WINDSOR FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.

Non injusfa cano: Te noftræ, Vare, myricæ,
Te Nemus omne canet; nec Phæbo gratior ulla est,
Quam sibi quæ Vari præscripsit pagina nomen.

Virg.

WINDSOR-FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.

THY

forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats,

At once the Monarch's and the Muse's seats,
Invite my lays. Be present, fylvan maids !
Unlock your springs, and open

all
your
shades.

GRAN-
VARIATIONS.
Ver. 3, &c. Originally thus (and indeed much better):

Chalte Goddess of the woods,
Nymphs of the vales, and Naïads of the floods,
Lead me through arching bow'rs, and glimm'ring glades,
Unlock your springs-

Pope,

NOTES. This Poem was written at two different times: the first part of its which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals ; the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published.

P. a Notwithstanding the many praises lavished on this celebrated nobleman as a poet, by Dryden, by Addison, by Bolingbroke, by our Author, and others, yet candid criticism must oblige us to confess, that he was but a feeble imitator of the feebleft parts of Waller. In his tragedy of Heroic Love, he seems not to have had a true relish for Homer whom he copied ; and in the British Enchanters, very little fancy is to be found in a subject fruitful of romantic imagery. It was fortunate for him, says Mr. Walpole in his Anecdotes, that in an age when persecution raged so fiercely against lukewarm authors, that he had an intimacy with the Inquifitor General ; how else would such lines as these escape the Bathos; they are in his Heroic Love :

Why thy Gods
Enlighten thee to speak their dark decrees.

GRANVILLE commands; your aid, O Muses, bring ! What Muse for GRANVILLE can refuse to sing ? 6

The NOTES. His Progress of Beauty, and his Essay on Unnatural Flights in Poetry, seem to be the best of his pieces; in the latter are many good critical remarks and precepts, and it is accompanied with notes that contain much agreeable instruction. For it may be added, his prose is better than his verse. Witness a Letter to a Young Man on his taking Orders, hris Obserrations on Burnet, and his Defence of his relation Sir Richard Grenville, and a Trans. lation of some parts of Demosthenes, and a Letter to his Father on the Revolution, written in October. 1688. After having been Secretary at War 1710, Controller and Treasurer to the Household, and of her Majesty's Privy Council, and created a Peer 1711, he was seized as a suspected person, at the accession of King George the First, and confined in the Tower, in the very

chamber that had before been occupied by Sir Robert Walpole. But whatezer may be thought of Lord Lansdown as a poet, his character as a man was highly valuable. His conversation was most pleasing and polite; his affability, and universal benevolence and gentleness, captivating; he was a firm friend, and a fincere lover of his country.

WASTON. Johnson remarks, that this poem was written after the model of Denham's Cooper's Hill, with perhaps an eye on Waller's Poem of The Park. Marvel has also written a Poem on Local Scenery,

upon the Hill and Grove at Billborow;" and another, Appleton House,” (now Nunappleton in Yorkshire).

Marvel abounds with conceits and false thoughts, but some of the deseriptive touches are picturesque and beautiful. His de. fcription of a gently rising eminence is more picturesque, although not so elegantly and justly exprefled, as the same subject is in Denham. I transcribe the following, as the Poem is but little read :

« See what a soft access, and wide,
Lies open to its grassy' fide;

Nor

on

The Groves of Eden, vanish'd now so long, Live in description, and look green in song:

These,

REMARKS.'
VER. 7. Allusion to Milton's Paradise Lost. WARTON.
VER. 8. Live in description,] Evidently suggested by Waller:

“ Of the first Paradise there's nothing found,
Yet the description lafts; who knows the fate
Of lives that shall this Paradise relate?
Instead of rivers rolling by the side
Of Eden's garden," &c.

NOTES.
Nor with its rugged path deters
The feet of breathless travellers.
Yet thus it all the plain commands,
And in unenvied greatness stands,
Discerning farther than the cliff
Of Heaven-daring Teneriff.
How glad the weary

seamen haste
When they falute it from the mast!
By night, the northern star their way
Directs, and this no less by day.
Upon its crest, this mountain grave,

A plume of aged trees does wave.' Sometimes Marvel observes little circumstances of rural nature with the eye and feeling of a true Poet :

$ Then as I careless on the bed

Of gelid Arawberries do tread,
And thro' the bazles thick, espy

The hatching thrufle's fbining eye.” The last circumstance is new, highly poetical, and could only have been described by one who was a real lover of nature, and a witness of her beauties in her moft solitary retirements. It is the obfervation of such circumstances, which can alone form an accurate deseriptive rural Poet. In this province of his art, Pope there