[Footnote 11: Virg. Ecl. vii. 60:
Jupiter et laeto descendet plurimus imbri.--POPE.
In the original manuscript the couplet was slightly different:
Relenting Naiads wept in ev'ry bow'r,
And Jove consented in a silent show'r.
Pope. "Objection, that the Naiads weeping in bowers is not so proper,
being water nymphs, and that the word _consented_ is doubted by some to
whom I have shown these verses. Alteration:
The Naiads wept in ev'ry wat'ry bow'r,
And Jove relented in a silent show'r.
Quaere. Which of these do you like best?" Walsh. "The first. Upon second
thoughts I think the second is best." Pope ended by adopting the first
line of the second version, and the second line of the first.]
[Footnote 12: This is taken from Virg. Ecl. viii. 12.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's translation, ver. 17:
Amidst thy laurels let this ivy twine,
Thine was my earliest muse.
Ivy, with the Romans, was the emblem of literary success, and the laurel
crown was worn by a victorious general at a triumph. As Pollio, to whom
Virgil addressed his eighth eclogue, was both a conqueror and a poet,
the double garland allotted to him was appropriate, but there was no
fitness in the application of the passage to Garth.]
[Footnote 13: A harsh line, and a false and affected thought.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 14: Virg. Ecl. x. 8.
Non canimus surdis: respondent omnia sylvae.--POPE.
Ogilby's translation of the verse in Virgil:
Nor to the deaf do we our numbers sing,
Since woods, in answ'ring us, with echoes ring.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 15: A line out of Spenser's Epithalamion.--POPE.]
[Footnote 16: A line unworthy our author, containing a false and trivial
thought; as is also the 22nd line.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 17: Pope says his merit in these Pastorals is his copying from
the ancients. Can anything like this, and other conceits, be found in
the natural and unaffected language of Virgil? No such thing. But what
do we find in Dryden's imitation of Virgil, Ecl. ii. 13:
The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.
This is Virgil's:
Sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis.