[559] Tasso's description of an angel in the translation of Fairfax, i. 14:
Of silver wings he took a shining pair
Fringed with gold.—Wakefield.
[560] The expression has reference to ver. 61. "No sacred earth allowed her room," but her remains have "made sacred" the common earth in which she was buried.
[561] Such a poem as Pope's Elegy, deeply serious and pathetic, rejects with disdain all fiction. Upon that account the passage from ver. 59 to ver. 68 deserves no quarter; for it is not the language of the heart, but of the imagination indulging its flights at ease, and by that means is eminently discordant with the subject. It would be a still more severe censure if it should be ascribed to imitation, copying indiscreetly what has been said by others.—Lord Kames.
The ghost of the injured person appears to excite the poet to revenge her wrongs. He describes her character, execrates the author of her misfortunes, expatiates on the severity of her fate, the rites of sepulture denied her in a foreign land. Then follows, "What though no weeping," &c. Can anything be more naturally pathetic? Yet the critic tells us he can give no quarter to this part of the poem. Well might our poet's last wish be to commit his writings to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic.—Warburton.
[562] When Pope describes the retribution which is to fall upon the imperious relatives of the unfortunate lady, he says,
Thus unlamented pass the proud away;
and it is to these same relations, whose pride was their vice, that he reverts in the line,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
The persecutors who have hunted you into the grave, shall one day share your fate.