When hoary-winter clothes the years in white,
The woods and fields to pleasing toils invite.—Pope.
[56] The reflection is misplaced; for dogs by nature chase hares, and man avails himself of their instinctive propensities.
[57] Originally:
O'er rustling leaves around the naked groves.—Warburton.
This is a better line.—Warton.
[58] Wakefield understood Pope to mean that the trees shaded the doves, and he objected that leafless trees could not properly be said to overshadow. Steevens pointed out that it was the doves, on the contrary, which overshadowed the trees, by alighting on them in flocks. The ambiguity was caused by Pope's bad and inveterate habit of putting the accusative case before the verb.
The fowler lifts his levelled tube on high.—Pope.
He owed the line in the text to Dryden's Virgil, Geor. ii. 774.
And bends his bow, and levels with his eyes.