[Footnote 44: This thought occurs in several authors. Persius, Sat. ii.
39,
Quicquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat.
Butler finely ridicules this trite fancy of the poets:
Where'er you tread your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 45: The six lines from ver. 71 to ver. 76 stood thus in the
original manuscript:
Oh, deign to grace our happy rural seats,
Our mossy fountains, and our green retreats;
While you your presence to the groves deny,
Our flowers are faded, and our brooks are dry;
Though with'ring herbs lay dying on the plain,
At your return they shall be green again.
The two last couplets were copied from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. vii. 77:
But if Alexis from our mountains fly,
Ev'n running rivers leave their channels dry.
And ver. 81:
But, if returning Phyllis bless the plain,
The grass revives, the woods are green again.
In Pope's next version, the four lines "While you, &c.," ran as follows:
Winds, where you walk, shall gently fan the glade,
Or,
Where'er you walk fresh gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Flow'rs where you tread in painted pride shall rise,
Or,
Where'er you tread the purple flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes!
Walsh preferred the second form of the passage to the original draught;
and of the variations in the second form he preferred the lines
beginning "Where'er you walk," and "Where'er you tread."]
[Footnote 46: He had in view Virg. Ecl. x. 43:
hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 47:
Your praise the tuneful birds to heav'n shall bear,
And list'ning wolves grow milder as they hear.
So the verses were originally written. But the author, young as he was,
soon found the absurdity which Spenser himself overlooked, of
introducing wolves into England.--POPE.
There was no absurdity upon the principle of Pope, that the scene of
pastorals was to be laid in the golden age, which could not be supposed
to be subsequent to the reign of Edward I. when wolves still existed in
this island. They lingered in Scotland in the reign of Charles II., and
in Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne.]
[Footnote 48: Virg. Ecl. iii. 73: