Part 56

The argument from Doomsday Book is of no weight if, as Lingard asserts, the New Forest was formed before the registration took place. William was an eager sportsman. "He loved the beasts of chase," says the Saxon chronicle, "as if he had been their father," and the source of his love was the pleasure he took in killing them. His hunting grounds, however, were ample without the New Forest, and Thierry thinks that his motive in forming it may have been political. The wooded district, denuded of a hostile population, and stretching to the sea, would have afforded shelter to the Normans in the event of a reverse, and enabled them to disembark in safety.]

O'er prostrate towns and palaces they pass, Now covered o'er with weeds, and hid in grass.]

When winds in our ruined abbeys roar.--WAKEFIELD.]

And wolves with howling fill, &c.

The author thought this an error, wolves not being common in England at the time of the Conqueror.--POPE.]

Richard is said by some to have been killed by a stag in the New Forest, by others to have been crushed against a tree by his horse.]

At once the taker, and at once the prey.--WAKEFIELD.]

A stone pillar now marks the spot.--CROKER.]

Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma. Virg.--WARBURTON.

Virgil is treating of grafts, and says that the parent stock, when the slips grow, wonders at leaves and fruit not its own. Here the imagination keeps pace with the description, but stops short before the notion that the trees in the forest wondered to behold the crops of corn.]

Latonæ tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus.--WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's translation:

And feeds with secret joy her silent breast.

In Virgil the silent exultation is felt by a mother, who, in an assembly of nymphs, marks the superior beauty of her goddess daughter. There was not the same reason why the swain should keep secret the transport he felt at the sight of wheat fields.]

O may no more a foreign master's rage, With wrongs yet legal, curse a future age! Still spread, fair liberty! thy heav'nly wings, Breathe plenty on the fields, and fragrance on the springs.--POPE.

The last couplet was suggested by Addison's Letter to Lord Halifax:

O Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright, Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.]

Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood.

When yellow autumn summer's heat succeeds, And into wine the purple harvest bleeds, The partridge feeding in the new-shorn fields, Both morning sports and evening pleasures yields.--POPE.

Richardson transcribes from the margin of Pope's MS. "Qu. if allowable to describe the season by a circumstance not proper to our climate, the vintage?" And the line which speaks of the making of wine was no doubt altered to obviate this objection.]

Watchful to betray With inward rage he meditates his prey.--HOLT WHITE.]

si parra licet componere magnis.

If little things with great we may compare. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]

Pleased in the general's sight, the host lie down Sudden before some unsuspecting town; The young, the old, one instant make our prize, And o'er their captive heads Britannia's standard flies.--WARBURTON.

Pope, as Wakefield observes, has joined together in the simile in the text the inconsistent notions of a town surprised, and a town taken by the regular approaches of a siege. "The passage," adds Wakefield, "as it originally stood was free from this heterogeneous intermixture, and by a little polish might have been made superior to the present reading."]

Exults in air and plies his whistling wings.

The poet doubtless substituted the later version, because the expression "whirring pheasant" conveyed the same idea as "whistling wings."]

Now what avails his well-deserving toil. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.]