Than what more humble mountains offer here,
Where, in their bleffings, all thofe Gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown'd,
Here blushing Flora paints th' enamel'd ground,
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand ;
Rich Industry fits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a STUART reigns.
Not thus the land appear'd in ages past,
A dreary defert, and a gloomy waste,
To favage beasts and favage laws a prey,

And kings more furious and fevere than they;
Who claim'd the fkies, difpeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:
Cities laid wafte, they ftorm'd the dens and caves,
(For wifer brutes were backward to be flaves,)
What could be free, when lawless beasts obey'd,
And ev❜n the elements a Tyrant fway'd?

In vain kind feafons fwell'd the teeming grain,

Soft fhow'rs diftill'd, and funs grew warm in vain;

35

40

45

50

The

VARIATIONS.

VER. 49. Originally thus in the MS.

From towns laid wafte, to dens and caves they ran
(For who first stoop'd to be a flavę was man).

NOTES.

VER. 37.] The word crown'd is exceptionable; it makes Pan erowned with flocks. WARTON.

VER. 45. Javage laws] The Foreft Laws. See the account of them in Black stone's excellent Lectures; the killing a deer, boar, or kare, was punished with the lofs of the delinquent's eyes. WARTON.

бо

The fwain with tears his fruftrate labour yields, 55
And famifh'd dies amidst his ripen'd fields.
What wonder then, a beast or fubje&t flain
Were equal crimes in a defpotic reign?
Both doom'd alike, for fportive Tyrants bled,
But while the subject starv'd, the beast was fed.
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man :
Our haughty Norman boasts that barbʼrous name,
And makes his trembling flaves the royal game. .64
The fields are ravish'd from th' industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from Gods their fanes:

The

VARIATIONS.

VER. 57, &C.

No wonder favages or fubjects flain

But fubjects ftarv'd, while favages were fed.

It was originally thus, but the word "favages" is not properly applied to beafts, but to men; which occafioned the alteration.

NOTES.

POPE.

VER. 65. The fields are ravish'd, &c.] Alluding to the deftruction made in the New Foreft, and the tyrannies exercised there by William I.

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

IMITATIONS.

compafs

VER. 65. The fields are ravish'd from th' industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from Gods their fanes :}

Tranflated from

"Templa adimit divis, fora civibus, arva colonis,"

an old monkifh writer, I forget who.

POPE.

In Camden's Britannia, first edition, in the account of Somerfetfhire it is faid of Edgar,

"Templa Deo, Templis Monachos, Monachis dedit agros."

WARTON.

The levell'd towns with weeds lie cover'd o'er;
The hollow winds through naked temples roar;
Round broken columns clafping ivy twin'd
O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox obfcene to gaping tombs retires,
And favage howlings fill the facred quires.
Aw'd by his Nobles, by his Commons curst,
Th' Oppreffor rul'd tyrannic where he durst,

70

Stretch'd

VARIATIONS.

VER. 72. 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.

NOTES.

compass of thirty miles, being deftroyed, in the New Foreft, is abfolutely groundless, no traces or veftiges of fuch being to be discovered, nor any other parish named in Doomsday Book, but what now remains. Of late years, fome minute enquiries have been made on this fubject, by accurate and well-informed judges, who are clearly of this opinion. The Prefident Henault has given us a more amiable idea of our Norman Conqueror than is here exWARTON.

hibited.

VER. 71. This image of the fox is in the poems afcribed to Offian.

WARTON.

Pope certainly never faw the Poems afcribed to Offian, nor indeed is the fox in thofe poems defcribed as but looking out from a ruin.

retiring to tombs,"

VER. 74.] A fine remain of ancient art and ancient customs, a piece of tapestry, faid to be the work of Queen Matilda, is an. nually exhibited in the cathedral church of Bayeux, in Normandy, representing the expedition of William the Conqueror,

and

Stretch'd o'er the Poor and Church his iron rod, 75
And ferv'd alike his Vaffals and his God.

Whom ev❜n the Saxon fpar'd, and bloody Dane,
The wanton victims of his sport remain.
But fee, the man, who fpacious regions gave
A wafte for beafts, himself deny'd a grave!
Stretch'd on the lawn his fecond hope furvey,
At once the chafer, and at once the prey:

80

Lo

NOTES.

and containing a moft minute picture of every part of that event, from his landing in England to the battle of Haftings. An engraving of it is given in the tenth volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres. WARTON.

VER. 80.] In St. Foix's entertaining historical Effays on Paris, it is related, p. 95. tom. 5. that just as the body of William I. was going to be put into the grave, a voice cried aloud, “I forbid his interment. When William was only Duke of Normandy he feized this piece of Land from my father, on which he built this abbey of St. Stephen, without making me a recompence, which I now demand." Prince Henry, who was present, called out the man, who was only a common farrier, and agreed to give him an hundred crowns for this burial-place. Except the former conqueft of England by the Saxons, (fays Hume, vol. 1.), who were induced, by peculiar circumftances, to proceed even to the extermination of the natives, it would be difficult to find in all hiftory, a revolution more deftructive, or attended with a more complete fubjection of the ancient inhabitants. WARTON.

The circumftance of William's laying wafte fo much territory is very doubtful. I believe the fact can be difproved.

VER. 81. fecond hope] Richard, fecond fon of William the Conqueror. WARBURTON.

Lo Rufus, tugging at the deadly dart,

Bleeds in the foreft like a wounded hart.

Succeeding monarchs heard the fubjects cries,
Nor faw difpleas'd the peaceful cottage rise:
Then gath'ring flocks on unknown mountains fed,
O'er fandy wilds were yellow harvests spread,
The forest wonder'd at th' unusual grain,
And secret transports touch'd the conscious fwain.
Fair Liberty, Britannia's Goddess, rears

Her chearful head, and leads the golden years.

85

91

Ye

VARIATIONS.

VER. 91.

O may no more a foreign master's rage,

With wrongs yet legal, curfe a future age!

Still fpread, fair Liberty! thy heav'nly wings,

Breath plenty on the fields, and fragrance on the fprings.

NOTES.

POPE.

VER. 83. The moment Walter Tyrrel had fhot him, without fpeaking of the accident, he inftantly haftened to the fea-fhore and embarked for France, and from thence hurried to Jerufalem to do penance for his involuntary crime. The body of Rufus was found in the forest by a countryman, whofe family are still faid to be living near the spot, and was buried, without any pomp, before the altar of Winchester cathedral, where the monument still remains. Though the Monkish historians, who hated him, may perhaps have exaggerated his vices, yet he feems really to have been a violent, prodigal, proud, perfidious, ungenerous, and tyrannical prince. There was however something of magnificence in his building the Tower, Westminster-hall, and London-bridge. WARTON.

The oak, under which Rufus was shot, was standing till within these few years.

IMITATIONS.

VER. 89. "Miraturque novas frondes et non fua poma," Virg.