Chapter XIX: Part 19

Oh, deign to grace our happy rural seats,
Our mossy fountains, and our green retreats;
While you your presence to the groves deny,
Our flowers are faded, and our brooks are dry;
Though with'ring herbs lay dying on the plain,
At your return they shall be green again.

The two last couplets were copied from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. vii. 77:

But if Alexis from our mountains fly,
Ev'n running rivers leave their channels dry.

And ver. 81:

But, if returning Phyllis bless the plain,
The grass revives, the woods are green again.

In Pope's next version, the four lines "While you, &c.," ran as follows:

Winds, where you walk, shall gently fan the glade,

Or,

Where'er you walk fresh gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Flow'rs where you tread in painted pride shall rise,

Or,

Where'er you tread the purple flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes!

Walsh preferred the second form of the passage to the original draught; and of the variations in the second form he preferred the lines beginning "Where'er you walk," and "Where'er you tread."]

[Footnote 46: He had in view Virg. Ecl. x. 43:

hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 47:

Your praise the tuneful birds to heav'n shall bear,
And list'ning wolves grow milder as they hear.

So the verses were originally written. But the author, young as he was, soon found the absurdity which Spenser himself overlooked, of introducing wolves into England.--POPE.

There was no absurdity upon the principle of Pope, that the scene of pastorals was to be laid in the golden age, which could not be supposed to be subsequent to the reign of Edward I. when wolves still existed in this island. They lingered in Scotland in the reign of Charles II., and in Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne.]

[Footnote 48: Virg. Ecl. iii. 73:

Partem aliquam, venti, Divum referatis ad aures.--POPE.]

[Footnote 49: In place of this couplet and the next, the original MS. had these lines:

Such magic music dwells within your name,
The voice of Orpheus no such pow'r could claim;
Had you then lived, when he the forests drew,
The trees and Orpheus both had followed you.]

[Footnote 50: This verse is debased by the word _dance_. But he followed Dryden in Ecl. iii. 69:

Where Orpheus on his lyre laments his love,
With beasts encompassed, and a dancing grove.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 51: Lucan vi. 473:

de rupe pependit
Abscissa fixus torrens; amnisque cucurrit
Non qua pronus erat.

Streams have run back at murmurs of her tongue,
And torrents from the rock suspended hung. Rowe.--STEEVENS.

"The line _And headlong streams_," says Ruffhead, "surely presents a new image and a bold one too." Bold indeed! Pope has carried the idea into extravagance when he makes the stream not only "listening," but "hang listening in its headlong fall." An idea of this sort will only bear just touching; the mind then does not perceive its violence; if it be brought before the eyes too minutely, it becomes almost ridiculous.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 52: In the MS.:

But see the southing sun displays his beams,
See Tityrus leads his herd to silver streams.]

[Footnote 53: Virg. Ecl. ii. 68:

Me tamen urit amor, quis enim modus adsit amori?--POPE.

He had Dryden's translation of the passage in Virgil before him:

Cool breezes now the raging heats remove:
Ah, cruel heav'n, that made no cure for love.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 54: The phrase "where his journey ends" is mean and prosaic, nor by any means adequately conveys the sentiment required, which is this,--The sun grows milder by degrees, and is at length extinguished in the ocean, but my flames know neither abatement nor intermission.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 55: Variation:

Me love inflames, nor will his fires allay.--POPE.]

[Footnote 56: This is certainly the poorest of Pope's pastorals, and it has many false thoughts and conceits. But the ingenuous and candid critic will always bear in mind the early age at which they were written, and the false taste of Cowley at that time prevalent.--BOWLES.]

AUTUMN:

THE THIRD PASTORAL,[1]

OR

HYLAS AND AEGON.

TO MR. WYCHERLEY.[2]

Beneath the shade a spreading beech displays,[3]
Hylas and AEgon sung their rural lays;
This mourned a faithless, that an absent love,[4]
And Delia's name and Doris' filled the grove.[5]
Ye Mantuan nymphs, your sacred succour bring; 5
Hylas and AEgon's rural lays I sing.
Thou,[6] whom the nine, with Plautus' wit inspire,
The art of Terence, and Menander's fire;
Whose sense instructs us,[7] and whose humour charms,
Whose judgment sways us, and whose spirit[8] warms! 10
Oh, skilled in nature![9] see the hearts of swains,
Their artless passions, and their tender pains.[10]
Now setting Phoebus shone serenely bright,
And fleecy clouds were streaked with purple light;
When tuneful Hylas with melodious moan, 15
Taught rocks to weep, and made the mountains groan.[11]
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away![12]
To Delia's ear the tender notes convey.
As some sad turtle[13] his lost love deplores
And with deep murmurs fills the sounding shores; 20
Thus, far from Delia, to the winds I mourn,
Alike unheard, unpitied, and forlorn.
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
For her, the feathered quires neglect their song:
For her, the limes their pleasing shades deny; 25
For her, the lilies hang their heads and die.
Ye flow'rs that droop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees that fade when autumn-heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?[14] 30
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away!
Cursed be the fields that cause my Delia's stay;
Fade ev'ry blossom, wither ev'ry tree,[15]
Die ev'ry flower, and perish all but she.
What have I said? where'er my Delia flies, 35
Let spring attend, and sudden flow'rs arise;
Let op'ning roses knotted oaks adorn,[16]
And liquid amber drop from ev'ry thorn.
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
The birds shall cease to tune their ev'ning song, 40
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move,
And streams to murmur, ere I cease to love.[17]
Not bubbling fountains to the thirsty swain,[18]
Not balmy sleep to lab'rers faint with pain,[19]
Not show'rs to larks, or sunshine to the bee, 45
Are half so charming as thy sight to me.[20]
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away!
Come, Delia, come; ah, why this long delay?
Through rocks and caves the name of Delia sounds,
Delia, each cave and echoing rock rebounds. 50
Ye pow'rs, what pleasing frenzy soothes my mind!
Do lovers dream, or is my Delia kind?[21]
She comes, my Delia comes!--Now cease my lay,[22]
And cease, ye gales, to bear my sighs away!
Next AEgon sung, while Windsor groves admired; 55
Rehearse, ye muses, what yourselves inspired.
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strain!
Of perjured Doris, dying I complain:[23]
Here, where the mountains, less'ning as they rise,
Lose the low vales, and steal into the skies: 60
While lab'ring oxen, spent with toil and heat,
In their loose traces from the field retreat:[24]
While curling smokes from village tops are seen,
And the fleet shades glide o'er the dusky green.[25]
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay! 65
Beneath yon poplar oft we passed the day:
Oft on the rind I carved her am'rous vows,[26]
While she with garlands hung the bending boughs:
The garlands fade, the vows are worn away;
So dies her love, and so my hopes decay. 70
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strain!
Now bright Arcturus[27] glads the teeming grain,
Now golden fruits on loaded branches shine,
And grateful clusters swell with floods of wine;[28]
Now blushing berries paint the yellow grove; 75
Just Gods! shall all things yield returns but love?
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay!
The shepherds cry, "Thy flocks are left a prey"--
Ah! what avails it me, the flocks to keep,
Who lost my heart while I preserved my sheep? 80
Pan came, and asked, what magic caused my smart,[29]
Or what ill eyes[30] malignant glances dart?[31]
What eyes but hers, alas, have pow'r to move![32]
And is there magic but what dwells in love!
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strains; 85
I'll fly from shepherds, flocks, and flow'ry plains,
From shepherds, flocks, and plains, I may remove,
Forsake mankind, and all the world--but love!
I know thee, Love! on foreign mountains bred,[33]
Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed.[34] 90
Thou wert from AEtna's burning entrails torn,
Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born![35]
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay!
Farewell, ye woods, adieu the light of day!
One leap from yonder cliff shall end my pains,[36] 95
No more, ye hills, no more resound my strains!
Thus sung the shepherds till th' approach of night,
The skies yet blushing with departing light,[37]
When falling dews with spangles decked the glade,
And the low sun had lengthened ev'ry shade.[38] 100

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This Pastoral consists of two parts, like the eighth of Virgil: the scene, a hill; the time, at sunset.--POPE.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Wycherley, a famous author of comedies; of which the most celebrated were the Plain-Dealer and Country-Wife. He was a writer of infinite spirit, satire, and wit. The only objection made to him was, that he had too much. However, he was followed in the same way by Mr. Congreve, though with a little more correctness.--POPE.]

[Footnote 3: Formed on Dryden's version of Ecl. i. 1:

Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 4: Before the edition of 1736 the couplet ran thus:

To whose complaints the list'ning forests bend,
While one his mistress mourns, and one his friend.

In keeping with this announcement the song of Hylas, which forms the first portion of the Pastoral, was devoted to mourning an absent _shepherd_, and not, as at present, an absent _shepherdess_. When Pope made his lines commemorative of love, instead of friendship, he did little more than change the name of the man (Thyrsis) to that of a woman (Delia), and substitute the feminine for the masculine pronoun. The extravagant idea expressed in the first line of the rejected couplet is found in Oldham's translation of Moschus:

And trees leaned their attentive branches down.

There is nothing of the kind in the Greek text.]

[Footnote 5: From Dryden's version of Ecl. i. 5:

While stretched at ease you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 6: Wycherley.]

[Footnote 7: He was always very careful in his encomiums not to fall into ridicule, the trap which weak and prostitute flatterers rarely escape. For "sense," he would willingly have said "moral;" propriety required it. But this dramatic poet's moral was remarkably faulty. His plays are all shamefully profligate, both in the dialogue and action.--WARBURTON.

Warburton's note has more the appearance of an insidious attack upon Pope than of serious commendation; for if, as Warburton assumes, the panegyric in the text has reference to the plays and not to the man, it was a misplaced "encomium" to say that Wycherley "instructed" the world by the "sense," and "swayed" them by the "judgment," which were manifested "in a shamefully profligate dialogue and action."]

[Footnote 8: The reading was "rapture" in all editions till that of 1736.]

[Footnote 9: Few writers have less nature in them than Wycherley.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 10: Till the edition of 1736 the following lines stood in place of the couplet in the text:

Attend the muse, though low her numbers be,
She sings of friendship, and she sings to thee.]

[Footnote 11: Pope had Waller's Thyrsis and Galatea in his memory:

Made the wide country echo to your moan,
The list'ning trees, and savage mountains groan.--WAKEFIELD.

The groans of the trees and mountains are, in Waller's poem, the echo of the mourner's lamentations, but to this Pope has added that the "moan" made "the rocks weep," which has no resemblance to anything in nature.]

[Footnote 12: The lines from verse 17 to 30 are very beautiful, tender, and melodious.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 13: It was a time-honoured fancy that the "moan" of the turtle-dove was a lament for the loss of its mate. _Turtur_, the Latin name for the bird, is a correct representation of its monotonous note. The poets commonly call it simply the turtle, but since the term, to quote the explanation of Johnson in his Dictionary, is also "used by sailors and gluttons for a tortoise" the description of its "deep murmurs" as "filling the sounding shores," calls up this secondary sense, and gives an air of ludicrousness to the passage.]

[Footnote 14: This whole passage is imitated from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Book iii. p. 712, 8vo ed.:

Earth, brook, flow'rs, pipe, lamb, dove,
Say all, and I with them,
Absence is death, or worse, to them that love.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 15: Congreve's Mourning Muse of Alexis:

Fade all ye flow'rs, and wither all ye woods.]

