[703] Pope owes much throughout this poem to the character of Dido as drawn by Virgil, and this passage seems directly formed upon one in Dryden, Æn. iv. 667:
Oft when she visited this lonely dome
Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb:
She thought she heard him summon her away,
Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay.
The imitation of the passage in Ovid, Epist. vii. 101, similar to this from Virgil, is still more palpable:
Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari:
Ipse sono tenui dixit, "Elissa, veni!"
Nulla mora est; venio; venio, tibi debita conjux.—Wakefield.
[704] It is well contrived that this invisible speaker should be a person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with Eloisa.—Warton.
[705] Dryden's version of the latter part of the third book of Lucretius:
But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.—Wakefield.
[706] In the first edition:
I come ye ghosts.—Wakefield.
[707] Ogilby, Virg. Æn. xi.: