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:
exeat aula
Qui vult esse pius. Virtus et summa potestas
Non coëunt.
He who would spotless live from courts must go:
No union power supreme and virtue know.—Wakefield.
[9] Waller, The Maid's Tragedy Altered:
Happy is she that from the world retires,
And carries with her what the world admires.—Wilkes.
[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:
Each poet of the air her glory sings
And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.