[Footnote 41: In the New Forest, where the cottages had been swept away
by William. "Succeeding monarchs" did not, as Pope implies, suffer
encroachments on the forest out of pity for their subjects. The
concession was extorted. Some of the provisions of Magna Charta were
directed against the increase of the royal forests and against the "evil
customs" maintained with respect to them.]
[Footnote 42: Mountains hitherto unknown to the flocks, who were now for
the first time permitted to feed there.]
[Footnote 43:
Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma. Virg.--WARBURTON.
Virgil is treating of grafts, and says that the parent stock, when the
slips grow, wonders at leaves and fruit not its own. Here the
imagination keeps pace with the description, but stops short before the
notion that the trees in the forest wondered to behold the crops of
corn.]
[Footnote 44: He doubtless had in his eye, Vir. AEn. i. 506:
Latonae tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's translation:
And feeds with secret joy her silent breast.
In Virgil the silent exultation is felt by a mother, who, in an assembly
of nymphs, marks the superior beauty of her goddess daughter. There was
not the same reason why the swain should keep secret the transport he
felt at the sight of wheat fields.]
[Footnote 45: Originally:
O may no more a foreign master's rage,
With wrongs yet legal, curse a future age!
Still spread, fair liberty! thy heav'nly wings,
Breathe plenty on the fields, and fragrance on the springs.--POPE.
The last couplet was suggested by Addison's Letter to Lord Halifax:
O Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.]
[Footnote 46: Addison's Campaign:
Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood
Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood.
[Footnote 47: "Thickest woods" till Warburton's edition. The epithet
"gameful," to express that the woods were full of game, seems to be
peculiar to Pope.]
[Footnote 48: Originally:
When yellow autumn summer's heat succeeds,
And into wine the purple harvest bleeds,
The partridge feeding in the new-shorn fields,
Both morning sports and evening pleasures yields.--POPE.
Richardson transcribes from the margin of Pope's MS. "Qu. if allowable
to describe the season by a circumstance not proper to our climate, the
vintage?" And the line which speaks of the making of wine was no doubt
altered to obviate this objection.]
[Footnote 49: Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo:
Watchful to betray
With inward rage he meditates his prey.--HOLT WHITE.]
[Footnote 50: From Virgil, Geo. iv. 176:
si parra licet componere magnis.