[Footnote 1: This was the poet's favourite Pastoral.--WARBURTON.
It is professedly an imitation of Theocritus, whom Pope does not
resemble, and whose Idylls he could only have read in a translation. The
sources from which he really borrowed his materials will be seen in the
notes.]
[Footnote 2: This lady was of ancient family in Yorkshire, and
particularly admired by the author's friend Mr. Walsh, who having
celebrated her in a Pastoral Elegy, desired his friend to do the same,
as appears from one of his letters, dated Sept. 9, 1706. "Your last
Eclogue being on the same subject with mine on Mrs. Tempest's death, I
should take it very kindly in you to give it a little turn, as if it
were to the memory of the same lady." Her death having happened on the
night of the great storm in 1703, gave a propriety to this Eclogue,
which in its general turn alludes to it. The scene of the Pastoral lies
in a grove, the time at midnight.--POPE.
I do not find any lines that allude to the great storm of which the poet
speaks.--WARTON.
Nor I. On the contrary, all the allusions to the winds are of the
gentler kind,--"balmy Zephyrs," "whispering breezes" and so forth. Miss
Tempest was the daughter of Henry Tempest, of Newton Grange, York, and
grand-daughter of Sir John Tempest, Bart. She died unmarried. When
Pope's Pastoral first appeared in Tonson's Miscellany, it was entitled
"To the memory of a Fair Young Lady."--CROKER.]
[Footnote 3: This couplet was constructed from Creech's translation of
the first Idyll of Theocritus:
And, shepherd, sweeter notes thy pipe do fill
Than murm'ring springs that roll from yonder hill.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 4: Suggested by Virg. Ecl. v. 83:
nec quae
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.