[40] This image is very inferior to the original, as it is more vague and general: the picture in the original is strikingly beautiful. The circumstances which make it so, are omitted by Pope:
Ipse gubernabit residens in puppe Cupido,
Ipse dabit tenera vela legetque manu.—Bowles.
The objection of Bowles would not have applied to the manuscript, where this admirable couplet, which Pope unwisely omitted, follows the lines in the text:
Shall take the rudder in his tender hand,
And steer thee safe to this forsaken land.
There is a second, but inferior rendering:
Shall sit presiding on the painted prore,
And steer thy ship to this forsaken shore.
Cromwell applied the words of Horace, "quæ desperat nitescere posse, relinquit," which seems intended to intimate that it was impossible to give a poetical translation of the original. Pope deferred to the mistaken criticism.