[No poppy-water half so good.] Poppy-water, made by boiling the heads of the white, black, or red poppy, was a favourite eighteenth-century soporific:—‘Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail.’ (Congreve’s Love for Love, 1695, iv. 3.)
[With this he drives men’s souls to hell.]
Tu....
....virgaque levem coerces
Aurea turbam.—Hor. Od. i. 10.
[Moreover, Merc’ry had a failing.]
Te canam....
Callidum, quidquid placuit, iocoso
Condere furto.—Hor. Od. i. 10.
Goldsmith, it will be observed, rhymes ‘failing’ and ‘stealing.’ But Pope does much the same:—
That Jelly’s rich, this Malmsey healing,
Pray dip your Whiskers and your tail in.
(Imitation of Horace, Bk. ii, Sat. vi.)
Unless this is to be explained by poetical licence, one of these words must have been pronounced in the eighteenth century as it is not pronounced now.
[In which all modern bards agree.] The text of 1765 reads ‘our scribling bards.’