Part 14

Say, lovely youth, why would'st thou thus betray.--WAKEFIELD.]

These mournful numbers suit a mournful muse.]

I burn, I burn, like kindled fields of corn, When by the driving winds the flames are borne.--WAKEFIELD.

The first version in Pope's manuscript, though not so closely copied from Scrope, is decidedly inferior to the text:

I burn, I burn, as when fierce whirlwinds raise The spreading flames, and crackling harvests blaze.]

My muse, and lute can now no longer please; These are th' employments of a mind at ease.--WAKEFIELD.]

For they who truly love remember all.--BOWLES.]

My ruined brother trades from shore to shore, And gains as basely as he lost before: Me too he hates, advised by me in vain, So fatal 'tis to be sincere and plain.

Of the last couplet the MS. contains a second version:

He hates his sister for a sister's care, So unsuccessful 'tis to be sincere.]

An infant now my hapless fortunes shares, And this sad breast feels all a mother's cares.]

When grey Aurora, having vanquished night, Beheld me on the ever-fragrant hill Of steep Hymettus, and against my will, As I my toils extended, bare me thence.]

Oh! let me once more see those eyes of thine! Thy love I ask not; do but suffer mine.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope's couplet was as follows in the MS.:

Thy love I ask not to forsaken me, All that I ask is but to doat on thee.

"Scrope melius hic," wrote Cromwell, and though Pope altered the lines the remark of Cromwell remains true.]

Aspice, quam sit in hoc multa litura loco;

which he thinks flat and languid: but the simplicity of the appeal to the blot on her paper is admirable, and should be only mentioned as a fact. The imitator has destroyed the whole beauty of the line, by a quaint antithesis, and a laboured arrangement of words, which are not natural in affliction. Scrope's translation again excels Pope's:

My constant falling tears the paper stain, And my weak hand, etc.--BOWLES.]

No gift on thee thy Sappho could confer.

The original couplet in the MS. was

No pledge you left me, faithless and unkind! Nothing with me but wrongs was left behind.

"Jejune, flat, and ill expressed," is written against the last line in the manuscript, and Pope profited by the criticism.]

Their daily longing, and their nightly dream.

It was at first thus in Pope's MS.:

Thou art at once my anguish and delight, Care of my day, and phantom of my night.

Thy kisses then, thy words my soul endear. Glow on my lips, and murmur in my ear.

The charming phantom flies, and I complain, As if thyself forsook me once again.