[150] The Wandle.—Croker.
[151] Milton has "gulphy Dun" and "sedgy Lee," and Pope combined the characteristics. The remainder of the couplet is from Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian:
Her dropping locks the silver Tessin rears,
The blue transparent Adda next appears.
[152] Milton's Vacation Exercise:
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath.—Wakefield.
The Mole at particular spots, called the swallows, sinks through crevices in the chalk, and during dry seasons, when there is not sufficient water to till both the subterranean and the upper channel, the bed of the river is laid bare in parts of its course. The stream sometimes entirely disappears from Burford-bridge to the neighbourhood of Thorncroft-bridge, a distance of nearly three miles.
[153] Drayton:
And the old Lee brags of the Danish blood.—Bowles.
Pope's epithet "silent" was suggested by "the still Darent" of Spenser, and the same poet had said of the Eden that it was
——stained with blood of many a band
Of Scots and English.