[Footnote 16: Virg. Ecl. viii. 52:

aurea durae
Mala ferant quercus, narcisso floreat alnus;
Pinguia corticibus sudent electra myricae.--POPE.

His obligations are also due to Dryden's version of Ecl. iv. 21:

Unlaboured harvests shall the fields adorn,
And clustered grapes shall blush on ev'ry thorn:
And knotted oaks shall show'rs of honey weep,
And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep.

Bowles, in his translation of Theocritus, Idyll. v., assisted our bard:

On brambles now let violets be born,
And op'ning roses blush on ev'ry thorn.

He seems to have had in view also the third Eclogue of Walsh:

Upon hard oaks let blushing peaches grow,
And from the brambles liquid amber flow.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 17: These four lines followed in the MS.:

With him through Libyia's burning plains I'll go,
On Alpine mountains tread th' eternal snow;
Yet feel no heat but what our loves impart,
And dread no coldness but in Thyrsis' heart.--WARBURTON.

Wakefield remarks that the second line in this passage is taken from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. x. 71:

And climb the frozen Alps, and tread th' eternal snow.]

[Footnote 18: Virg. Ecl. v. 46:

Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum
Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo.--POPE.]

[Footnote 19: "Faint with pain" is both flat and improper. It is fatigue, and not pain that makes them faint.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 20: The turn of the last four lines is evidently borrowed from Drummond of Hawthornden, a charming but neglected poet.

To virgins flow'rs, to sun-burnt earth the rain,
To mariners fair winds amid the main,
Cool shades to pilgrims, whom hot glances burn,
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 21: Virg. Ecl. viii. 108:

an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt?--POPE.

In the first edition, conformably to the original plan of the Pastoral, the passage stood thus:

Do lovers dream, or is my shepherd kind?
He comes, my shepherd comes.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 22: From Virg. Ecl. viii. 110:

Parcite, ab urbe venit, jam parcite carmina, Daphnis.

Stafford's translation in Dryden's Miscellany:

Cease, cease, my charms,
My Daphnis comes, he comes, he flies into my arms.]

[Footnote 23: Dryden's Virg. Ecl. viii. 26, 29:

While I my Nisa's perjured faith deplore.
Yet shall my dying breath to heav'n complain.]

[Footnote 24: This imagery is borrowed from Milton's Comus, ver. 290:

Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 25: Variation:

And the fleet shades fly gliding o'er the green.--POPE.

These two verses are obviously adumbrated from the conclusion of Virgil's first eclogue, and Dryden's version of it:

For see yon sunny hill the shade extends
And curling smoke from cottages ascends.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 26: This fancy he derived from Virgil, Ecl. x. 53:

tenerisque meos incidere amores Arboribus.
The rind of ev'ry plant her name shall know. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.

Garth's Dispensary, Canto vi:

Their wounded bark records some broken vow,
And willow garlands hang on ev'ry bough.]

[Footnote 27: According to the ancients, the weather was stormy for a few days when Arcturus rose with the sun, which took place in September, and Pope apparently means that rain at this crisis was beneficial to the standing corn. The harvest at the beginning of the last century was not so early as it is now.]

[Footnote 28: The scene is in Windsor Forest; so this image is not so exact.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 29: This is taken from Virg. Ecl. x. 26, 21:

Pan deus Arcadiae venit . . . .
Omnes, unde amor iste, rogant tibi.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 30: Virg. Ecl. iii. 103:

Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos.--POPE.

Dryden's version of the original:

What magic has bewitched the woolly dams,
And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 31: It should be "darted;" the present tense is used for the sake of the rhyme.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 32: Variation:

What eyes but hers, alas! have pow'r on me;
Oh mighty Love! what magic is like thee?--POPE.]

[Footnote 33: Virg. Ecl. viii. 43:

Nunc scio quid sit amor. Duris in cotibus illum, etc.--POPE.

Stafford's version of the original in Dryden's Miscellanies:

I know thee, Love! on mountains thou wast bred.

Pope was not unmindful of Dryden's translation:

I know thee, Love! in deserts thou wert bred,
And at the dugs of savage tigers fed.

He had in view also a passage in the AEneid, iv. 366, and Dryden's version of it:

But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock,
And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck.

Nor did our author overlook the parallel passage in Ovid's Epistle of Dido to AEneas, and Dryden's translation thereof:

From hardened oak, or from a rock's cold womb,
At least thou art from some fierce tigress come;
Or on rough seas, from their foundation torn,
Got by the winds, and in a tempest born.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 34: Till the edition of Warburton, this couplet was as follows:

I know thee, Love! wild as the raging main,
More fell than tigers on the Lybian plain.]

[Footnote 35: Were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.: "Love out of Mount AEtna by a Whirlwind," he would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us.--DE QUINCY.

Sentiments like these, as they have no ground in nature, are of little value in any poem, but in pastoral they are particularly liable to censure, because it wants that exaltation above common life, which in tragic or heroic writings often reconciles us to bold flights and daring figures.--JOHNSON.]

[Footnote 36: Virg. Ecl. viii. 59:

Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas
Deferar.

From yon high cliff I plunge into the main. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.

This passage in Pope is a strong instance of the abnegation of feeling in his Pastorals. The shepherd proclaims at the beginning of his chant that it is his dying speech, and at the end that he has resolved upon immediate suicide. Having announced the tragedy, Pope treats it with total indifference, and quietly adds, "Thus sung the shepherds," &c.]

[Footnote 37: Ver. 98, 100. There is a little inaccuracy here; the first line makes the time after sunset; the second before.--WARBURTON.

Pope had at first written:

Thus sung the swains while day yet strove with night,
And heav'n yet languished with departing light.

"Quaere," he says to Walsh, "if languish be a proper word?" and Walsh answers, "Not very proper."]

[Footnote 38: Virg. Ecl. ii. 67:

Et sol decedens crescentes duplicat umbras.
The shadows lengthen as the sun grows low. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.

"Objection," Pope said to Walsh, "that to mention the sunset after twilight (_day yet strove with night_) is improper. Is the following alteration anything better?

And the brown ev'ning lengthened ev'ry shade."

Walsh. "It is not the evening, but the sun being low that lengthens the shades, otherwise the second passage is the best."]

WINTER:[1]

THE FOURTH PASTORAL,

OR

DAPHNE.

TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. TEMPEST.[2]

LYCIDAS.

Thyrsis, the music of that murm'ring spring
Is not so mournful as the strains you sing;[3]
Nor rivers winding through the vales below,[4]
So sweetly warble, or so smoothly flow.[5]
Now sleeping flocks on their soft fleeces lie, 5
The moon, serene in glory, mounts the sky,
While silent birds forget their tuneful lays,
Oh sing of Daphne's fate, and Daphne's praise![6]

THYRSIS.

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost,
Their beauty withered, and their verdure lost! 10
Here shall I try the sweet Alexis' strain,
That called the list'ning dryads to the plain?[7]
Thames heard the numbers as he flowed along,
And bade his willows learn the moving song.[8]

LYCIDAS.

So may kind rains[9] their vital moisture yield, 15
And swell the future harvest of the field.
Begin; this charge the dying Daphne gave,[10]
And said, "Ye shepherds sing around my grave!"
Sing, while beside the shaded tomb I mourn,
And with fresh bays her rural shrine adorn.[11] 20

THYRSIS.

Ye gentle muses, leave your crystal spring,
Let nymphs and sylvans cypress garlands bring
Ye weeping loves, the stream with myrtles hide,[12]
And break your bows, as when Adonis died;[13]
And with your golden darts, now useless grown, 25
Inscribe a verse on this relenting stone:
"Let nature change, let heav'n and earth deplore,
"Fair Daphne's dead, and love is now no more!"[14]
'Tis done, and nature's various charms decay,[15]
See gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day! 30
Now hung with pearls the dropping trees appear,[16]
Their faded honours scattered on her bier.[17]
See, where on earth the flow'ry glories lie,
With her they flourished, and with her they die.[18]
Ah what avail the beauties nature wore? 35
Fair Daphne's dead, and beauty is no more!
For her the flocks refuse their verdant food,
The thirsty heifers shun the gliding flood,[19]
The silver swans her hapless fate bemoan,
In notes more sad than when they sing their own;[20] 40
In hollow caves[21] sweet echo[22] silent lies,[23]
Silent, or only to her name replies:[24]
Her name with pleasure once she taught the shore,
Now Daphne's dead, and pleasure is no more!
No grateful dews descend from ev'ning skies, 45
Nor morning odours from the flow'rs arise;
No rich perfumes refresh the fruitful field,
No fragrant herbs their native incense yield.[25]
The balmy zephyrs, silent since her death,
Lament the ceasing of a sweeter breath;[26] 50
Th' industrious bees neglect their golden store![27]
Fair Daphne's dead, and sweetness is no more![28]
No more the mountain larks, while Daphne sings,[29]
Shall list'ning in mid-air suspend their wings;[30]
No more the birds shall imitate her lays,[31] 55
Or hushed with wonder, hearken from the sprays:
No more the streams their murmurs shall forbear,
A sweeter music than their own to hear,[32]
But tell the reeds, and tell the vocal shore,
Fair Daphne's dead, and music is no more! 60
Her fate is whispered by the gentle breeze,
And told in sighs to all the trembling trees;
The trembling trees, in ev'ry plain and wood,
Her fate remurmur to the silver flood;[33]
The silver flood, so lately calm, appears 65
Swelled[34] with new passion, and o'erflows with tears;[35]
The winds, and trees, and floods, her death deplore,[36]
Daphne, our grief! our glory now no more!
But see! where Daphne wond'ring mounts on high[37]
Above the clouds, above the starry sky![38] 70
Eternal beauties grace the shining scene,
Fields ever fresh, and groves for ever green!
There while you rest in amaranthine bow'rs,
Or from those meads select unfading flow'rs,
Behold us kindly, who your name implore, 75
Daphne our goddess! and our grief no more!

LYCIDAS.

How all things listen, while thy muse complains![39]
Such silence waits on Philomela's strains,
In some still ev'ning, when the whisp'ring breeze
Pants on the leaves, and dies upon the trees.[40] 80
To thee, bright goddess, oft a lamb shall bleed,[41]
If teeming ewes increase my fleecy breed.
While plants their shade, or flow'rs their odours give,[42]
Thy name, thy honour, and thy praise shall live![43]

THYRSIS.

But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews:[44] 85
Arise; the pines a noxious shade diffuse;
Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay,
Time conquers all, and we must time obey,[45]
Adieu ye vales, ye mountains, streams, and groves,
Adieu ye shepherds' rural lays and loves; 90
Adieu, my flocks;[46] farewell, ye sylvan crew;
Daphne, farewell; and all the word adieu![47]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This was the poet's favourite Pastoral.--WARBURTON.

It is professedly an imitation of Theocritus, whom Pope does not resemble, and whose Idylls he could only have read in a translation. The sources from which he really borrowed his materials will be seen in the notes.]

[Footnote 2: This lady was of ancient family in Yorkshire, and particularly admired by the author's friend Mr. Walsh, who having celebrated her in a Pastoral Elegy, desired his friend to do the same, as appears from one of his letters, dated Sept. 9, 1706. "Your last Eclogue being on the same subject with mine on Mrs. Tempest's death, I should take it very kindly in you to give it a little turn, as if it were to the memory of the same lady." Her death having happened on the night of the great storm in 1703, gave a propriety to this Eclogue, which in its general turn alludes to it. The scene of the Pastoral lies in a grove, the time at midnight.--POPE.

