Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood
Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood.
[47] "Thickest woods" till Warburton's edition. The epithet "gameful," to express that the woods were full of game, seems to be peculiar to Pope.
[48] Originally:
When yellow autumn summer's heat succeeds,
And into wine the purple harvest bleeds,
The partridge feeding in the new-shorn fields,
Both morning sports and evening pleasures yields.—Pope.
Richardson transcribes from the margin of Pope's MS. "Qu. if allowable to describe the season by a circumstance not proper to our climate, the vintage?" And the line which speaks of the making of wine was no doubt altered to obviate this objection.
[49] Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo:
Watchful to betray
With inward rage he meditates his prey.—Holt White.
[50] From Virgil, Geo. iv. 176:
si parra licet componere magnis.
If little things with great we may compare. Dryden.—Wakefield.
[51] It stood thus in the first editions: