And every herb that sips the dew.—Wakefield.
[24] This is an obvious imitation of those trite lines in Ovid, Met. i. 522:
herbarum subjecta potentia nobis.
Hei mihi, quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis;
Nec prosunt domino, quæ prosunt omnibus, artes.—Wakefield.
Dryden's translation:
What herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their pow'rs I know.
To cure the pains of love no plant avails,
And his own physic the physician fails.
It is remarkable that the imitation in the text of some of the most hacknied lines in classical literature, should be one of four passages quoted by Ruffhead, to prove that all the images in Pope's Pastorals had not been borrowed from preceding poets.
[25] The only faulty rhymes, care and shear, perhaps in these poems, where the versification is in general so exact and correct.—Warton.
[26] The scene is laid upon the banks of the Thames, and "mountain" is a term inapplicable to any of the neighbouring hills. Pope was too intent upon copying Virgil to pay much regard to the characteristics of the English landscape.
[27] It is not easy to conceive a more harsh and clashing line than this. There is the same imagery in Theocritus (Idyll viii. 55), but it is made more striking by the circumstances and picturesque accompaniments, as well as by the extraordinary effect of the lines adapted to the subject.—Bowles.
[28] The name taken by Spenser in his Eclogues, where his mistress is celebrated under that of Rosalinda.—Pope.