I do not find any lines that allude to the great storm of which the poet speaks.--WARTON.

Nor I. On the contrary, all the allusions to the winds are of the gentler kind,--"balmy Zephyrs," "whispering breezes" and so forth. Miss Tempest was the daughter of Henry Tempest, of Newton Grange, York, and grand-daughter of Sir John Tempest, Bart. She died unmarried. When Pope's Pastoral first appeared in Tonson's Miscellany, it was entitled "To the memory of a Fair Young Lady."--CROKER.]

[Footnote 3: This couplet was constructed from Creech's translation of the first Idyll of Theocritus:

And, shepherd, sweeter notes thy pipe do fill
Than murm'ring springs that roll from yonder hill.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 4: Suggested by Virg. Ecl. v. 83:

nec quae
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.

For winding streams that through the valley glide. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 5: Milton, Par. Lost, v. 195:

Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.]

[Footnote 6: Variation:

In the warm folds the tender flocks remain,
The cattle slumber on the silent plain,
While silent birds neglect their tuneful lays,
Let us, dear Thyrsis, sing of Daphne's praise.--POPE.

It was originally,

Now in warm folds the tender flock remains.

Pope. "Objection to the word _remains_. I do not know whether these following be better or no, and desire your opinion.

Now while the groves in Cynthia's beams are dressed,
And folded flocks in their soft fleeces rest;
While sleeping birds, etc.

Or,

While Cynthia tips with silver all the groves,
And scarce the winds the topmast branches moves.

or

While the bright moon with silver tips the grove,
And not a breeze the quiv'ring branches move."

Walsh. "I think the last the best, but might not even that be mended?"]

[Footnote 7: Garth's Dispensary, Canto iv.:

As tuneful Congreve tries his rural strains,
Pan quits the woods, the list'ning fauns the plains.

Dryden's Virgil, Ecl. vi. 100:

And called the mountain ashes to the plain.

Among the poems of Congreve is one entitled "The Mourning Muse of Alexis, a Pastoral lamenting the death of Queen Mary." This was the "sweet Alexis strain" to which Pope referred, and which the Thames "bade his willows learn."]

[Footnote 8: Virg. Ecl. vi. 83:

Audiit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros.--POPE.

Admitting that a river gently flowing may be imagined a sensible being listening to a song, I cannot enter into the conceit of the river's ordering his laurels to learn the song. Here all resemblance to anything real is quite lost. This however is copied literally by Pope.--LORD KAMES.]

[Footnote 9: There is some connection implied between the "kind rains" and the "willows learning the song," but I cannot trace the idea.]

[Footnote 10: Virg. Ecl. v. 41:

mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis.]

[Footnote 11: Rowe's Ambitious Step-Mother:

And with fresh roses strew thy virgin urn.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 12: Ver. 23, 24, 25. Virg. Ecl. v. 40, 42:

inducite fontibus umbras.... Et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen.--POPE.

If the idea of "hiding the stream with myrtles" have either beauty or propriety, I am unable to discover them. Our poet unfortunately followed Dryden's turn of the original phrase in Virgil:

With cypress boughs the crystal fountains hide.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 13: This image is taken from Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus, Amor. iii. 9. 6:

Ecce! puer Veneris fert eversamque pharetram,
Et fractos arcus, et sine luce facem.--WAKEFIELD.

Ovid copied Bion. Idyl. 1. The Greek poet represents the Loves as trampling upon their bows and arrows, and breaking their quivers in the first paroxysm of their grief for Adonis. In place of this natural burst of uncontrollable sorrow, the shepherd, in Pope, invokes the Loves to break their bows at his instigation. When their darts are said in the next line to be henceforth useless, the sense must be that nobody would love any woman again since Mrs. Tempest was dead. Such hyperboles can neither touch the heart nor gratify the understanding. The Pastorals were verse exercises in which every pretence to real emotion was laid aside, for Pope was not even acquainted with the lady of whom he utters these extravagances.]

[Footnote 14: This is imitated from Walsh's Pastoral on the death of Mrs. Tempest in Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 323:

Now shepherds! now lament, and now deplore!
Delia is dead, and beauty is no more.--WAKEFIELD.

Congreve's Mourning Muse of Alexis:

All nature mourns; the floods and rocks deplore
And cry with me, Pastora is no more.]

[Footnote 15: Originally thus in the MS.

'Tis done, and nature's changed since you are gone;
Behold the clouds have put their mourning on.--WARBURTON.

This low conceit, which our poet abandoned for the present reading, was borrowed from Oldham's version of the elegy of Moschus:

For thee, dear swain, for thee, his much-loved son,
Does Phoebus clouds of mourning black put on.--WAKEFIELD.

When Pope submitted the rejected and the adopted reading to Walsh, the critic replied, "_Clouds put on mourning_ is too conceited for pastoral. The second is better, and _the thick_ or _the dark_ I like better than _sable_." The last verse of the couplet in the text was then

See sable clouds eclipse the cheerful day.]

[Footnote 16: Dryden's pastoral elegy on the death of Amyntas:

'Twas on a joyless and a gloomy morn,
Wet was the grass and hung with pearls the thorn.

So in his version of Virgil, Ecl. x. 20:

And hung with humid pearls the lowly shrub appears.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 17: Spenser's Colin Clout:

The fields with faded flow'rs did seem to mourn.]

[Footnote 18: Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Each flower fades and hangs its withered head,
And scorns to thrive or live now thou art dead.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 19: Variation:

For her the flocks the dewy herbs disdain,
Nor hungry heifers graze the tender plain.--POPE.

Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 38:

The thirsty cattle of themselves abstained
From water, and their grassy fare disdained.

Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, November, ver. 123, where

The feeble flocks in field refuse their former food,

because Dido is dead.]

[Footnote 20: Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Ye gentle swans....
In doleful notes the heavy loss bewail
Such as you sing at your own funeral.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 21: Cowley in his verses on Echo:

Ah! gentle nymph! who lik'st so well
In hollow solitary caves to dwell.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 22: This expression of "sweet echo" is taken from Comus.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 23: Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Sad echo too does in deep silence moan,
Since thou art mute, since thou art speechless grown.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 24: The couplet was different in the early editions:

Echo no more the rural song rebounds;
Her name alone the mournful echo sounds.]

[Footnote 25: In the MS.

Which but for you did all its incense yield.

This, with the reading in the text, was laid before Walsh, who selected the latter.]

[Footnote 26: Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Fair Galatea too laments thy death,
Laments the ceasing of thy tuneful breath.

Sedley's Elegy:

Here sportive zephyrs cease their selfish play
Despairing now to fetch perfumes away.--WAKEFIELD.

The couplet in the text is the third passage in Pope's Pastorals for which Ruffhead claims the merit of originality. The quotations of Wakefield show that the thought and the language are alike borrowed, and the only novelty is the bull, pointed out by Johnson, of making the _zephyrs_ lament in _silence_.]

[Footnote 27: Oldham's version of Moschus:

The painful bees neglect their wonted toil.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 28: The same:

Alas! what boots it now thy hives to store,
When thou, that wast all sweetness, art no more.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 29: In the original draught Pope had again introduced the wolves, and the first four lines of this paragraph stood thus:

No more the wolves, when you your numbers try,
Shall cease to follow, and the lambs to fly:
No more the birds shall imitate your lays,
Or, charmed to silence, listen from the sprays.]

[Footnote 30: The image of the birds listening with their wings suspended in mid-air is striking, and, I trust, new.--RUFFHEAD.

This circumstance of the lark suspending its wings in mid-air is highly beautiful, because there is a _veri similitudo_ in it, which is not the case where a waterfall is made to be suspended by the power of music.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 31: Oldham's translation of Moschus:

The feathered choir that used to throng
In list'ning flocks to learn his well-tuned song.

The line in the text was the earliest reading in the manuscript, but did not appear in print till the edition of Warburton. The reading in the previous editions was,

No more the nightingales repeat her lays.

This idea of the nightingale repeating the lays is amplified by Philips in his Fifth Pastoral, who copied it, according to Pope in the Guardian, from Strada. Thence also it must have been borrowed by Pope, and he may have restored the primitive version to get rid of the coincidence.]

[Footnote 32: The _veri similitudo_, which Bowles commends in the description of the lark, is not to be found in the notion of the streams ceasing to murmur that they might listen to the song of Daphne. Milton does a similar violence to fact and imagination in his Comus, ver. 494, and many lesser poets, before and after him, adopted the poor conceit.]

[Footnote 33: Dryden's AEneis, vii. 1041:

Yet his untimely fate th' Angitian woods
In sighs remurmured to the Fucine floods.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 34: This is barbarous: he should have written "swoln."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 35: Ovid, Met. xi. 47:

lacrimis quoque flumina dicunt
Increvisse suis.

Oldham's translation of Moschus:

The rivers too, as if they would deplore
Her death, with grief swell higher than before.

Fenton in his pastoral on the Marquis of Blandford's death:

And, swoln with tears, to floods the riv'lets ride.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 36: Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single expression, but when this figure is deliberately spread out with great accuracy through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is struck with its ridiculous appearance.--LORD KAMES.

All this is very poor, and unworthy Pope. First the breeze whispers the death of Daphne to the trees; then the trees inform the flood of it; then the flood o'erflows with tears; and then they all deplore together. The whole pastoral would have been much more classical, correct, and pure, if these lines had been omitted. Let us, however, still remember the youth of Pope, and the example of prior poets.--BOWLES.

Moschus in his third Idyll calls upon the nightingales to tell the river Arethusa that Bion is dead. Oldham in his imitation of Moschus exaggerated his original and commanded the nightingales to tell the news "to _all_ the British floods,"--to see that it was "conveyed to Isis, Cam, Thames, Humber, and utmost Tweed," and these in turn were to be ordered "to waft the bitter tidings on." Pope went further than Oldham, and describes one class of inanimate objects as conveying the intelligence to another class of inanimate objects till the whole uttered lamentations in chorus. Each succeeding copyist endeavoured to eclipse his predecessor by going beyond him in absurdity. Most of the ideas adopted by Pope in his Winter had been employed by scores of elegiac bards. "The numerous pastorals upon the death of princes or friends," says Dr. Trapp, "are cast in the same mould; read one, you read all. Birds, sheep, woods, mountains, rivers, are full of complaints. Everything in short is wondrous miserable."]

[Footnote 37: Virg. Ecl. v. 56:

miratur limen Olympi,
Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.--POPE.

Dryden thus renders the passage in Virgil:

Daphnis, the guest of heav'n, with wond'ring eyes
Views in the milky way the starry skies.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 38: In Spenser's November, and in Milton's Lycidas, there is the same beautiful change of circumstances.--WARTON.

It was one of the stereotyped common-places of elegiac poems, and was ridiculed in No. 30 of the Guardian. The writer might almost be thought to have had this passage of Pope in his mind, if his satire did not equally apply to a hundred authors besides. A shepherd announces to his fellow-swain that Damon is dead. "This," says the Guardian, "immediately causes the other to make complaints, and call upon the lofty pines and silver streams to join in the lamentation. While he goes on, his friend interrupts him, and tells him that Damon lives, and shows him a track of light in the skies to conform to it. Upon this scheme most of the noble families in Great Britain have been comforted; nor can I meet with any right honourable shepherd that doth not die and live again, after the manner of the aforesaid Damon."]

[Footnote 39: The four opening lines of the speech of Lycidas were as follows in the MS.:

Thy songs, dear Thyrsis, more delight my mind
Than the soft whisper of the breathing wind,
Or whisp'ring groves, when some expiring breeze
Pants on the leaves, and trembles in the trees.

The first couplet of the original reading, and the phrase "trembles in the trees," in the second couplet, were from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 128:

Not the soft whispers of the southern wind,
That play through trembling trees, delight me more.]

[Footnote 40: Milton, Il Penseroso:

When the gust hath blown his fill
Ending on the rustling leaves.]

[Footnote 41: Virg. Ecl. i. 7:

illius aram
Saepe tener, nostris ab ovilibus, imbuet agnus.--POPE.

He partly follows Dryden's translation of his original:

The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 42: Originally thus in the MS.

While vapours rise, and driving snows descend.
Thy honour, name, and praise shall never end.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 43: Virg. Ecl. v. 76:

Dum juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae,
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 44: Virg. Ecl. x. 75:

solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra;
Juniperi gravis umbra.--POPE.

Dryden's version of the passage is,

From juniper unwholesome dews distil.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 45: Virg. Ecl. x. 69:

Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori.

Vid. etiam Sannazarii Ecl. et Spenser's Calendar.--WARBURTON.

Dryden's verse is:

Love conquers all, and we must yield to love.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 46: There is a passage resembling this in Walsh's third eclogue:

Adieu, ye flocks, no more shall I pursue;
Adieu, ye groves; a long, a long adieu.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 47: These four last lines allude to the several subjects of the four Pastorals, and to the several scenes of them particularized before in each--POPE.

They should have been added by the poet in his own person, instead of being put into the mouth of a shepherd who is not presumed to have any knowledge of the previous pieces. The specific character which Pope ascribes to each of his Pastorals is not borne out by the poems themselves. There is as much about "flocks" in the first Pastoral as in the second; and there is as much about "rural lays and loves" in the second Pastoral as in the first. The third Pastoral contains no mention of a "sylvan crew," but a couple of shepherds are absorbed by the same "rural lays and loves" which occupied their predecessors.]

MESSIAH,

A SACRED ECLOGUE:

IN IMITATION OF

VIRGIL'S POLLIO.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In reading several passages of the Prophet Isaiah, which foretell the coming of Christ and the felicities attending it, I could not but observe a remarkable parity between many of the thoughts, and those in the Pollio of Virgil. This will not seem surprising, when we reflect, that the Eclogue was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject. One may judge that Virgil did not copy it line by line, but selected such ideas as best agreed with the nature of pastoral poetry, and disposed them in that manner which served most to beautify his piece. I have endeavoured the same in this imitation of him, though without admitting anything of my own; since it was written with this particular view, that the reader, by comparing the several thoughts, might see how far the images and descriptions of the prophet are superior to those of the poet. But as I fear I have prejudiced them by my management, I shall subjoin the passages of Isaiah, and those of Virgil, under the same disadvantage of a literal translation.[1]

This is certainly the most animated and sublime of all our author's compositions, and it is manifestly owing to the great original which he copied. Perhaps the dignity, the energy, and the simplicity of the original, are in a few passages weakened and diminished by florid epithets, and useless circumlocutions.--WARTON.

All things considered, the Messiah is as fine and masterly a piece of composition as the English language, in the same style of verse, can boast. I have ventured to point out a passage or two, for they are rare, where the sublimity has been weakened by epithets; and I have done this, because it is a fault, particularly with young writers, so common. In the most truly sublime images of Scripture, the addition of a single word would often destroy their effect. It is therefore right to keep as nearly as possible to the very words. No one understood better than Milton where to be general, and where particular; where to adopt the very expression of Scripture, and where it was allowed to paraphrase.--BOWLES.

The fourth eclogue of Virgil is devoted to celebrating the coming birth, while Pollio is Consul, of a boy whose infancy will usher in the golden age, and whose manhood will witness its fullness. Wars are to cease; the beasts of prey are to change their natures; the untilled earth is to bring forth fruits spontaneously; and peace, ease, and plenty are to reign supreme. The names of the parents of this expected child are not recorded, and the commentators are greatly divided upon the question. The most reasonable conjecture is that the intention was to do homage to the ruling genius at Rome, Augustus, or Caesar Octavianus, as he was then called, whose wife Scribonia was pregnant at the time. Unhappily for the prognostications of the poet the infant "proved a daughter, and the infamous Julia."[2] Virgil grounds his glowing anticipations upon certain Cumaean or Sibylline verses; for, as Jortin well remarks, he would have deprived his announcement of all authority if he himself had set up for a prophet. He could only hope to accredit his promised marvels by appealing to an oracle that was popularly believed to be inspired. "The Sibylline books," says Prideaux, "were a main engine of state. When they were ordered to be consulted the keepers of them always brought forth such an answer as served their purpose, and in many difficulties the governors helped themselves this way."[3] Virgil was equally diplomatic. He probably had no faith in the wonders he announced. His object was to pay court to Augustus, and to assist in establishing his patron's power.

The resemblance which portions of the Pollio bear to passages in Isaiah is generally admitted. "This," says Pope, "will not seem surprising when we reflect that the Eclogue was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject." He does not attempt to explain how the Sibyl came by her knowledge, unless he means us to infer that she was divinely illuminated. This theory has been supported by learned men, and would be warranted if the eight books of Sibylline oracles, still extant in Greek verse, were anterior to the Christian era; for since they often go beyond the Old Testament predictions in historic precision, the insight into futurity could not have been gathered exclusively from the Scripture prophets. But the existing oracles, says Jortin, "are without any one exception, mere impostures. They abound with phrases, words, facts, and passages taken from the Septuagint and the New Testament, and are a remarkable specimen of astonishing impudence, and miserable poetry."[4] Still there remains the circumstance of the parallelism between parts of Isaiah and the Eclogue which Virgil based upon the Sibylline verses. It is easy to account for the coincidence. The original Sibylline books were accidentally burnt B. C. 83. A few years later the senate employed agents to glean together from Italy, Greece, Sicily and Africa a body of prophecies to replace the oracles which had perished. The collection was from private as well as public sources, and a vast number of the same or similar predictions were in the hands of individuals at Rome. The Jews were located everywhere; they abounded in Rome itself; they were animated by the expectation that the reign of the Messiah was approaching; their prophetic records were incomparable for poetic beauty, sublimity, and variety; the language of the Septuagint was well understood by lettered pagans, and was even the language of the new Sibylline oracles, which were embodied in Greek verse. When all these things are considered, it would be strange if the persons employed to pick up prophecies had not come across notions, which had either been derived from personal intercourse with Jews, or from their sacred books. Although the entire world had been sunk in stupid apathy, and not a single heathen had been attracted by curiosity to turn his attention to Hebrew literature and beliefs, it was yet inevitable that a crude conception should get abroad of the leading idea which fermented in the mind of the ubiquitous Jew, and nothing was more likely than that it should be put into Sibylline verse when Roman agents were searching far and wide for oracles, and inviting contributions from every quarter.

Pope's Messiah first appeared in the Spectator for May 14, 1712, No. 378, where it is prefaced by these words: "I will make no apology for entertaining the reader with the following poem, which is written by a great genius, a friend of mine, in the country, who is not ashamed to employ his wit in the praise of his Maker." After it was published, Steele wrote on June 1, 1712, to Pope, and said, "I have turned to every verse and chapter, and think you have preserved the sublime heavenly spirit throughout the whole, especially at 'Hark a glad voice,' and 'The lamb with wolves shall graze.' Your poem is better than the Pollio." Upon this Johnson remarks, "That the Messiah excels the Pollio is no great praise, if it be considered from what original the improvements are derived." Bowles and Warton thought that Pope had kept up his verse to the level of Isaiah, and had only here and there weakened the sublimity by epithets. Wordsworth was of another opinion. When he contended that the language of poetry should be a selection from the real language of men "in a state of vivid sensation," and repudiated the ornate conventional phraseology which passed for poetic diction, he pointed to the paraphrases on parts of the Bible in illustration of what he condemned, and to the passages as they exist in our authorised version for a specimen of what he approved. "Pope's Messiah throughout" was in his apprehension an adulteration of the original.[5] His criticism appears well founded. The pure and natural language of the prophet is sometimes exchanged for sickly, affected expressions. "Righteousness" becomes "dewy nectar," "sheep" the "fleecy care," and the call upon Jerusalem to "Arise and shine" is turned into an invocation to "exalt her tow'ry head." Apart from these mawkish phrases, the imitation is framed from first to last upon the mistaken principle that the original would be embellished by amplifications, by a profusion of epithets, and by a gaudier diction. The "fir-tree and box-tree" of Isaiah are called by Pope "the _spiry_ fir, and _shapely_ box." Where the sacred text announces that "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree," Pope tells us that

"To _leafless_ shrubs the _flow'ring_ palms succeed,
And _od'rous_ myrtle to the _noisome_ weed."

In his translation of the prediction, that in the kingdom of Christ, "the sucking-child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den," Pope makes the cockatrice a "_crested_ basilisk," and the asp a "_speckled_ snake;" they have both scales of a "_green_ lustre," and a "_forky_ tongue," and with this last the "_smiling_ infant shall _innocently_ play." "The leopard," says Isaiah, "shall lie down with the kid, and the young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them"; but Pope could not leave this exquisite picture undecorated, and with him "boys in _flow'ry_ bands the tiger lead." How grievously is the force and pathos of the passage impaired by the substitution of "boys" for the "little child"; how completely is the bewitching nature turned into masquerade by the engrafted notion that the beasts are led by "_flow'ry_ bands." The alteration is an example of the justice of De Quincey's observation that "the Arcadia of Pope's age was the spurious Arcadia of the opera theatre."[6] The prophet refers anew to the time when creatures of prey shall cease to be carnivorous, and relates that "the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and dust shall be the serpent's meat." Pope converts the second clause into the statement that "harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet," which alters the meaning, and introduces a conception more noticeable for its grotesqueness than for the enchanting vision it should conjure up of universal peace.[7] Pope says he was induced to subjoin in his notes the passages he had versified by "the fear that he had prejudiced Isaiah and Virgil by his management." The reputation of Isaiah and Virgil was safe, and no one can doubt that his real reason for inviting the comparison was the belief that he had improved upon them. He imagined that he had enriched the text of the prophet, and did not suspect that the majesty and truth of the original were vitiated by his embroidery. Bowles has drawn attention to the finest parts of the poem, and it may be allowed that the piece in general is powerful of its kind. The fault is in the kind itself, which belongs to a lower style than the living strains of Isaiah, and borders too closely upon the meretricious to suit the lofty theme. The Messiah is a prophetic vision of a golden age, and on this account was classed by Pope among his Pastorals.[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Pope printed in his notes only those passages of Isaiah which had some resemblance to the ideas of Virgil. To the other portions of the prophet which he put into verse he merely gave references.]

[Footnote 2: Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, p. 323.]

[Footnote 3: Prideaux's Connection, ed. Wheeler, vol. ii, p. 518.]

[Footnote 4: Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 318.]

[Footnote 5: Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1836, vol. ii. p. 343.]

[Footnote 6: De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 115.]

[Footnote 7: Such is the difference of taste that Wakefield says of Pope's variation, "This is indeed a glorious improvement on the sublime original. The diction has the true doric simplicity in perfection, and poetic genius never gave birth to a more delicate and pleasing image."]

[Footnote 8: Singer's Spence, p. 236.]

MESSIAH,

A SACRED ECLOGUE:

IN IMITATION OF

VIRGIL'S POLLIO.