[1] Our author's friendship with this gentleman commenced at very unequal years; he was under sixteen, but Sir William above sixty, and had lately resigned his employment of secretary of state to King William.—Pope.
This amiable old man, who had been a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and doctor of civil law, was sent by Charles II. judge advocate to Tangier, and afterwards in a public character to Florence, to Turin, to Paris; and by James II. ambassador to Constantinople; to which city he went through the continent on foot. He was afterwards a lord of the treasury, and secretary of state, with the Duke of Shrewsbury, which office he resigned 1697, and retiring to East Hampstead, died there in December, 1716, aged seventy-seven. Nothing of his writing remains but an elegant character of Archbishop Dolben.—Warton.
Pope says that Sir William Trumbull had "lately" resigned his office at the period of their acquaintance, but seven years had elapsed after the date of Sir William's retirement, before Pope had reached the age of sixteen.
This is the general exordium and opening of the Pastorals, in imitation of the sixth of Virgil, which some have therefore not improbably thought to have been the first originally. In the beginnings of the other three Pastorals, he imitates expressly those which now stand first of the three chief poets in this kind, Spenser, Virgil, Theocritus.
are manifestly imitations of
[3] Pope not only imitated the lines he quotes from Virgil, but, as Wakefield points out, was also indebted to Dryden's translation of them.
Originally Pope had written,
Upon this he says to Walsh, "Objection that the letter is hunted too much—sing the sylvan—peaceful plains—and that the word sing is used two lines afterwards, Sicilian muses sing." He proposed to read "try" in the place of "sing;" "happy" instead of "peaceful," and adds, "Quære. If try be not properer in relation to first, as we first attempt a thing; and more modest? and if happy be not more than peaceful?" Walsh replies, "Try is better than sing. Happy does not sound right, the first syllable being short. Perhaps you may find a better word than peaceful as flow'ry." Pope rejected all three epithets, and substituted "blissful."
[4] Evidently imitated from Spenser's Prothalamion:
[5] Because Theocritus, the father of Pastoral Poetry, was a Sicilian.—Professor Martyn.
[6] Paradise Regained, ii. 27:
Dryden, Theodore and Honoria:
[7] Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse:
The term "Albion's cliffs," which is usually appropriated to the steeps that bound the sea-shore, is applied by Pope to the hills about Windsor.
[8] The expression in this verse is philosophically just. True wisdom is the knowledge of ourselves, which terminates in a conviction of our absolute insignificancy with respect to God, and our relative inferiority in many instances to the accomplishments of our own species: and power is encompassed with such a multiplicity of dangerous temptations as to be almost incompatible with virtue. A passage in Lucan, viii. 493, is very apposite:
[9] Waller, The Maid's Tragedy Altered:
[10] Sir W. Trumbull was born in Windsor-forest, to which he retreated after he had resigned the post of secretary of state of King William III.—Pope.
The address to Trumbull was not in the original manuscript which passed through his hands, and the lines were probably added when the Pastorals were prepared for the press. "Little Pope," wrote Sir William to the Rev. Ralph Bridges on May 2, 1709, "was here two days ago, always full of poetry and services to Mr. Bridges. I saw in the advertisement, after he was gone, the Miscellany is published, or publishing, by Jacob Tonson, wherein are his Pastorals, and which is worse, I am told one of them is inscribed to my worship." A more inappropriate panegyric could not have been devised than to pretend that Trumbull was among poets what the nightingale was among birds. The retired statesman had a true taste for literature, but his efforts as a versifier had been limited to a dozen lines translated from Martial.
[11] Warton observes that the nightingale does not sing till the other birds are at rest. This is a mistake; the nightingale sings by day as well as at night, but the expressions "to rest removes" and "forsaken groves" give an idea of evening, in which case there would be certainly an error in making the thrush "chant" after the nightingale. As to the thrush being "charmed to silence" at any time by the nightingale, and the "aërial audience" applauding, it is allowable as a fanciful allusion, perhaps, though the circumstance is contrary to nature and fact.—Bowles.
[12] Concanen, in a pamphlet called A Supplement to the Profound, objected to the use of an image borrowed from the theatre, and Pope, in vindication of his line, has written "Dryden" in the margin, alluding doubtless to a couplet in Dryden's verses to the Duchess of York:
Every one must feel the image to be burlesque, and even Dryden's authority cannot recommend it.
[13] The scene of this Pastoral a valley, the time the morning. It stood originally thus,
There was in the manuscript a still earlier, and perhaps better, version of the first two lines:
They were however borrowed from Lycon, an Eclogue, in the fifth part of Tonson's Miscellany:
Wakefield points out that the opening verse of the couplet, as it stands in the text, was indebted to Congreve's Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas:
[14] The epithet "whitening" most happily describes the progressive effect of the light.—Wakefield.
[15] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
[16] From Virgil, Ecl. vii. 20:
[17] Milton's first sonnet:
[18] Congreve's Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas:
[19] Waller's Chloris and Hylas:
Concanen having commented in the Supplement to the Profound upon the impropriety "of making an English clown call a well-known bird by a classical name," Pope wrote in the margin, "Spenser and Ph." The remainder of the second name has been cut off by the binder. Pope's memory deceived him if A. Philips was meant, for the nightingale is not once called Philomela in his Pastorals.
[20] Phosphor was the Greek name for the planet Venus when she appeared as a morning star.
[21] Purple is here used in the Latin sense of the brightest, most vivid colouring in general, not of that specific tint so called.—Warburton.
[22] Dryden in his Cock and Fox:
[23] In the manuscript this verse ran
which was evidently borrowed from a line in Dryden's Cock and Fox, quoted by Wakefield:
The first edition of the Pastorals had
and this reading was retained till the edition of Warburton. It probably at last occurred to the poet that as people do not blush blue or purple, the epithet "blushing" was inapplicable to the violet.
[24] "Breathing" means breathing odours, and Wakefield quotes Paradise Lost, ii. 244:
[25] Pope rarely mentions flowers without being guilty of some mistake as to the seasons they blow in. Who ever saw roses, crocuses, and violets in bloom at the same time?—Steevens.
[26] The first reading was,
Pope submitted the reading in the note, and that in the text to Walsh, and asked which was the best. Walsh preferred the text.
[28] Variation:
Dryden's Virgil, Eclogues:
[29] Dryden, Æn. viii. 830:
[30] The subject of these Pastorals engraven on the bowl is not without its propriety. The Shepherd's hesitation at the name of the zodiac imitates that in Virgil, Ecl. iii. 40:
Creech's translation of Eclogue iii.:
Pope also drew upon Dryden's version of the passage:
Virgil's commentators cannot agree upon the name which the shepherd had forgotten, but they unite in commending the stroke of nature which represents a rustic poet as unable to recall the name of a man of science.
[31] Dryden, Georg. i. 328.
[32] Literally from Virgil, Ecl. iii. 59:
Creech's translation:
The usage was for the second speaker to imitate the idea started by the first, and endeavour to outdo him in his vaunt. All the speeches throughout the contest consisted of the same number of lines. In the third eclogue of Virgil we have two rivals and an umpire. One of the antagonists stakes a carved bowl, the other a cow; and the final effort of each poet is to propound a riddle, upon which the umpire interposes, and declares that the candidates are equal in merit. Pope keeps close to his original.
[33] Dryden, Ecl. x. 11.
[34] In place of this couplet the original manuscript read,
Pope imitated Virgil, Ecl. vii. 21:
[35] George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, known for his poems, most of which he composed very young, and proposed Waller as his model.—Pope.
[36] Virgil, Ecl. iii. 86:
Dryden, Æn. ix. 859:
The second line of the couplet in the text ran thus in the original manuscript:
This also was from Dryden, Ecl. iii. 135:
[37] Originally thus in the manuscript:
This he formed on Dryden's Vir. Ecl. vii. 45:
[38] Pope had at first written,
"Objection," he says, in the paper he submitted to Walsh, "that hides without the accusative herself is not good English, and that from her deluded swain is needless. Alteration:
Quære. If wanton be more significant than lovely; if eludes be properer in this case than deluded; if eager be an expressive epithet to the swain who searches for his mistress?"
Walsh. "Wanton applied to a woman is equivocal, and therefore not proper. Eludes is properer than deluded. Eager is very well."
[39] He owes this thought to Horace, Ode i. 9, 21.—Wakefield.
Or rather to the version of Dryden, since the lines of Pope have a closer resemblance to the translation than to the original:
[40] Imitation of Virgil, Ecl. iii. 64:
He probably consulted Creech's translation of the passage in Virgil:
[41] Dryden's Don Sebastian;
[42] A very trifling and false conceit.—Warton.
[43] In place of the next speech of Strephon, and the reply of Daphnis, the dialogue continued thus in the original manuscript:
The speech of Strephon is an echo of Waller's well-known song:
The speech of Daphnis is from Dryden's Virgil, Ecl. iii. 113:
[44] It stood thus at first:
[45] It is evident from the mention of the "golden sands" of Pactolus, and the "amber" of the poplars in connection with the Thames, that he had in view Denham's description in Cooper's Hill:
The sisters of Phæton, according to the classical fable, were, upon the death of their brother, turned into poplars on the banks of the Po, and the tears which dropt from these trees were said to be converted into amber.
[46] This couplet is a palpable imitation of Virgil, Ecl. vii. 67:
The entire speech is a parody of the lines quoted by Wakefield, and of the lines which immediately precede them in Virgil's Eclogue. The passage omitted by Wakefield is thus translated in vol. i. of Tonson's Miscellany:
[47] Virg. Ecl. vii. 57:
[48] These verses were thus at first:
Wakefield remarks that the last couplet of the original version, which is but slightly modified in the text, was closely imitated from Addison's Epilogue to the British Enchanters:
[49] Dryden, Ecl. vii. 76:
[50] Pope had at first written,
This he submitted to Walsh. Pope. "Quære, whether to say the sun is outshined be too bold and hyperbolical?" Walsh. "For pastoral it is." Pope. "If it should be softened with seems? Do you approve any of these alterations?
Quære, which of these three?" Walsh. "The last of these three I like best."
[51] Cowley, Davideis, iii. 553:
[52] An allusion to the royal oak, in which Charles II. had been hid from the pursuit after the battle of Worcester.—Pope.
This wretched pun on the word "bears" is called "dextrous" by Wakefield, but Warton says that it is "one of the most trifling and puerile conceits" in all Pope's works, and is only exceeded in badness by the riddle "which follows of the thistle and the lily."
[53] The contraction "I'll," which often occurs in these pastorals, is familiar and undignified.—Wakefield.
[54] It was thus in the manuscript:
Pope submitted the first two lines to Walsh in conjunction with the version in the text. "Quære, which of these couplets is better expressed, and better numbers? and whether it is better here to use thistle or thistles, lily or lilies, singular or plural? The epithet more happy refers to something going before." Walsh. "The second couplet [the text] is best; and singular, I think better than plural."
[55] Alludes to the device of the Scots' monarchs, the thistle, worn by Queen Anne; and to the arms of France, the fleur de lys. The two riddles are in imitation of those in Virg. Ecl. iii. 106:
Thus translated by Dryden;
Either the commentators on Virgil have not hit upon the true solution of his riddles, or they are not at all superior to the parody of Pope.
[56] This is from Virg. Ecl. iii. 109:
[57] Originally:
[58] The Pleiades rose with the sun in April, and the poet ascribes the April showers to their influence.