[1] This Pastoral consists of two parts, like the eighth of Virgil: the scene, a hill; the time, at sunset.—Pope.

[2] Mr. Wycherley, a famous author of comedies; of which the most celebrated were the Plain-Dealer and Country-Wife. He was a writer of infinite spirit, satire, and wit. The only objection made to him was, that he had too much. However, he was followed in the same way by Mr. Congreve, though with a little more correctness.—Pope.

[3] Formed on Dryden's version of Ecl. i. 1:

[4] Before the edition of 1736 the couplet ran thus:

In keeping with this announcement the song of Hylas, which forms the first portion of the Pastoral, was devoted to mourning an absent shepherd, and not, as at present, an absent shepherdess. When Pope made his lines commemorative of love, instead of friendship, he did little more than change the name of the man (Thyrsis) to that of a woman (Delia), and substitute the feminine for the masculine pronoun. The extravagant idea expressed in the first line of the rejected couplet is found in Oldham's translation of Moschus:

There is nothing of the kind in the Greek text.

[5] From Dryden's version of Ecl. i. 5:

[6] Wycherley.

[7] He was always very careful in his encomiums not to fall into ridicule, the trap which weak and prostitute flatterers rarely escape. For "sense," he would willingly have said "moral;" propriety required it. But this dramatic poet's moral was remarkably faulty. His plays are all shamefully profligate, both in the dialogue and action.—Warburton.

Warburton's note has more the appearance of an insidious attack upon Pope than of serious commendation; for if, as Warburton assumes, the panegyric in the text has reference to the plays and not to the man, it was a misplaced "encomium" to say that Wycherley "instructed" the world by the "sense," and "swayed" them by the "judgment," which were manifested "in a shamefully profligate dialogue and action."

[8] The reading was "rapture" in all editions till that of 1736.

[9] Few writers have less nature in them than Wycherley.—Warton.

[10] Till the edition of 1736 the following lines stood in place of the couplet in the text:

[11] Pope had Waller's Thyrsis and Galatea in his memory:

The groans of the trees and mountains are, in Waller's poem, the echo of the mourner's lamentations, but to this Pope has added that the "moan" made "the rocks weep," which has no resemblance to anything in nature.

[12] The lines from verse 17 to 30 are very beautiful, tender, and melodious.—Bowles.

[13] It was a time-honoured fancy that the "moan" of the turtle-dove was a lament for the loss of its mate. Turtur, the Latin name for the bird, is a correct representation of its monotonous note. The poets commonly call it simply the turtle, but since the term, to quote the explanation of Johnson in his Dictionary, is also "used by sailors and gluttons for a tortoise" the description of its "deep murmurs" as "filling the sounding shores," calls up this secondary sense, and gives an air of ludicrousness to the passage.

[14] This whole passage is imitated from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Book iii. p. 712, 8vo ed.:

[15] Congreve's Mourning Muse of Alexis:

[16] Virg. Ecl. viii. 52:

His obligations are also due to Dryden's version of Ecl. iv. 21:

Bowles, in his translation of Theocritus, Idyll. v., assisted our bard:

He seems to have had in view also the third Eclogue of Walsh:

[17] These four lines followed in the MS.:

Wakefield remarks that the second line in this passage is taken from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. x. 71:

[18] Virg. Ecl. v. 46:

[19] "Faint with pain" is both flat and improper. It is fatigue, and not pain that makes them faint.—Wakefield.

[20] The turn of the last four lines is evidently borrowed from Drummond of Hawthornden, a charming but neglected poet.

[21] Virg. Ecl. viii. 108:

In the first edition, conformably to the original plan of the Pastoral, the passage stood thus:

[22] From Virg. Ecl. viii. 110:

Stafford's translation in Dryden's Miscellany:

[23] Dryden's Virg. Ecl. viii. 26, 29:

[24] This imagery is borrowed from Milton's Comus, ver. 290:

[25] Variation:

These two verses are obviously adumbrated from the conclusion of Virgil's first eclogue, and Dryden's version of it:

[26] This fancy he derived from Virgil, Ecl. x. 53:

Garth's Dispensary, Canto vi:

[27] According to the ancients, the weather was stormy for a few days when Arcturus rose with the sun, which took place in September, and Pope apparently means that rain at this crisis was beneficial to the standing corn. The harvest at the beginning of the last century was not so early as it is now.

[28] The scene is in Windsor Forest; so this image is not so exact.—Warburton.

[29] This is taken from Virg. Ecl. x. 26, 21:

[30] Virg. Ecl. iii. 103:

Dryden's version of the original:

[31] It should be "darted;" the present tense is used for the sake of the rhyme.—Warton.

[32] Variation:

[33] Virg. Ecl. viii. 43:

Stafford's version of the original in Dryden's Miscellanies:

Pope was not unmindful of Dryden's translation:

He had in view also a passage in the Æneid, iv. 366, and Dryden's version of it:

Nor did our author overlook the parallel passage in Ovid's Epistle of Dido to Æneas, and Dryden's translation thereof:

[34] Till the edition of Warburton, this couplet was as follows:

[35] Were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.: "Love out of Mount Ætna by a Whirlwind," he would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us.—De Quincy.

Sentiments like these, as they have no ground in nature, are of little value in any poem, but in pastoral they are particularly liable to censure, because it wants that exaltation above common life, which in tragic or heroic writings often reconciles us to bold flights and daring figures.—Johnson.

[36] Virg. Ecl. viii. 59:

This passage in Pope is a strong instance of the abnegation of feeling in his Pastorals. The shepherd proclaims at the beginning of his chant that it is his dying speech, and at the end that he has resolved upon immediate suicide. Having announced the tragedy, Pope treats it with total indifference, and quietly adds, "Thus sung the shepherds," &c.

[37] Ver. 98, 100. There is a little inaccuracy here; the first line makes the time after sunset; the second before.—Warburton.

Pope had at first written:

"Quære," he says to Walsh, "if languish be a proper word?" and Walsh answers, "Not very proper."

[38] Virg. Ecl. ii. 67:

"Objection," Pope said to Walsh, "that to mention the sunset after twilight (day yet strove with night) is improper. Is the following alteration anything better?

Walsh. "It is not the evening, but the sun being low that lengthens the shades, otherwise the second passage is the best."

[1] This was the poet's favourite Pastoral.—Warburton.

It is professedly an imitation of Theocritus, whom Pope does not resemble, and whose Idylls he could only have read in a translation. The sources from which he really borrowed his materials will be seen in the notes.

[2] This lady was of ancient family in Yorkshire, and particularly admired by the author's friend Mr. Walsh, who having celebrated her in a Pastoral Elegy, desired his friend to do the same, as appears from one of his letters, dated Sept. 9, 1706. "Your last Eclogue being on the same subject with mine on Mrs. Tempest's death, I should take it very kindly in you to give it a little turn, as if it were to the memory of the same lady." Her death having happened on the night of the great storm in 1703, gave a propriety to this Eclogue, which in its general turn alludes to it. The scene of the Pastoral lies in a grove, the time at midnight.—Pope.

I do not find any lines that allude to the great storm of which the poet speaks.—Warton.

Nor I. On the contrary, all the allusions to the winds are of the gentler kind,—"balmy Zephyrs," "whispering breezes" and so forth. Miss Tempest was the daughter of Henry Tempest, of Newton Grange, York, and grand-daughter of Sir John Tempest, Bart. She died unmarried. When Pope's Pastoral first appeared in Tonson's Miscellany, it was entitled "To the memory of a Fair Young Lady."—Croker.

[3] This couplet was constructed from Creech's translation of the first Idyll of Theocritus:

[4] Suggested by Virg. Ecl. v. 83:

[5] Milton, Par. Lost, v. 195:

[6] Variation:

It was originally,

Pope. "Objection to the word remains. I do not know whether these following be better or no, and desire your opinion.

Or,

or

Walsh. "I think the last the best, but might not even that be mended?"

