[131] The proper word would have been "beyond."
[Much we begin to doubt and much to fear
Our sight less trusting as we see more clear.]
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try,
Filled with ideas of fair Italy,
The traveller beholds with cheerful eyes
The less'ning vales, and seems to tread the skies.—Pope.
The couplet between brackets is from the manuscript. The next couplet, with a variation in the first line, was transferred to the epistle to Jervas.
[133] This is, perhaps, the best simile in our language—that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly unrelated to each other.—Johnson.
I will own I am not of this opinion. The simile appears evidently to have been suggested by the following one in the works of Drummond:
All as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass,
Or Atlas' temples crowned with winter's glass,
The airy Caucasus, the Apennine,
Pyrene's cliffs where sun doth never shine,
When he some heaps of hills hath overwent,
Begins to think on rest, his journey spent,
Till mounting some tall mountain he doth find
More heights before him than he left behind.—Warton.
The simile is undoubtedly appropriate, illustrative, and eminently beautiful, but evidently copied.—Bowles.
[134] Diligenter legendum est ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem: nec per partes modo scrutanda sunt omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus. Quint.—Pope.
[135] The Bible never descends to the mean colloquial preterites of "chid" for "did chide," or "writ" for "did write," but always uses the full-dress word "chode" and "wrote." Pope might have been happier had he read his Bible more, but assuredly he would have improved his English.—De Quincey.