Part 55

As in old chaos heav'n with earth confused, And stars with rocks together crushed and bruised.--WAKEFIELD.]

Here Nature, whether more intent to please Us, or herself, with strange varieties, Wisely she knew the harmony of things, As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. Such was the discord which did first disperse Form, order, beauty through the universe.--WARTON.

Why should I sing our better suns or air, Whose vital draughts prevent the leech's care, While through fresh fields th' enlivening odours breathe, Or spread with vernal blooms the purple heath?--POPE.

The first couplet of the lines in Pope's note, was from Dryden's epistle to his kinsman:

He scapes the best, who, nature to repair, Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.]

Bosomed high in tufted trees.--WAKEFIELD.]

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms.

This fancy was borrowed from the ancients. According to Ovid (Met. x. 500), Myrrha, changed into a tree, weeps myrrh, and the sisters of Phæton (Met. ii. 364), transformed into poplars, shed tears which harden in the sun, and turn into amber.]

Pope, in his manuscript, has underscored "Pan with flocks," and "crowned," and set a mark against the line, as if he had detected, and intended to remove, the defect.]

A dismal desert, and a silent waste.

Pope weakened the line in varying it. "Dreary desert" and "gloomy waste" are synonymous, but "silent" adds a distinct idea to "dismal."]

The killing a deer, boar, or hare, was punished with the loss of the delinquent's eyes.--WARTON.

Thierry believes that the forest laws had a more serious object than to secure for the king a monopoly of sport. The chief intention was to keep the newly conquered Saxons from going armed under the pretext that they were in pursuit of game. Hence the penalty was of a nature to incapacitate the offender for military service.]

Prove all a desert! and none there make stay But savage beasts, or men as wild as they.--WAKEFIELD.

Sir William Temple says of the forests on the continent that they

give a shade To savage beasts who on the weaker prey, Or human savages more wild than they.

Wakefield remarks that there is an inaccuracy in Pope's couplet, since the "savage laws" to which the pronoun "they" in part refers, were the mode in which the severity of the king displayed itself.]

From towns laid waste, to dens and caves they ran (For who first stooped to be a slave was man).--WARBURTON.

The conceit is childish, because dens and caves are the residence of these brutes at all times, and therefore their retreat to these places constitutes no argument of their aversion to slavery. And the following couplet is by no means worthy of the poet.--WAKEFIELD.]

The swain with tears to beasts his labour yields,

which defined the poet's idea more clearly. He changed the expression to avoid the recurrence of the same word when he introduced "beast" into the next couplet.]

The poor inhabitant beholds in vain The reddening orange, and the swelling grain: Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines: Starves, in the midst of nature's bounty curst, And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst.--HOLT WHITE.

This passage, which describes the misery entailed upon the Italian peasants by an oppressive government, plainly suggested the lines of Pope. The death from thirst, which Addison adds to the death from starvation, is too great an exaggeration. Water could always be had.]

No wonder savages or subjects slain-- But subjects starved, while savages were fed.

It was originally thus, but the word "savages" is not properly applied to beasts, but to men; which occasioned the alteration.--POPE.]

Templa adimit divis, fora civibus, arva colonis,

an old monkish writer, I forget who.--POPE.]

I have the authority of three or four of our best antiquarians to say, that the common tradition of villages and parishes, within the compass of thirty miles, being destroyed, in the New Forest, is absolutely groundless, no traces or vestiges of such being to be discovered, nor any other parish named in Doomsday Book, but what now remains.--WARTON.