[Footnote 36: Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the
trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single
expression, but when this figure is deliberately spread out with great
accuracy through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is
struck with its ridiculous appearance.--LORD KAMES.
All this is very poor, and unworthy Pope. First the breeze whispers the
death of Daphne to the trees; then the trees inform the flood of it;
then the flood o'erflows with tears; and then they all deplore together.
The whole pastoral would have been much more classical, correct, and
pure, if these lines had been omitted. Let us, however, still remember
the youth of Pope, and the example of prior poets.--BOWLES.
Moschus in his third Idyll calls upon the nightingales to tell the river
Arethusa that Bion is dead. Oldham in his imitation of Moschus
exaggerated his original and commanded the nightingales to tell the news
"to _all_ the British floods,"--to see that it was "conveyed to Isis,
Cam, Thames, Humber, and utmost Tweed," and these in turn were to be
ordered "to waft the bitter tidings on." Pope went further than Oldham,
and describes one class of inanimate objects as conveying the
intelligence to another class of inanimate objects till the whole
uttered lamentations in chorus. Each succeeding copyist endeavoured to
eclipse his predecessor by going beyond him in absurdity. Most of the
ideas adopted by Pope in his Winter had been employed by scores of
elegiac bards. "The numerous pastorals upon the death of princes or
friends," says Dr. Trapp, "are cast in the same mould; read one, you
read all. Birds, sheep, woods, mountains, rivers, are full of
complaints. Everything in short is wondrous miserable."]
[Footnote 37: Virg. Ecl. v. 56:
miratur limen Olympi,
Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.--POPE.
Dryden thus renders the passage in Virgil:
Daphnis, the guest of heav'n, with wond'ring eyes
Views in the milky way the starry skies.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 38: In Spenser's November, and in Milton's Lycidas, there is
the same beautiful change of circumstances.--WARTON.
It was one of the stereotyped common-places of elegiac poems, and was
ridiculed in No. 30 of the Guardian. The writer might almost be thought
to have had this passage of Pope in his mind, if his satire did not
equally apply to a hundred authors besides. A shepherd announces to his
fellow-swain that Damon is dead. "This," says the Guardian, "immediately
causes the other to make complaints, and call upon the lofty pines and
silver streams to join in the lamentation. While he goes on, his friend
interrupts him, and tells him that Damon lives, and shows him a track of
light in the skies to conform to it. Upon this scheme most of the noble
families in Great Britain have been comforted; nor can I meet with any
right honourable shepherd that doth not die and live again, after the
manner of the aforesaid Damon."]
[Footnote 39: The four opening lines of the speech of Lycidas were as
follows in the MS.:
Thy songs, dear Thyrsis, more delight my mind
Than the soft whisper of the breathing wind,
Or whisp'ring groves, when some expiring breeze
Pants on the leaves, and trembles in the trees.
The first couplet of the original reading, and the phrase "trembles in
the trees," in the second couplet, were from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 128:
Not the soft whispers of the southern wind,
That play through trembling trees, delight me more.]
[Footnote 40: Milton, Il Penseroso:
When the gust hath blown his fill
Ending on the rustling leaves.]
[Footnote 41: Virg. Ecl. i. 7:
illius aram
Saepe tener, nostris ab ovilibus, imbuet agnus.--POPE.
He partly follows Dryden's translation of his original:
The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 42: Originally thus in the MS.
While vapours rise, and driving snows descend.
Thy honour, name, and praise shall never end.--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 43: Virg. Ecl. v. 76:
Dum juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae,
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 44: Virg. Ecl. x. 75:
solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra;
Juniperi gravis umbra.--POPE.
Dryden's version of the passage is,