The Works of Alexander Pope Part 20

[Footnote 6: Scrope's couplet exceeds this in simplicity, and to my taste, on the whole, is preferable:

My muse, and lute can now no longer please; These are th' employments of a mind at ease.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 7: As Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses, Apollo fell in love with Daphne and pursued her. When he was gaining upon her in the race she was transformed, at her own request, into a laurel. The Cretan dame was Ariadne. Bacchus was smitten with her extraordinary beauty, and married her.]

[Footnote 8: This happy line, which is not too extravagant for a lover, belongs to Pope.]

[Footnote 9: Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, an aethiopian king. Her mother thought herself superior in beauty to the Nereids, which excited their jealousy, and through their influence a sea-monster was sent to prey upon man and beast in the dominions of Cepheus. To atone for her mother's vanity, and rid the land of the scourge, Cepheus agreed to offer up Andromeda to the monster. She was chained to a rock on the coast, where Perseus saw her at the critical moment when she was about to be devoured. Captivated by her charms he engaged and slew the monster, and made Andromeda his wife.]

[Footnote 10: This is very inferior to the conciseness, and simplicity of the original, "memini (meminerunt omnia amantes)." Sir Carr Scrope's translation is nearer the original, and more natural as well as elegant:

For they who truly love remember all.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 11: This line is another of the embellishments which Pope engrafted on the original.]

[Footnote 12: The first line of this couplet is faulty in point of versification, and, to use our bard's own remark, ten low words creep in one dull line. As to the last line, it is wholly redundant, and has no place in the original.--RUFFHEAD.]

[Footnote 13: In the original, Erycina, which was a surname of Venus from Mount Eryx, in Sicily, where a celebrated temple was dedicated to her.]

[Footnote 14: He has here left four lines untranslated, which are thus rendered in the MS.:

My ruined brother trades from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, And gains as basely as he lost before: Me too he hates, advised by me in vain, So fatal 'tis to be sincere and plain.

Of the last couplet the MS. contains a second version:

He hates his sister for a sister's care, So unsuccessful 'tis to be sincere.]

[Footnote 15: In the MS.:

An infant now my hapless fortunes shares, And this sad breast feels all a mother's cares.]

[Footnote 16: Cephalus tells the story poetically in Sandys' translation of Ovid's Met. vii. 701. He was a hunter, who was setting his nets in early dawn,

When grey Aurora, having vanquished night, Beheld me on the ever-fragrant hill Of steep Hymettus, and against my will, As I my toils extended, bare me thence.]

[Footnote 17: Cynthia prolonged the sleep of Endymion, a shepherd of singular beauty, that she might kiss him without his knowledge.]

[Footnote 18: Scrope is pleasing here:

Oh! let me once more see those eyes of thine!

Thy love I ask not; do but suffer mine.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope's couplet was as follows in the MS.:

Thy love I ask not to forsaken me, All that I ask is but to doat on thee.

"Scrope melius hic," wrote Cromwell, and though Pope altered the lines the remark of Cromwell remains true.]

[Footnote 19: Ruffhead observes, that this line is superior to the original,

Aspice, quam sit in hoc multa litura loco;

which he thinks flat and languid: but the simplicity of the appeal to the blot on her paper is admirable, and should be only mentioned as a fact. The imitator has destroyed the whole beauty of the line, by a quaint ant.i.thesis, and a laboured arrangement of words, which are not natural in affliction. Scrope's translation again excels Pope's:

My constant falling tears the paper stain, And my weak hand, etc.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 20: "The parenthesis is an interpolation," says a note transcribed by Richardson from Pope's ma.n.u.script, and the remark is equally applicable to the next line.]

[Footnote 21: In the first edition,

No gift on thee thy Sappho could confer.

The original couplet in the MS. was

No pledge you left me, faithless and unkind!

Nothing with me but wrongs was left behind.

"Jejune, flat, and ill expressed," is written against the last line in the ma.n.u.script, and Pope profited by the criticism.]

[Footnote 22: This image is not in the original, but it is very pleasingly introduced.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 23: The ten next verses are much superior to the original.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 24: From Dryden's Ovid, Epist. vii.:

Their daily longing, and their nightly dream.

It was at first thus in Pope's MS.:

Thou art at once my anguish and delight, Care of my day, and phantom of my night.

[Footnote 25: In the MS.:

Thy kisses then, thy words my soul endear.

Glow on my lips, and murmur in my ear.

[Footnote 26: Of this couplet there are two other versions in the MS.:

The charming phantom flies, and I complain, As if thyself forsook me once again.

And,

I dread the light of cruel heav'n to view, And close my eyes once more to dream of you.

[Footnote 27: "Antra nemusque" are not well rendered by "through lonely plains." Ovid is concise and specific, Pope general. Better rendered by Scrope:

Soon as I rise I haunt the caves and groves.--BOWLES.