[10] There is a levity in this comparison which appears to me unseasonable, and but ill according with the serene dignity of the subject.—Wakefield.
[11] Originally thus:
Why should I sing our better suns or air,
Whose vital draughts prevent the leech's care,
While through fresh fields th' enlivening odours breathe,
Or spread with vernal blooms the purple heath?—Pope.
The first couplet of the lines in Pope's note, was from Dryden's epistle to his kinsman:
He scapes the best, who, nature to repair,
Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.
[12] Milton's Allegro, ver. 78:
Bosomed high in tufted trees.—Wakefield.
[13] Milton, Par. Lost, iv. 248:
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms.
This fancy was borrowed from the ancients. According to Ovid (Met. x. 500), Myrrha, changed into a tree, weeps myrrh, and the sisters of Phæton (Met. ii. 364), transformed into poplars, shed tears which harden in the sun, and turn into amber.