[Footnote 140: Spenser of Father Thames:
his beard all gray
Dewed with silver drops that trickled down alway.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 141: Between verse 330 and 331, originally stood these lines;
From shore to shore exulting shouts he heard,
O'er all his banks a lambent light appeared,
With sparkling flames heav'n's glowing concave shone,
Fictitious stars, and glories not her own.
He saw, and gently rose above the stream
His shining horns diffused a golden gleam:
With pearl and gold his tow'ry front was drest,
The tributes of the distant East and West.--POPE.]
[Footnote 142: Horns were a classical attribute of rivers,--not I think,
according to the common view, as a mark of dignity, but as a symbolical
expression of the fact that the principal streams, like the ocean
itself, are formed from a confluence of tributaries.--CROKER.
Pope's personification of the Thames is the echo of Addison's
translation of a passage in Claudian, describing the deity of the
Eridanus:
His head above the floods he gently reared,
And as he rose his golden horns appeared,
That on the forehead shone divinely bright
And o'er the banks diffused a yellow light:
Beneath his arm an urn supported lies
With stars embellished, and fictitious skies.]
[Footnote 143: Augusta was the name which the Romans at one period gave
to London. The representation of the god attended by
All little rivers, which owe vassalage
To him, as to their lord, and tribute pay,
and the accompanying enumeration of the subsidiary streams, is closely
imitated from the Faery Queen. Pope professes to describe the river-gods
who stood round the throne of Father Thames, but he has confounded the
river-gods with the rivers, and some of his epithets,--"winding Isis,"
"blue transparent Vandalis," "gulphy Lee,"--are not applicable to
persons.]
[Footnote 144: The river-gods were said to be the children of Oceanus
and Tethys, but in the earlier mythology, Oceanus was himself a _river_
(not a sea), surrounding the earth, and the lesser rivers were his
progeny.]
[Footnote 145: The Tamesis. It was a common but erroneous notion, that
the appellation was formed from appending the name Isis to Thame.]
[Footnote 146: Warton observes that Pope has here copied and equalled
the description of rivers in Spenser, Drayton, and Milton. The
description is beautiful, but in some points it is deficient. "Winding
Isis" and "fruitful Thame" are ill designated. No peculiar and visible
image is added to the character of the streams, either interesting from
beauty, or incidental circumstances. Most rivers wind and may be called
fruitful, as well as the Isis and Thame. The latter part of the
description is much more masterly, as every river has its distinctive
mark, and that mark is picturesque. It may be said, however, that all
the epithets, in a description of this sort, cannot be equally
significant, but surely something more striking should have been given
as circumstantially characteristic of such rivers as the Isis and
Thames, than that they were "winding" and "fruitful," or of the Kennet
that it was renowned for "silver eels."--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 147: Drayton:
The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned.--BOWLES.
The Kennet is not linked by Pope to any poetical association when he
simply says that it is "renowned for silver eels," but Spenser brings a
delightful picture before the eye when he speaks of the
still Darent in whose waters clean
Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.]
[Footnote 148: Addison: