[140] Spenser of Father Thames:
his beard all gray
Dewed with silver drops that trickled down alway.—Wakefield.
[141] Between verse 330 and 331, originally stood these lines;
From shore to shore exulting shouts he heard,
O'er all his banks a lambent light appeared,
With sparkling flames heav'n's glowing concave shone,
Fictitious stars, and glories not her own.
He saw, and gently rose above the stream
His shining horns diffused a golden gleam:
With pearl and gold his tow'ry front was drest,
The tributes of the distant East and West.—Pope.
[142] Horns were a classical attribute of rivers,—not I think, according to the common view, as a mark of dignity, but as a symbolical expression of the fact that the principal streams, like the ocean itself, are formed from a confluence of tributaries.—Croker.
Pope's personification of the Thames is the echo of Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian, describing the deity of the Eridanus:
His head above the floods he gently reared,
And as he rose his golden horns appeared,
That on the forehead shone divinely bright
And o'er the banks diffused a yellow light:
Beneath his arm an urn supported lies
With stars embellished, and fictitious skies.
[143] Augusta was the name which the Romans at one period gave to London. The representation of the god attended by
All little rivers, which owe vassalage
To him, as to their lord, and tribute pay,
and the accompanying enumeration of the subsidiary streams, is closely imitated from the Faery Queen. Pope professes to describe the river-gods who stood round the throne of Father Thames, but he has confounded the river-gods with the rivers, and some of his epithets,—"winding Isis," "blue transparent Vandalis," "gulphy Lee,"—are not applicable to persons.