[172] "To tempt the sea" is a classical expression, significant of hazard and resolution. Dryden's Iliad:
What now remains
But that once more we tempt the wat'ry plains.—Wakefield.
[173] "Exalt" is an inefficient and prosaic word.—Wakefield.
The word is certainly not "prosaic," for no one in prose would talk of exalting a sail, but it is "inefficient," just because it is one of those deviations from common speech, which sound affected.
[174] The whole passage seems a grand improvement from Philips' Cider, book ii.:
uncontroll'd
The British navy, through the ocean vast,
Shall wave her double cross t' extremest climes
Terrific, and return with od'rous spoils
Of Araby well fraught, or Indus' wealth,
Pearl and barbaric gold.—Wakefield.
Pope also drew upon Addison's lines to William III.:
Where'er the waves in restless errors roll,
The sea lies open now to either pole:
Now may we safely use the northern gales,
And in the polar circle spread our sails:
Or deep in southern climes, secure from wars,
New lands explore, and sail by other stars;
Fetch uncontrolled each labour of the sun,
And make the product of the world our own.
Towards the close of 1712 Tickell published his poem on the Prospect of Peace. "The description," Pope wrote to Caryll, "of the several parts of the world in regard to our trade has interfered with some lines of my own in Windsor Forest, though written before I saw his. I transcribe both, and desire your sincere judgment whether I ought not to strike out mine, either as they seem too like his, or as they are inferior." The close resemblance arose from their having copied a common original. The couplet of Pope on the West India islands, which he subsequently omitted, has no counterpart in Tickell, because it was not derived from the passage in Addison.
[175] In poetical philosophy the crude material from which jewels and the precious metals were formed, was supposed to be ripened into maturity by the sun. Tickell has the same idea: