Pope also drew upon Dryden's version of the passage:
Two figures on the sides embossed appear,
Conon, and what's his name who made the sphere,
And showed the seasons of the sliding year?
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.
And cross their limits cut a sloping way,
Which the twelve signs in beauteous order sway.—Wakefield.
[32] Literally from Virgil, Ecl. iii. 59:
Alternis dicetis: amant alterna Camœnæ,
Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos,
Nunc frondent sylvæ, nunc formosissimus annus.—Pope.
Creech's translation:
play
By turns, for verse the muses love by turns.
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.