The Works of Alexander Pope Part 73

Methinks around your hold scenes I rove, And hear your music echoing through the grove: With transport visit each inspiring shade, By G.o.d-like poets venerable made.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 105: From Philips's Cider, ii. 6:

or what Unrivalled authors by their presence made For ever venerable.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 106: By "first lays," Pope means Cooper's Hill, but Denham had previously written the Sophy, a tragedy, and translated the second book of the aeneid.]

[Footnote 107: Dryden says of the Cooper's Hill, "it is a poem which for _majesty_ of style is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing."

From hence, no doubt, Pope took the word "majestic."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 108: Mr. Cowley died at Chertsey, on the borders of the Forest, and was from thence conveyed to Westminster.--POPE.

Pope told Spence that Cowley was killed by a fever brought on by lying out all night in the fields. He had got drunk, in company with his friend Dean Sprat, at the house of a neighbour, and they lost their way in the attempt to walk home. Sprat had long before related that Cowley caught his last illness in the "meadows," but says it was caused "by staying too long amongst his labourers in the heat of the summer." The drunkenness, and the lying out all night, appear to have been the embellishments of scandal.]

[Footnote 109: Cowley died July 28, 1667, in the 49th year of his age.

Pope's "O early lost!" is copied from the "O early ripe!" of Dryden in his lines to the Memory of Oldham.]

[Footnote 110: Oldham's Imitation of Moschus:

This, Thames, ah! this, is now thy second loss For which in tears thy weeping current flows.]

[Footnote 111: On the margin of his ma.n.u.script Pope wrote the pa.s.sage of Virgil which he imitated:

quae, Tiberine, videbis Funera, c.u.m tumulum praeterlabere recentem.

The "pomp" was not a poetical exaggeration. Evelyn, who attended the funeral, says that Cowley's body was "conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hea.r.s.e with six horses, near a hundred coaches of n.o.blemen, and persons of quality following."]

[Footnote 112: Originally:

What sighs, what murmurs, filled the vocal sh.o.r.e!

His tuneful swans were heard to sing no more.--POPE.]

[Footnote 113: We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. Psalm cx.x.xvii. 2.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope says that "_each_ muse" hung up her lyre because Cowley was thought to excel in many departments of verse. "He was beloved," said Dr.

Felton, "by every muse he courted, and has rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy." Dr. Sprat ent.i.tled his poem on him an "Ode to the English Ovid, Anacreon, Pindar, and Virgil."]

[Footnote 114: Warton mentions, that "living lyre" is used by Cowley.]

[Footnote 115: This couplet was a triplet in the ma.n.u.script with the following middle line:

What bard, what angel, tunes the warbling strings?

It is surprising that Pope did not feel the bathos of the expression, "'Tis yours, my lord," introduced into the midst of the high-flown adulation.]

[Footnote 116: Philips:

And paint those honours thou art sure to wear.--STEEVENS.]

[Footnote 117: Meaning, I apprehend, the star of the knights of the Garter installed at Windsor.--WAKEFIELD.

The order was founded by Edward III., the builder of Windsor Castle, which further connected it with Pope's subject. Denham had celebrated the inst.i.tution of the garter in Cooper's Hill, and Lord Lansdowne, in his Progress of Beauty, "sung the honours" in a few despicable verses, which certainly added no "l.u.s.tre to the silver star."]

[Footnote 118: All the lines that follow were not added to the poem till the year 1710 [1712]. What immediately followed this, and made the conclusion, were these;

My humble muse in unambitious strains Paints the green forests and the flow'ry plains; Where I obscurely pa.s.s my careless days, Pleased in the silent shade with empty praise, Enough for me that to the list'ning swains First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.--POPE.]

[Footnote 119: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, one of the first refiners of the English poetry; famous in the time of Henry VIII. for his sonnets, the scene of many of which is laid at Windsor.--POPE.]

[Footnote 120: The Fair Geraldine, the general object of Lord Surrey's pa.s.sionate sonnets, was one of the daughters of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare. In Warton's History of English Poetry, is a poem of the elegiac kind, in which Surrey laments his imprisonment in Windsor Castle.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 121: The Mira of Granville was the Countess of Newburgh.

Towards the end of her life Dr. King, of Oxford, wrote a very severe satire against her, in three hooks, called The Toast.--WARTON.

She proved in her conduct to be the reverse of "heavenly." "Granville,"

says Johnson, "wrote verses to her before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much haste to praise."]

[Footnote 122:

Not to recount those several kings, to whom It gave a cradle, and to whom a tomb. Denham.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 123: Edward III. born here.--POPE.]

[Footnote 124: David Bruce, king of Scotland, taken prisoner at the battle of Nevil's Cross, 1346, and John, king of France, captured at the battle of Poitiers, 1356. "Monarchs chained" conveys the idea of a rigorous imprisonment, and belies the chivalry, which was the pride of Edward and the Black Prince. David, who was the brother-in-law of Edward III., was subjected to so little constraint, that he was allowed to visit Scotland, and confer with his people on the terms of his ransom.

John was received with royal honours in England, and during the whole of his residence here was surrounded with regal luxury and state.]

[Footnote 125: Denham's Cooper's Hill:

----Great Edward, and thy greater son, The lilies which his father wore, he won.

Edward III. claimed the crown of France by descent, and quartered the French fleur-de-lis on his s.h.i.+eld before the victories of the Black Prince had made the a.s.sumption something more than an empty boast.]

[Footnote 126: Originally thus in the MS.

When bra.s.s decays, when trophies lie o'er-thrown, And mould'ring into dust drops the proud stone, From Windsor's roofs, &c.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 127: He was a Neapolitan. Without much invention, and with less taste, his exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, kings, emperors, and triumphs, over those public surfaces on which the eye never rests long enough to criticise,--I mean ceilings and staircases. Charles II. consigned over Windsor to his pencil. He executed most of the ceilings there, one whole side of St. George's Hall, and the chapel. On the accession of James II., Verrio was again employed at Windsor in Wolsey's Tomb-house.--HORACE WALPOLE.]

[Footnote 128: Pope had in his head this couplet of Halifax:

The wounded arm would furnish all their rooms, And bleed for ever scarlet in the looms.--HOLT WHITE.]

[Footnote 129: Henry VI.--POPE.]

[Footnote 130: Edward IV.--POPE.]

[Footnote 131: The Land's End in Cornwall is called by Diodorus Siculus, _Belerium promentorium_, perhaps from Bellerus, one of the Cornish giants with which that country and the poems of old British bards were once filled.--T. WARTON.]