te 90: "Her" appears for the first time in the edition of
Warburton in the place of "his," and is now the accepted reading, but it
is manifestly a misprint, since "her" has no antecedent. The couplet is
obscure. Pope could hardly intend to assert that the flow of the tide
poured as much water into the Thames as all the other rivers of the
world discharged into the ocean, and he probably meant that all the
navigable rivers of the globe did not send more commerce to the sea than
came from the sea up the Thames. Even in this case it was a wild,
without being a poetical, exaggeration.]

[Footnote 91: In the first edition:

No seas so rich, so full no streams appear.

The epithets "clear," "gentle," "full," which Pope applies to the
Thames, show that he had in his mind the celebrated passage in Cooper's
Hill:

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'er-flowing full.]

[Footnote 92: The ancients gave the name of the terrestrial Eridanus or
Po, to a constellation which has somewhat the form of a winding river.
Pope copied Denham:

Heav'n her Eridanus no more shall boast,
Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents lost,
By nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes,
To shine amongst the stars and bathe the gods.]

[Footnote 93: Very ill expressed, especially the rivers swelling the
lays.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 94: The original readings were beyond all competition
preferable both in strength and beauty:

Not fabled Po more swells the poet's lays
While through the skies his shining current strays.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 95: In saying that the Po did not swell the lays of the poet
in the same degree as the Thames, Pope more especially alluded to the
celebrated description of the latter in Cooper's Hill.]

[Footnote 96: In the earlier editions,

Nor all his stars a brighter lustre show,
Than the fair nymphs that gild thy shore below.

The MS. goes on thus:

Whose pow'rful charms enamoured gods may move
To quit for this the radiant court above;
And force great Jove, if Jove's a lover still,
To change Olympus, &c.]

[Footnote 97: Originally:

Happy the man, who to these shades retires,
But doubly happy, if the muse inspires!
Blest whom the sweets of home-felt quiet please;
But far more blest, who study joins with ease.--POPE.

The turn of this passage manifestly proves that our poet had in view
t