FOOTNOTES:
[1] Solyma is the latter part of the Greek name for Jerusalem, Ἱεροσολυμα.
[2] Dryden's Virg. Ecl. iv. 1.
Sicilian muse, begin a loftier strain—Wakefield.
[3] The poets of antiquity were thought to receive inspired dreams by sleeping on the poetic mountains.—Wakefield.
[4] The pause and words are evidently from Dryden, a greater harmonist, if I may say so, than Pope:
The lovely shrubs and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all.—Bowles.
[5] Alluding to Isaiah vi. 6, 7. "Then flew one of the Seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips." Milton had already made the same allusion to Isaiah, at the close of his Hymn on the Nativity:
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his sacred altar touched with hallowed fire.—Wakefield.
[6] Rapt, that is, carried forwards from the present scene of things into a distant period, from the Latin rapio.—Wakefield.
[7] The poet wrongly uses "begun," instead of the past, began.—Wakefield.
[8] Virg. Ecl. iv. 6:
Jam redit et Virge, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.—
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.—
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.
"Now the Virgin returns, now the kingdom of Saturn returns, now a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. By means of thee, whatever reliques of our crimes remain, shall be wiped away, and free the world from perpetual fears. He shall govern the earth in peace, with the virtues of his father."
Isaiah vii. 14. "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son." Ch. ix. ver. 6, 7. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,—the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government, and of his peace, there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice, for ever and ever."—Pope.
By "the virgin" Virgil meant Astræa, or Justice, who is said by the poets to have been driven from earth by the wickedness of mankind.—Professor Martyn.
[9] Isaiah xi. i.—Pope. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."
[10] Pope lowers the comparison when he follows it out into details, and likens the endowments of the Messiah to leaves, and his head to the top of a tree on which the dove descends.
[11] Isaiah xlv. 8.—Pope. "Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness."
[12] Dryden's Don Sebastian:
But shed from nature like a kindly show'r.—Steevens.
[13] Isaiah xxv. 4,—Pope. "For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat."
[14] Warburton says that Pope referred to the fraud of the serpent, but the allusion is more general, and the poet had probably in his mind the "priscæ vestigia fraudis," which Wakefield quotes from Virg. Ecl. iv. 31, and which Dryden renders
Yet of old fraud some footsteps shall remain.
[15] Isaiah ix. 7.—Pope.
For Justice was fabled by the poets to quit the earth at the conclusion of the golden age.—Wakefield.
[16] This animated apostrophe is grounded on that of Virg. Ecl. iv. 46:
Talia sæcla . . . currite . . .—Wakefield.
[17] This seems a palpable imitation of Callimachus, Hymn. Del. 214, but where our poet fell upon it I cannot discover.—Wakefield.
[18] Virg. Ecl. iv. 18:
At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu,
Errantes hederas passim cum 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 xxxv. 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.
[19] This couplet has too much prettiness, and too modern an air.—Warton.
[20] Isaiah xxxv. 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 God."
[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,
[22] Virg. Ecl. iv. 46:
Aggredere, ô magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores,
Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum.
Ecl. v. 62:
Ipsi lætitia voces ad sidera jactan
Intonsi montes, ipsæ 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 gods, 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 god, a god!"
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 God! 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 passage from Virgil, in which the shrubs are supposed to cry out "a god, a god," is not from the same Eclogue with the rest of Pope's extracts, and has no reference to the anticipated appearance of a ruler who should regenerate the world. The occasion of the shout is the presumed deification of one Daphnis who is dead.
[23] The repetition is in the true spirit of poetry, "Deus, deus ipse." The whole passage indeed is finely worked up from "lofty Lebanon" to the magnificent and powerful appeal, "Hark! a glad voice."—Bowles.
[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.
[25] He seems to have had in his eye Cromwell's translation of Ovid, Amor, ii. 16:
Then, as you pass, let mountains homage pay
And bow their tow'ring heads to smooth your way.—Wakefield.
[26] Isaiah xlii. 18.—Pope. "Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see."
[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 noble, 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 passages support Pope's misapplication of the phrase "thick films" to rays of light.
[28] Isaiah xxxv. 5.—Pope. "The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped."
[29] Isaiah xxxv. 6.—Pope. "Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing."
[30] I wonder Dr. Warton had not here pointed out the force and the beauty of this most comprehensive and striking line.—Bowles.
[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 God will wipe away tears from off all faces,"—the poet altered his text without, perhaps, either injuring or improving it.
[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 passport to a blissful eternity.
[33] "He" is redundant.—Warton.
[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."
[35] He was betrayed into a little impropriety here, by not being aware that the "bosom," in classic use, commonly means the capacious flow of the eastern garments.—Wakefield.
[36] Isaiah ix. 6.—Pope. "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
[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."
[38] The words "covered o'er" form an insipid termination of this verse.—Wakefield.
[39] Mr. Steevens aptly quotes Virg. Æn. vi. 165:
Ære ciere viros.
With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms. Dryden.—Wakefield.
[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."
[41] A line almost wholly borrowed from Dryden's Britannica Rediviva:
And finish what thy god-like sire begins—Wakefield.
[42] St. John iv. 37. "One soweth, and another reapeth."—Wakefield.
[43] Isaiah xxxv. 1.—Pope. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."
[44] Virg. Ecl. iv. 28:
Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,
Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.
"The fields shall grow yellow with ripened ears, and the red grape shall hang upon the wild brambles, and the hard oak shall distil honey like dew."
Isaiah xxxv. 7. "The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: In the habitation where dragons lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes." Chap. lv. ver. 13. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree."—Pope.
[45] Pope has been happy in introducing this circumstance.—Warton.
[46] Isaiah xli. 19, and chap. lv. 13.—Pope. "I will set in the desert the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together."
[47] Virg. Ecl. iv. 21:
Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capelæ
Ubera, nec magnos metuent armeuta leones.—
Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni
Occidet.
"The goats shall bear to the fold their udders distended with milk: nor shall the herds be afraid of the greatest lions. The serpent shall die, and the herb that conceals poison shall die."
Isaiah xi. 6, 7, 8. "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the den of the cockatrice."—Pope.
[48] The similarity of the rhymes in this couplet to those of the preceding is a blemish to this passage.—Wakefield.
[49] Isaiah lxv. 25.—Pope. "The lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat."
[50] Pope's line may have been suggested by Ovid's description of the transformation of Cadmus and his wife into snakes. Of Cadmus it is said, Met. iv. 595, that
ille suæ lambebat conjugis ora;
and of husband and wife, when the change in both was complete, that
Nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem, nec vulnere lædunt.
[51] Originally,
And with their forky tongue and pointless sting shall play.
Wakefield conjectures that Pope altered the line from having learnt the erroneousness of the vulgar belief that the sting of the serpent is in its tail. The expression he substituted in the text is borrowed from Dryden's Palamon and Arcite, quoted by Wakefield:
And troops of lions innocently play.
[52] Salem is used for Jerusalem in Psalm lxxvi. 2.
[53] Isaiah lx. 1.—Pope. "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."
[54] The thoughts of Isaiah, which compose the latter part of the poem, are wonderfully elevated, and much above those general exclamations of Virgil, which make the loftiest parts of his Pollio:
Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo
—toto surget gens aurea mundo!
—incipient magni procedere menses!
Aspice, venture lætentur ut omnia sæclo! &c.
The reader needs only to turn to the passages of Isaiah, here cited.—Pope.
[55] The open vowel thy eyes is particularly offensive.—Wakefield.
[56] Isaiah lx. 4.—Pope. "Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side."
[57] Isaiah lx. 3.—Pope. "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."
[58] Dryden in his Aureng-Zebe:
What sweet soe'er Sabæan springs disclose.—Steevens.
Saba, in Arabia, was noted for its aromatic products. Thus Milton, Par. Lost, iv. 161:
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest.
[59] Isaiah lx. 6.—Pope. "All they from Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord."
[60] Broome, in Pope's Miscellanies, p. 104:
A stream of glory, and a flood of day.—Wakefield.
[61] Isaiah lx. 19, 20.—Pope. "The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory."
[62] Cynthia is an improper, because a classical word.—Warton.
Sandys' Ovid:
Now waxing Phœbe filled her wained horns.—Wakefield.
[63] Here is a remarkably fine effect of versification. The poet rises with his subject, and the correspondent periods seem to flow more copious and majestic with the grandeur and sublimity of the theme.—Bowles.
[64] This fine expression is borrowed from Dryden's Ode on Mrs. Killegrew:
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.—Wakefield.
[65] Isaiah li. 6, and chap. liv. 10.—Pope. "The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, but my salvation shall be for ever.—For the mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee."