The Works of Alexander Pope Part 71

[Footnote 63: "Volume," except in its application to books, now carries with it an idea of magnitude. In Pope's day it was still used in its strictly etymological sense. When Milton, in his personification of Sin (Par. Lost, ii. 651), says that she

ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast,

"voluminous" is the synonym for "many a scaly fold," and not for the conjoint epithet "vast."]

[Footnote 64: Wakefield points out that Pope borrowed the language from Lauderdale's translation of the fourth Georgic, where he says of the bees that they are "bedropped with gold," or from Milton's description of the fish, which

sporting with quick glance Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold.]

[Footnote 65: "The wat'ry plain" from the _campi liquentes_ of Virgil, is an expression of Dryden's in his translation of Ovid, Met. i., and elsewhere. Drayton in his Polyolbion has the tyrant pike.--WAKEFIELD.

"The luce, or pike," says Walton, "is the tyrant of the fresh waters."]

[Footnote 66: Originally thus:

But when bright Phoebus from the twins invites Our active genius to more free delights, With springing day we range the lawns around.--POPE.]

[Footnote 67: "Sylvan _war_," is an expression borrowed from writers who described the chase of ferocious beasts,--the lion, tiger, and boar. The language is inapplicable to the pursuit of such timid creatures as the hare, deer, and fox.]

[Footnote 68: Translated from Statius.

Stare adeo miserum est, pereunt vestigia mille Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum.

These lines Mr. Dryden, in his preface to his translation of Fresnoy's Art of Painting, calls wonderfully fine, and says "they would cost him an hour, if he had the leisure, to translate them, there is so much of beauty in the original," which was the reason, I suppose, why Mr. Pope tried his strength with them.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 69: "Threatening" is an inappropriate epithet for the sloping hills up which the hunters rode in the neighbourhood of Windsor.]

[Footnote 70: Instead of this couplet, Pope had written in his early ma.n.u.script,

They stretch, they sweat, they glow, they shout around; Heav'n trembles, roar the mountains, thunders all the ground.

He was betrayed into this bombast, which his better taste rejected, by the attempt to carry on the hyperbolical strain of Statius.]

[Footnote 71: Queen Anne.--WARBURTON.

Congreve's Prologue to the Queen:

For never was in Rome nor Athens seen So fair a circle, and so bright a queen.]

[Footnote 72: This use of the word "reign" for the territory ruled over, instead of for the sway of the ruler, was always uncommon, and is now obsolete. Queen Anne is mentioned in connection with the chase and the "immortal huntress," because her favourite diversion before she grew unwieldy and inactive, was to follow the hounds in her chaise.]

[Footnote 73: Better in the ma.n.u.script:

And rules the boundless empire of the main.

By the alteration Pope increased the compliment to Anne by making her the light of the earth as well as mistress of the forest and the sea.

Wakefield thinks that this application to the queen of the offices of Diana as G.o.ddess of the woods, the luminary of the night, and the chief agent in the production of the tides, is happily conceived, but the moon and the monarch were "the light of the earth "and "empress of the main"

in such different senses, that the line is a trivial play upon words.]

[Footnote 74: In the last edition published in Pope's lifetime, the four previous lines, with the variation of "sunny heaths" for "airy wastes,"

were printed in a note, and their place in the text was supplied by a single couplet:

Here, as old bards have sung, Diana strayed, Bathed in the springs, or sought the cooling shade.

Wakefield suggests that Pope rejected this latter line, as not being suited to the prevailing character of the English climate, but at ver.

209 he represents the G.o.ddess as often "laving" in the Lodona, and to bathe and luxuriate in shade are surely common enough in England.]

[Footnote 75: Dr. Warton says, "that Johnson seems to have pa.s.sed too severe a censure on this episode of Lodona; and that a tale in a descriptive poem has a good effect." Johnson does not object to a tale in a descriptive poem. He objects only to the triteness of such a tale as this.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 76: Dryden's Translations from Ovid:

The nicest eye did no distinction know, But that the G.o.ddess bore a golden bow.]

[Footnote 77:

Nec positu variare comas; uni fibula vestem, Vitta coercuerat neglectos alba capillos. Ovid.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 78: This thought of the quiver sounding is found both in Homer and Virgil.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope remembered Dryden's translation of Virgil, aeneis, xi. 968:

Diana's arms upon her shoulder sounds.

And xi. 1140:

A gilded quiver from his shoulder sounds.]

[Footnote 79: Dryden's aeneis, xii. 108:

The lover gazed, and burning with desire, The more he looked the more he fed the fire.]

[Footnote 80:

Ut fugere accipitrem penna trepidante columbae, Ut solet accipiter trepidas agitare columbas. Ovid, Met. lib. v.--WARBURTON.

Sandys' translation:

As trembling doves the eager hawks eschew; As eager hawks the trembling dovers pursue.]

[Footnote 81: In the first edition:

As from the G.o.d with fearful speed she flew, As did the G.o.d with equal speed pursue.

[Footnote 82: Wakefield remarks that Pope, yielding to the exigencies of rhyme, has put "run" for "ran."]

[Footnote 83:

Sol erat a tergo: vidi praecedere longam Ante pedes umbram; nisi timor illa videbat.

Sed certe sonituque pedum terrebar; et ingens Crinales vittas afflabat anhelitus oris. Ovid, Met. lib. v.--WARBURTON.