Which shall o'er long posterity prevail.
The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 132:
And children's children shall the crown sustain.
[27] This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:
Put on that diadem besmeared with gore
Which from my father's head these fingers tore.
[28] Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 78:
Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth
[29] Pope uses "preventing" in the then common but now obsolete sense of "anticipating."
[30] A river in the lower world.
[31] Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.—Warton.