Chapter XX: Part 20

Ye Nymphs of Solyma![1] begin the song:
To heav'nly themes sublimer strains[2] belong.
The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus[3] and th' Aonian maids,
Delight no more[4]--O Thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire![5]
Rapt[6] into future times, the bard begun:[7]
A virgin shall conceive, a virgin bear a son![8]
From Jesse's[9] root behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flow'r with fragrance fills the skies: 10
Th' ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descends the mystic dove.[10]
Ye heav'ns! from high the dewy nectar pour,[11]
And in soft silence shed the kindly show'r![12]
The sick[13] and weak the healing plant shall aid, 15
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud[14] shall fail;
Returning Justice[15] lift aloft her scale;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. 20
Swift fly the years,[16] and rise th' expected morn!
Oh spring to light, auspicious babe, be born![17]
See Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,[18]
With all the incense of the breathing spring:[19]
See lofty Lebanon[20] his head advance; 25
See nodding forests on the mountains dance:[21]
See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise,
And Carmel's flow'ry top perfumes the skies!
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers;
Prepare the way![22] a God, a God appears: 30
A God, a God![23] the vocal hills reply,
The rocks proclaim th' approaching deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down, ye mountains, and, ye valleys, rise;
With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay;[24] 35
Be smooth, ye rocks;[25] ye rapid floods, give way!
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold!
Hear him, ye deaf, and all ye blind, behold![26]
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,[27]
And on the sightless eye-ball pour the day: 40
'Tis he th' obstructed paths of sound shall clear,[28]
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear:
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.[29]
No sigh, no murmur the wide world shall hear,[30] 45
From ev'ry face he wipes off ev'ry tear,[31]
In adamantine[32] chains shall Death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture and the purest air, 50
Explores the lost, the wand'ring sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects,
The tender lambs he[33] raises in his arms,[34]
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms;[35]
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage, 55
The promised Father[36] of the future age.
No more shall nation[37] against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,[38]
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;[39] 60
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad faulchion in a plow-share end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son[40]
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun;[41]
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,[42] 65
And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts[43] with surprise
Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise;[44]
And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds, to hear
New fells of water murm'ring in his ear.[45] 70
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy valleys,[46] once perplexed with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn;
To leafless shrubs the flow'ring palms succeed, 75
And od'rous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,[47]
And boys in flow'ry bands the tiger lead;[48]
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,[49]
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.[50] 80
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake,
Pleased, the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play.[51]
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem,[52] rise![53] 85
Exalt thy tow'ry head,[54] and lift thy eyes![55]
See, a long race[56] thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on ev'ry side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies! 90
See barb'rous nations[57] at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabaean[58] springs![59]
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow, 95
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heav'n its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day.[60]
No more the rising sun[61] shall gild the morn,
Nor ev'ning Cynthia[62] fill her silver horn; 100
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory,[63] one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine![64]
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,[65] 105
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains:
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own MESSIAH reigns!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Solyma is the latter part of the Greek name for Jerusalem, [Greek: Hierosolyma].]

[Footnote 2: Dryden's Virg. Ecl. iv. 1.

Sicilian muse, begin a loftier strain--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 3: The poets of antiquity were thought to receive inspired dreams by sleeping on the poetic mountains.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 4: The pause and words are evidently from Dryden, a greater harmonist, if I may say so, than Pope:

The lovely shrubs and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 5: Alluding to Isaiah vi. 6, 7. "Then flew one of the Seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips." Milton had already made the same allusion to Isaiah, at the close of his Hymn on the Nativity:

And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his sacred altar touched with hallowed fire.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 6: Rapt, that is, carried forwards from the present scene of things into a distant period, from the Latin _rapio_.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 7: The poet wrongly uses "begun," instead of the past, began.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 8: Virg. Ecl. iv. 6:

Jam redit et Virge, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.--
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.--
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.

"_Now the Virgin returns, now the kingdom of Saturn returns, now a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. By means of thee, whatever reliques of our crimes remain, shall be wiped away, and free the world from perpetual fears. He shall govern the earth in peace, with the virtues of his father._"

Isaiah vii. 14. "_Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son._" Ch. ix. ver. 6, 7. "_Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,--the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government, and of his peace, there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice, for ever and ever._"--POPE.

By "the virgin" Virgil meant Astraea, or Justice, who is said by the poets to have been driven from earth by the wickedness of mankind.--PROFESSOR MARTYN.]

[Footnote 9: Isaiah xi. i.--POPE. "_And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots._"]

[Footnote 10: Pope lowers the comparison when he follows it out into details, and likens the endowments of the Messiah to leaves, and his head to the top of a tree on which the dove descends.]

[Footnote 11: Isaiah xlv. 8.--POPE. "_Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness._"]

[Footnote 12: Dryden's Don Sebastian:

But shed from nature like a kindly show'r.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 13: Isaiah xxv. 4,--POPE. "_For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat._"]

[Footnote 14: Warburton says that Pope referred to the fraud of the serpent, but the allusion is more general, and the poet had probably in his mind the "priscae vestigia fraudis," which Wakefield quotes from Virg. Ecl. iv. 31, and which Dryden renders

Yet of old fraud some footsteps shall remain.]

[Footnote 15: Isaiah ix. 7.--POPE.

For Justice was fabled by the poets to quit the earth at the conclusion of the golden age.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 16: This animated apostrophe is grounded on that of Virg. Ecl. iv. 46:

Talia saecla ... 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, o magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores,
Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum.

Ecl. v. 62:

Ipsi laetitia voces ad sidera jactan
Intonsi montes, ipsae 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. AEn. vi. 165:

AEre 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 durae 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:

Ipsae lacte domum referent distenta capelae
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 suae lambebat conjugis ora;

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

Nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem, nec vulnere laedunt.]

[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 saeclorum nascitur ordo
--toto surget gens aurea mundo!
--incipient magni procedere menses!
Aspice, venture laetentur ut omnia saeclo! &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 Sabaean springs disclose.--STEEVENS.

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

Sabaean 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 nostrae. Vare, myricae,
Te nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est,
Quam sibi quae Vari praescripsit 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]