[Footnote 1: The scene of this Pastoral by the river side, suitable to
the heat of the season: the time noon.--POPE.]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Samuel Garth, author of the Dispensary, was one of the
first friends of the author, whose acquaintance with him began at
fourteen or fifteen. Their friendship continued from the year 1703 to
1718, which was that of his death.--POPE.
He was a man of the sweetest disposition, amiable manners, and universal
benevolence. All parties, at a time when party violence was at a great
height, joined in praising and loving him. One of the most exquisite
pieces of wit ever written by Addison, is a defence of Garth against the
Examiner, 1710. It is unfortunate that this second Pastoral, the worst
of the four, should be inscribed to the best judge of all Pope's four
friends to whom they were addressed.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 3: This was one of the passages submitted to Walsh.
"Objection," remarks Pope, "against the parenthesis, _he seeks no better
name_. Quaere. Would it be anything better to say,
A shepherd's boy, who sung for love, not fame, etc.
Or,
A shepherd's boy, who fed an amorous flame.
Quaere, which of all these is the best, or are none of them good." Walsh
preferred the parenthesis in the text. "It is Spenser's way," he said,
"and I think better than the others."]
[Footnote 4: Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar:
A shepherd boy (no better do him call)
Led forth his flock.--BOWLES.
Pope's second Pastoral is an ostensible imitation of Spenser's first
eclogue, which is devoted to a lover's complaint, but though Pope has
echoed some of the sentiments of Spenser, and appropriated an occasional
line, his style has little resemblance to that of his model.]
[Footnote 5: "An inaccurate word," says Warton, "instead of Thames;" and
rendered confusing by the fact that there is a real river Thame, which
is a tributary of the Thames. Milton has used the same licence, and
speaks of the "royal towered Thame" in his lines on the English rivers.]
[Footnote 6: Originally thus in the MS.:
There to the winds Headrigg plained his hapless love,
And Amaryllis filled the vocal grove.--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 7: Dryden's Theodore and Honoria:
The winds within the quiv'ring branches played,
And dancing trees a mournful music made.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 8: Ver. 1, 2, 3, 4, were thus printed in the first edition:
A faithful swain, whom Love had taught to sing,
Bewailed his fate beside a silver spring;
Where gentle Thames his winding waters leads
Through verdant forests, and through flow'ry meads.--POPE.]
[Footnote 9: Dryden's Virg. Ecl. viii. 3:
To which the savage lynxes list'ning stood;
The rivers stood on heaps, and stopped the running flood.
Milton, Comus, 494:
Thyrsis, whose artful strains have oft delayed
The puddling brook to hear his madrigal.--WAKEFIELD.
Garth, in his Dispensary, canto iv., says that, when Prior sings,
The banks of Rhine a pleased attention show,
And silver Sequana forgets to flow.]
[Footnote 10: Milton, Comus:
That dumb things shall be moved to sympathise.--STEEVENS.
In the tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas, Congreve says of the tigers and
wolves, that