[7] Garth's Dispensary, Canto iv.:

Dryden's Virgil, Ecl. vi. 100:

Among the poems of Congreve is one entitled "The Mourning Muse of Alexis, a Pastoral lamenting the death of Queen Mary." This was the "sweet Alexis strain" to which Pope referred, and which the Thames "bade his willows learn."

[8] Virg. Ecl. vi. 83:

Admitting that a river gently flowing may be imagined a sensible being listening to a song, I cannot enter into the conceit of the river's ordering his laurels to learn the song. Here all resemblance to anything real is quite lost. This however is copied literally by Pope.—Lord Kames.

[9] There is some connection implied between the "kind rains" and the "willows learning the song," but I cannot trace the idea.

[10] Virg. Ecl. v. 41:

[11] Rowe's Ambitious Step-Mother:

[12] Ver. 23, 24, 25. Virg. Ecl. v. 40, 42:

inducite fontibus umbras.... Et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen.—Pope.

If the idea of "hiding the stream with myrtles" have either beauty or propriety, I am unable to discover them. Our poet unfortunately followed Dryden's turn of the original phrase in Virgil:

[13] This image is taken from Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus, Amor. iii. 9. 6:

Ovid copied Bion. Idyl. 1. The Greek poet represents the Loves as trampling upon their bows and arrows, and breaking their quivers in the first paroxysm of their grief for Adonis. In place of this natural burst of uncontrollable sorrow, the shepherd, in Pope, invokes the Loves to break their bows at his instigation. When their darts are said in the next line to be henceforth useless, the sense must be that nobody would love any woman again since Mrs. Tempest was dead. Such hyperboles can neither touch the heart nor gratify the understanding. The Pastorals were verse exercises in which every pretence to real emotion was laid aside, for Pope was not even acquainted with the lady of whom he utters these extravagances.

[14] This is imitated from Walsh's Pastoral on the death of Mrs. Tempest in Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 323:

Congreve's Mourning Muse of Alexis:

[15] Originally thus in the MS.

This low conceit, which our poet abandoned for the present reading, was borrowed from Oldham's version of the elegy of Moschus:

When Pope submitted the rejected and the adopted reading to Walsh, the critic replied, "Clouds put on mourning is too conceited for pastoral. The second is better, and the thick or the dark I like better than sable." The last verse of the couplet in the text was then

[16] Dryden's pastoral elegy on the death of Amyntas:

So in his version of Virgil, Ecl. x. 20:

[17] Spenser's Colin Clout:

[18] Oldham's translation of Moschus:

[19] Variation:

Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 38:

Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, November, ver. 123, where

because Dido is dead.

[20] Oldham's translation of Moschus:

[21] Cowley in his verses on Echo:

[22] This expression of "sweet echo" is taken from Comus.—Warton.

[23] Oldham's translation of Moschus:

[24] The couplet was different in the early editions:

[25] In the MS.

This, with the reading in the text, was laid before Walsh, who selected the latter.

[26] Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Sedley's Elegy:

The couplet in the text is the third passage in Pope's Pastorals for which Ruffhead claims the merit of originality. The quotations of Wakefield show that the thought and the language are alike borrowed, and the only novelty is the bull, pointed out by Johnson, of making the zephyrs lament in silence.

[27] Oldham's version of Moschus:

[28] The same:

[29] In the original draught Pope had again introduced the wolves, and the first four lines of this paragraph stood thus:

[30] The image of the birds listening with their wings suspended in mid-air is striking, and, I trust, new.—Ruffhead.

This circumstance of the lark suspending its wings in mid-air is highly beautiful, because there is a veri similitudo in it, which is not the case where a waterfall is made to be suspended by the power of music.—Bowles.

[31] Oldham's translation of Moschus:

The line in the text was the earliest reading in the manuscript, but did not appear in print till the edition of Warburton. The reading in the previous editions was,

This idea of the nightingale repeating the lays is amplified by Philips in his Fifth Pastoral, who copied it, according to Pope in the Guardian, from Strada. Thence also it must have been borrowed by Pope, and he may have restored the primitive version to get rid of the coincidence.

[32] The veri similitudo, which Bowles commends in the description of the lark, is not to be found in the notion of the streams ceasing to murmur that they might listen to the song of Daphne. Milton does a similar violence to fact and imagination in his Comus, ver. 494, and many lesser poets, before and after him, adopted the poor conceit.

[33] Dryden's Æneis, vii. 1041:

[34] This is barbarous: he should have written "swoln."—Wakefield.

[35] Ovid, Met. xi. 47:

Oldham's translation of Moschus:

Fenton in his pastoral on the Marquis of Blandford's death:

[36] Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single expression, but when this figure is deliberately spread out with great accuracy through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is struck with its ridiculous appearance.—Lord Kames.

All this is very poor, and unworthy Pope. First the breeze whispers the death of Daphne to the trees; then the trees inform the flood of it; then the flood o'erflows with tears; and then they all deplore together. The whole pastoral would have been much more classical, correct, and pure, if these lines had been omitted. Let us, however, still remember the youth of Pope, and the example of prior poets.—Bowles.

Moschus in his third Idyll calls upon the nightingales to tell the river Arethusa that Bion is dead. Oldham in his imitation of Moschus exaggerated his original and commanded the nightingales to tell the news "to all the British floods,"—to see that it was "conveyed to Isis, Cam, Thames, Humber, and utmost Tweed," and these in turn were to be ordered "to waft the bitter tidings on." Pope went further than Oldham, and describes one class of inanimate objects as conveying the intelligence to another class of inanimate objects till the whole uttered lamentations in chorus. Each succeeding copyist endeavoured to eclipse his predecessor by going beyond him in absurdity. Most of the ideas adopted by Pope in his Winter had been employed by scores of elegiac bards. "The numerous pastorals upon the death of princes or friends," says Dr. Trapp, "are cast in the same mould; read one, you read all. Birds, sheep, woods, mountains, rivers, are full of complaints. Everything in short is wondrous miserable."

[37] Virg. Ecl. v. 56:

Dryden thus renders the passage in Virgil:

[38] In Spenser's November, and in Milton's Lycidas, there is the same beautiful change of circumstances.—Warton.

It was one of the stereotyped common-places of elegiac poems, and was ridiculed in No. 30 of the Guardian. The writer might almost be thought to have had this passage of Pope in his mind, if his satire did not equally apply to a hundred authors besides. A shepherd announces to his fellow-swain that Damon is dead. "This," says the Guardian, "immediately causes the other to make complaints, and call upon the lofty pines and silver streams to join in the lamentation. While he goes on, his friend interrupts him, and tells him that Damon lives, and shows him a track of light in the skies to conform to it. Upon this scheme most of the noble families in Great Britain have been comforted; nor can I meet with any right honourable shepherd that doth not die and live again, after the manner of the aforesaid Damon."

[39] The four opening lines of the speech of Lycidas were as follows in the MS.:

The first couplet of the original reading, and the phrase "trembles in the trees," in the second couplet, were from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 128:

[40] Milton, Il Penseroso:

[41] Virg. Ecl. i. 7:

He partly follows Dryden's translation of his original:

[42] Originally thus in the MS.

[43] Virg. Ecl. v. 76:

[44] Virg. Ecl. x. 75:

Dryden's version of the passage is,

[45] Virg. Ecl. x. 69:

Vid. etiam Sannazarii Ecl. et Spenser's Calendar.—Warburton.

Dryden's verse is:

[46] There is a passage resembling this in Walsh's third eclogue:

[47] These four last lines allude to the several subjects of the four Pastorals, and to the several scenes of them particularized before in each—Pope.

They should have been added by the poet in his own person, instead of being put into the mouth of a shepherd who is not presumed to have any knowledge of the previous pieces. The specific character which Pope ascribes to each of his Pastorals is not borne out by the poems themselves. There is as much about "flocks" in the first Pastoral as in the second; and there is as much about "rural lays and loves" in the second Pastoral as in the first. The third Pastoral contains no mention of a "sylvan crew," but a couple of shepherds are absorbed by the same "rural lays and loves" which occupied their predecessors.