The Works of Alexander Pope Part 72

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 pa.s.sages 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 "sh.o.r.es," 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 a.s.sert 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 pa.s.sage 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 Erida.n.u.s or Po, to a constellation which has somewhat the form of a winding river.

Pope copied Denham:

Heav'n her Erida.n.u.s no more shall boast, Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents lost, By n.o.bler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, To shine amongst the stars and bathe the G.o.ds.]

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

[Footnote 94: The original readings were beyond all compet.i.tion 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 l.u.s.tre show, Than the fair nymphs that gild thy sh.o.r.e below.

The MS. goes on thus:

Whose pow'rful charms enamoured G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage:

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 Haemi 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.