[Footnote 7: Garth's Dispensary, Canto iv.:
As tuneful Congreve tries his rural strains,
Pan quits the woods, the list'ning fauns the plains.
Dryden's Virgil, Ecl. vi. 100:
And called the mountain ashes to the plain.
Among the poems of Congreve is one entitled "The Mourning Muse of
Alexis, a Pastoral lamenting the death of Queen Mary." This was the
"sweet Alexis strain" to which Pope referred, and which the Thames "bade
his willows learn."]
[Footnote 8: Virg. Ecl. vi. 83:
Audiit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros.--POPE.
Admitting that a river gently flowing may be imagined a sensible being
listening to a song, I cannot enter into the conceit of the river's
ordering his laurels to learn the song. Here all resemblance to anything
real is quite lost. This however is copied literally by Pope.--LORD
KAMES.]
[Footnote 9: There is some connection implied between the "kind rains"
and the "willows learning the song," but I cannot trace the idea.]
[Footnote 10: Virg. Ecl. v. 41:
mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis.]
[Footnote 11: Rowe's Ambitious Step-Mother: