[Footnote 149: Several of Pope's epithets are borrowed, although he has
not always coupled them with the same streams to which they are applied
in his originals. For "Kennet swift" Milton has "Severn swift," and for
"chalky Wey" Spenser has "chalky Kennet."]
[Footnote 150: The Wandle.--CROKER.]
[Footnote 151: Milton has "gulphy Dun" and "sedgy Lee," and Pope
combined the characteristics. The remainder of the couplet is from
Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian:
Her dropping locks the silver Tessin rears,
The blue transparent Adda next appears.]
[Footnote 152: Milton's Vacation Exercise:
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath.--WAKEFIELD.
The Mole at particular spots, called the swallows, sinks through
crevices in the chalk, and during dry seasons, when there is not
sufficient water to till both the subterranean and the upper channel,
the bed of the river is laid bare in parts of its course. The stream
sometimes entirely disappears from Burford-bridge to the neighbourhood
of Thorncroft-bridge, a distance of nearly three miles.]
[Footnote 153: Drayton:
And the old Lee brags of the Danish blood.--BOWLES.
Pope's epithet "silent" was suggested by "the still Darent" of Spenser,
and the same poet had said of the Eden that it was
----stained with blood of many a band
Of Scots and English.]
[Footnote 154: Addison's translation of an extract from Ovid:
While thus she rested on her arm reclined,
The hoary willows waving with the wind.]
[Footnote 155: The river god bowing respectfully to his human audience,
before he commenced his speech, is a ludicrous idea, into which Pope was
seduced by his courtly desire to represent even the deities as doing
homage to Queen Anne.]
[Footnote 156: So Dryden, AEneis, x. 156:
The winds their breath restrain,
And the hushed waves lie flatted on the main.--WAKEFIELD.
Pope's lines are compiled from the passage quoted by Wakefield and a
couplet in the Court Prospect of Hopkins:
Unrolling waves steal softly to the shore,
They know their sovereign and they fear to roar.]
[Footnote 157: The Hermus is characterised by Virgil as "turbid with
gold." The property was more usually ascribed to its tributary, the
Pactolus, but there was no gold in either.]
[Footnote 158: An undoubted imitation, I think, of Dr. Bathurst's verses
on Selden:
As when old Nilus, who with bounteous flows
Waters a hundred nations as he goes,
Scattering rich harvests, keeps his sacred head
Amidst the clouds still undiscovered.
Homer denominates the Nile, whose sources were unknown, a river that
falls from Jupiter or heaven. And our countryman calls it sevenfold, as
Ovid before him _septemfluus_, and Catullus still earlier
_septemgeminus_, from the seven mouths by which its waters are
discharged into the Mediterranean.--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 159: Originally thus in the MS.
Let Venice boast her tow'rs amidst the main,
Where the rough Adrian swells and roars in vain;
Here not a town, but spacious realms shall have
A sure foundation on the rolling wave.--WARBURTON.
This he altered with his usual discernment, on account of the mean
conceit in the equivocal use of the word "foundation."--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 160: This alludes to General Stanhope's campaigns on the Ebro,
and the Duke of Marlborough's on the Danube.--CROKER.
In saying that British blood should no more dye foreign lands, Pope
meant to furnish an argument for the Peace by intimating that the war
was kept up, at the sacrifice of English life, for the benefit of other
nations.]
[Footnote 161: In the manuscript:
O'er all the Forests shall appear no trace.
[Footnote 162: And certainly sufficient ferocity is displayed even in
these amusements. Cowley says,
And all his malice, all his craft is shown
In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone.
His commentator, Dr. Hurd, remarks in a spirit that endears him to the
reader, "Innocent, he means, in comparison with wars on his own
kind."--WAKEFIELD.]
[Footnote 163: The fifty new churches.--POPE.]
[Footnote 164: This seems imitated from Hopkins' Court Prospect:
As far as fair Augusta's buildings reach,
Bent, like a bow, along a peaceful beach.--WAKEFIELD.
Cowley's Somerset House:
And here, behold, in a long bending row,
How two joint cities make one glorious bow.
Whitehall is just above that circular sweep of the Thames in the midst
of which the cities of London and Westminster unite. Pope wrote in the
belief that the magnificent design of Inigo Jones for the palace at
Whitehall would one day be executed.]
[Footnote 165: Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian on the
imperial palace at Rome:
Thither the kingdoms and the nations come,
In supplicating crowds to learn their doom.
To Delphi less th' inquiring worlds repair.]
[Footnote 166: "Once more," as in the renowned reign of Elizabeth.--HOLT
WHITE.
After holding out a prospect of perpetual peace, Pope conjures up a
future vision of "sueing kings," and "suppliant states," which are the
consequences of war and victory.]
[Footnote 167: This return to the trees of Windsor Forest, his original
subject, is masterly and judicious; and the whole speech of Thames is
highly animated and poetical,--forcible and rich in diction, as it is
copious and noble in imagery.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 168: Originally thus:
Now shall our fleets the bloody cross display
To the rich regions of the rising day,
Or those green isles, where headlong Titan steeps
His hissing axle in th' Atlantic deeps:
Tempt icy seas, &c.--POPE.
The original lines were rejected, probably as too nearly resembling a
passage in Comus:
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream.--BOWLES.]
[Footnote 169: Pope has written "if obscure?" against this line in the
manuscript. It is plain he meant that the trees were converted into
ships, but the language is extravagant.]
[Footnote 170: The red cross upon the Union Jack.]
[Footnote 171: Waller's verses on Tea: