is not as circumstantial as
that of Somerville, is fairly answered by Johnson's remark, that the
chase was the main subject of Somerville, and is only subsidiary with
Pope. More, nevertheless, was required than a description of the
impatience and galloping of the horses, and of the eagerness of the
riders. Of this single topic one half was a translation from Statius.
The fishing and shooting are superior to the hunt. The particulars are
meagre, but there is mastery in the mode of representing them. The dying
pheasant is painted in language as rich as its plumage, and the doves,
the lapwing, the lark, and the wintry landscape, could not have been
brought more vividly before the mind, or in fewer words. A gentle pathos
intermingles with the whole. The portrait of the angler would have been
perfect, in the single circumstance to which it is confined, if Pope had
not said of him, "he hopes the scaly breed." Wakefield observed that
"hope," used as an active verb, was intolerably affected, and he might
have extended the remark to the use of "scaly breed" for fish.

The "story part" of Windsor Forest is a mosaic of translated scraps from
Ovid's Metamorphoses. The fictions of heathen mythology, which had been
repeated to satiety, which exhibited no invention, and had no charm for
modern imaginations, are worse than an excrescence in the midst of
English prospects, sports, and history. The bad effect does not stop
with the puerilities themselves, but they communicate an air of weakness
and unreality to the general texture of the work.

The well-merited praise which Bowles bestowed upon "the historical part"
of the poem is inapplicable to the ill drawn character of William the
Conqueror. Pope saw in him only a devastator and a tyrant. He had not
caught a glimpse of the robust will, and masculine genius, which
conquered and consolidated a great country. The vigour, daring, and
sagacity which tempered the grosser traits in the mind of William are
suppressed, and the masterly warrior and statesman is reduced to an
inglorious spoiler of peasants, and hunter of deer. The advantages which
accrued to England from the conquest itself were unknown to Pope, who
fancied that its principal result was to destroy agriculture, and
impoverish the people. He was not aware that it introduced a more
advanced civilisation, imparted new energy to a backward stagnant
population, opened up to them a vista of grander views, and repaid
transitory suffe