The Works of Alexander Pope Part 62

Talia saecla ... currite ...--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 17: This seems a palpable imitation of Callimachus, Hymn. Del.

214, but where our poet fell upon it I cannot discover.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 18: Virg. Ecl. iv. 18:

At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu, Errantes hederas pa.s.sim c.u.m baccare tellus, Mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho.-- Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores.

"_For thee, O child, shall the earth, without being tilled, produce her early offerings; winding ivy, mixed with Baccar, and Colocasia with smiling Acanthus. Thy cradle shall pour forth pleasing flowers about thee._"

Isaiah x.x.xv. 1. "_The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose._" Chap.

lx. 13. "_The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary._"--POPE.]

[Footnote 19: This couplet has too much prettiness, and too modern an air.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 20: Isaiah x.x.xv. 2.--POPE. "_It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our G.o.d._"]

[Footnote 21: An improper and burlesque image.--WARTON.

The line is too particular; it brings the image too close, and by exhibiting the action stronger than poetical propriety and sublimity required, destroys the intended effect. In images of this sort, the greatest care should be taken just to present the idea, but not to detail it,--otherwise it becomes, in the language of Shakespeare, like "ambition that o'er-leaps itself."--BOWLES.

Pope copied Dryden's translation of Virgil, Ecl. vi. 44, quoted by Wakefield;

And silver fauns and savage beasts advanced, And nodding forests to the numbers danced,]

[Footnote 22: Virg. Ecl. iv. 46:

Aggredere, o magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores, Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum.

Ecl. v. 62:

Ipsi laet.i.tia voces ad sidera jactan Intonsi montes, ipsae jam carmina rupes, Ipsa sonant arbusta, Deus, deus ille, Menalca!

"_Oh come and receive the mighty honours: the time draws nigh, O beloved offspring of the G.o.ds, O great increase of Jove! The uncultivated mountains send shouts of joy to the stars, the very rocks sing in verse, the very shrubs cry out, A G.o.d, a G.o.d!_"

Isaiah xl. 3, 4. "_The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord! make straight in the desert a high way for our G.o.d! Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain._" Chap. xliv. 23. "_Break forth into singing, ye mountains! O forest, and every tree therein! for the Lord hath redeemed Israel._"--POPE.

The pa.s.sage from Virgil, in which the shrubs are supposed to cry out "a G.o.d, a G.o.d," is not from the same Eclogue with the rest of Pope's extracts, and has no reference to the antic.i.p.ated appearance of a ruler who should regenerate the world. The occasion of the shout is the presumed deification of one Daphnis who is dead.]

[Footnote 23: The repet.i.tion is in the true spirit of poetry, "Deus, deus ipse." The whole pa.s.sage indeed is finely worked up from "lofty Lebanon" to the magnificent and powerful appeal, "Hark! a glad voice."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 24: This line is faulty, for the same reason as given in the remark on "nodding forests." The action is brought too near, and for that reason the image no longer appears grand.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 25: He seems to have had in his eye Cromwell's translation of Ovid, Amor, ii. 16:

Then, as you pa.s.s, let mountains homage pay And bow their tow'ring heads to smooth your way.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 26: Isaiah xlii. 18.--POPE. "_Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see._"]

[Footnote 27: The sense and language show, that by "visual ray," the poet meant the sight, or, as Milton calls it, indeed, something less boldly, "the visual nerve." And no critic would quarrel with the figure which calls the instrument of vision by the name of the cause. But though the term be just, nay n.o.ble, and even sublime, yet the expression of "thick films" is faulty, and he fell into it by a common neglect of the following rule of good writing, that when a figurative word is used, whatsoever is predicated of it ought not only to agree in terms to the thing to which the figure is applied, but likewise to that from which the figure is taken. "Thick films" agree only with the thing to which it is applied, namely, to the sight or eye; and not to that from which it is taken, namely, a ray of light coming to the eye. He should have said "thick clouds," which would have agreed with both. But these inaccuracies are not to be found in his later poems.--WARBURTON.

Concanen had previously made the same objection in his Supplement to the Profound, and Pope has written in the margin, "Milton," who uses "visual ray," Par. Lost, iii. 620, "visual nerve" xi. 415, and "visual beam,"

Samson Agonistes, ver. 163; but none of these pa.s.sages support Pope's misapplication of the phrase "thick films" to rays of light.]

[Footnote 28: Isaiah x.x.xv. 5.--POPE. "_The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped._"]

[Footnote 29: Isaiah x.x.xv. 6.--POPE. "_Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing._"]

[Footnote 30: I wonder Dr. Warton had not here pointed out the force and the beauty of this most comprehensive and striking line.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 31: The verse, as first published, stood

He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes,

which was from Milton's Lycidas, ver. 181:

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

Steele having objected that Pope's line "in exalted and poetical spirit"

was below the original, Isaiah xxv. 8,--"_The Lord G.o.d will wipe away tears from off all faces_,"--the poet altered his text without, perhaps, either injuring or improving it.]

[Footnote 32: Isaiah xxv. 8.--POPE. "_He will swallow up death in victory._"

The meaning of the original has been missed by Pope. The promise was not that men should cease to die, which would be the ease if Death was "bound in adamantine chains," but that death should lose its terrors through "the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel," and be welcomed as the pa.s.sport to a blissful eternity.]

[Footnote 33: "He" is redundant.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 34: Isaiah xl. 11.--POPE. "_He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom._"]

[Footnote 35: He was betrayed into a little impropriety here, by not being aware that the "bosom," in cla.s.sic use, commonly means the capacious flow of the eastern garments.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 36: Isaiah ix. 6.--POPE. "_His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty G.o.d, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace._"]

[Footnote 37: Isaiah ii. 4.--POPE. "_They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more._"]

[Footnote 38: The words "covered o'er" form an insipid termination of this verse.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 39: Mr. Steevens aptly quotes Virg. aen. vi. 165:

aere ciere viros.

With breathing bra.s.s to kindle fierce alarms. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 40: Isaiah lxv. 21, 22.--POPE. "_And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat._"]

[Footnote 41: A line almost wholly borrowed from Dryden's Britannica Rediviva:

And finish what thy G.o.d-like sire begins--WAKEFIELD.]