Part 47

Ovid copied Bion. Idyl. 1. The Greek poet represents the Loves as trampling upon their bows and arrows, and breaking their quivers in the first paroxysm of their grief for Adonis. In place of this natural burst of uncontrollable sorrow, the shepherd, in Pope, invokes the Loves to break their bows at his instigation. When their darts are said in the next line to be henceforth useless, the sense must be that nobody would love any woman again since Mrs. Tempest was dead. Such hyperboles can neither touch the heart nor gratify the understanding. The Pastorals were verse exercises in which every pretence to real emotion was laid aside, for Pope was not even acquainted with the lady of whom he utters these extravagances.]

Now shepherds! now lament, and now deplore! Delia is dead, and beauty is no more.--WAKEFIELD.

Congreve's Mourning Muse of Alexis:

All nature mourns; the floods and rocks deplore And cry with me, Pastora is no more.]

'Tis done, and nature's changed since you are gone; Behold the clouds have put their mourning on.--WARBURTON.

This low conceit, which our poet abandoned for the present reading, was borrowed from Oldham's version of the elegy of Moschus:

For thee, dear swain, for thee, his much-loved son, Does Phoebus clouds of mourning black put on.--WAKEFIELD.

When Pope submitted the rejected and the adopted reading to Walsh, the critic replied, "Clouds put on mourning is too conceited for pastoral. The second is better, and the thick or the dark I like better than sable." The last verse of the couplet in the text was then

See sable clouds eclipse the cheerful day.]

'Twas on a joyless and a gloomy morn, Wet was the grass and hung with pearls the thorn.

So in his version of Virgil, Ecl. x. 20:

And hung with humid pearls the lowly shrub appears.--WAKEFIELD.]

The fields with faded flow'rs did seem to mourn.]

Each flower fades and hangs its withered head, And scorns to thrive or live now thou art dead.--WAKEFIELD.]

For her the flocks the dewy herbs disdain, Nor hungry heifers graze the tender plain.--POPE.

Dryden's Virg. Ecl. v. 38:

The thirsty cattle of themselves abstained From water, and their grassy fare disdained.

Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, November, ver. 123, where

The feeble flocks in field refuse their former food,

because Dido is dead.]

Ye gentle swans.... In doleful notes the heavy loss bewail Such as you sing at your own funeral.--WAKEFIELD.]

Ah! gentle nymph! who lik'st so well In hollow solitary caves to dwell.--WAKEFIELD.]

Sad echo too does in deep silence moan, Since thou art mute, since thou art speechless grown.--WAKEFIELD.]

Echo no more the rural song rebounds; Her name alone the mournful echo sounds.]

Which but for you did all its incense yield.

This, with the reading in the text, was laid before Walsh, who selected the latter.]

Fair Galatea too laments thy death, Laments the ceasing of thy tuneful breath.

Sedley's Elegy: