[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.