[Footnote 24: This is an obvious imitation of those trite lines in Ovid,
Met. i. 522:
herbarum subjecta potentia nobis.
Hei mihi, quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis;
Nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's translation:
What herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their pow'rs I know.
To cure the pains of love no plant avails,
And his own physic the physician fails.
It is remarkable that the imitation in the text of some of the most
hacknied lines in classical literature, should be one of four passages
quoted by Ruffhead, to prove that all the images in Pope's Pastorals had
not been borrowed from preceding poets.]
[Footnote 25: The only faulty rhymes, _care_ and _shear_, perhaps in
these poems, where the versification is in general so exact and
correct.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 26: The scene is laid upon the banks of the Thames, and
"mountain" is a term inapplicable to any of the neighbouring hills. Pope
was too intent upon copying Virgil to pay much regard to the
characteristics of the English landscape.]
[Footnote 27: It is not easy to conceive a more harsh and clashing line
than this. There is the same imagery in Theocritus (Idyll viii. 55), but
it is made more striking by the circumstances and picturesque
accompaniments, as well as by the extraordinary effect of the lines
adapted to the subject.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 28: The name taken by Spenser in his Eclogues, where his
mistress is celebrated under that of Rosalinda.--POPE.]
[Footnote 29: Virg. Ecl. ii. 36:
Est mihi disparibus septem compacta cicutis
Fistula, Damoetas dono mihi quam dedit olim,
Et dixit moriens, Te nunc habet ista secundum.--POPE.
Pope's couplet originally ran thus:
Of slender reeds a tuneful flute I have.
The tuneful flute which dying Colin gave.
"Objection," he says to Walsh, "that the first line is too much
transposed from the natural order of the words, and that the rhyme is
inharmonious." He subjoined the couplet in the text, and asked, "Which
of these is best?" to which Walsh replies, "The second."]
[Footnote 30: Dr. Johnson says, "that every intelligent reader sickens
at the mention of the crook and the pipe, the sheep and the kids." This
appears to be an unjust and harsh condemnation of all pastoral
poetry.--WARTON.
Surely Dr. Johnson's decrying the affected introduction of "crook and
pipe," &c., into English pastorals, is not a condemnation of all
pastoral poetry. Dr. Johnson certainly could not very highly relish this
species of poetry, witness his harsh criticisms on Milton's exquisite
Lycidas; but we almost forgive his severity on several genuine pieces of
poetic excellence, when we consider that he has done a service to truth
and nature in speaking with a proper and dignified contempt for such
trite puerilities.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 31: Virg. Ecl. i. 5: