended in s.p.a.ce than for the earth itself.]

[Footnote 15: Dryden, aeneis, vi. 193:

Smooth the descent, and easy is the way.]

[Footnote 16:

Tho saw I all the hill y-grave With famous folkes names fele.

That had been in muchel wele And her fames wide y-blow; But well unneth might I know Any letters for to rede Their names by, for, out of drede, They weren almost off-thawen so, That of the letters one or two Were molte away of every name, So unfamous was woxe their fame; But men said what may ever last.--POPE.]

[Footnote 17:

Tho gan I in myne harte cast, That they were molte away for heate, And not away with stormes beate.--POPE.]

[Footnote 18: Does not this use of the heat of the sun appear to be a puerile and far-fetched conceit? What connection is there betwixt the two sorts of excesses here mentioned? My purpose in animadverting so frequently as I have done on this species of false thoughts is to guard the reader, especially of the younger sort, from being betrayed by the authority of so correct a writer as Pope into such specious and false refinements of style.--WARTON.

Not only is the comparison defective, but the fundamental idea is unfounded, for though excess of admiration may produce a temporary reaction, the opinion of the world oscillates back to the middle line, and no instance can be quoted of an author who has finally lost his due reputation because he had once been overpraised. Chaucer makes a different use of the image. In his poem the north side of the icy mountain bears the names of the ancients which were safe from injury.

The sunny side bears the names of the moderns, and he perhaps intended to intimate his opinion that the reason why their fame was less durable than that of the Greeks and Romans was that they were a more luxurious race, and did not in the same degree "scorn delights, and live laborious days" for the sake of producing immortal works.]

[Footnote 19:

For on that other side I sey Of that hill which northward ley, How it was written full of names Of folke, that had afore great fames, Of olde time, and yet they were As fresh as men had written hem there The self day, right or that houre That I upon hem gan to poure: But well I wiste what it made; It was conserved with the shade (All the writing that I sye) Of the castle that stoode on high, And stood eke in so cold a place, That heate might it not deface.--POPE.]

[Footnote 20: Though a strict verisimilitude be not required in the descriptions of this visionary and allegorical kind of poetry, which admits of every wild object that fancy may present in a dream, and where it is sufficient if the moral meaning atone for the improbability, yet men are naturally so desirous of truth that a reader is generally pleased, in such a case, with some excuse or allusion that seems to reconcile the description to probability and nature. The simile here is of that sort, and renders it not wholly unlikely that a rock of ice should remain for ever by mentioning something like it in our northern regions agreeing with the accounts of our modern travellers.--POPE.]

[Footnote 21: "Mountains _propping_ the sky" was one of those vicious common-places of poetry which falsify natural appearances.]

[Footnote 22: A real lover of painting will not be contented with a single view and examination of this beautiful winter-piece; but will return to it again and again with fresh delight. The images are distinct, and the epithets lively and appropriate, especially the words "pale," "unfelt," "impa.s.sive," "inc.u.mbent," "gathered."--WARTON.]

[Footnote 23: This excellent line was perhaps suggested by a fine couplet in Addison's translation of an extract from Silius Italicus: