Chapter XXI: Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[Footnote 2:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 20: Spectator, No. 523.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 28: Oldham's Elegies.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WINDSOR FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.[1]

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

[Footnote 3: Originally thus:

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

Dryden's Virgil, Geor. ii. 245:

Once more unlock for thee the sacred spring.

AEn. x. 241:

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

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

[Footnote 5: Evidently suggested by Waller:

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

Addison's Letter from Italy:

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

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

Addison's Letter from Italy:

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

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

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

[Footnote 8: From Waller:

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

[Footnote 9: Evidently from Cooper's Hill:

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

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

[Footnote 11: Originally thus:

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

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

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

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

Bosomed high in tufted trees.--WAKEFIELD.]

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

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms.

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 17: Dryden's Translations from Ovid:

A dismal desert, and a silent waste.

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 19: This is in imitation of Waller:

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 21: Originally thus in the MS.:

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 24: In the first edition it was,

The swain with tears to beasts his labour yields,

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

[Footnote 25: Addison's Letter from Italy:

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

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

[Footnote 26:

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

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

[Footnote 27: Translated from

Templa adimit divis, fora civibus, arva colonis,

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 29: Addison's Campaign:

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

[Footnote 30: Donne, in his second Satire,

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

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

[Footnote 32: Originally:

And wolves with howling fill, &c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 43:

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

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

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

Latonae tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus.--WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's translation:

And feeds with secret joy her silent breast.

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

[Footnote 45: Originally: