ennet is not linked by Pope to any poetical association when he
simply says that it is "renowned for silver eels," but Spenser brings a
delightful picture before the eye when he speaks of the

still Darent in whose waters clean
Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.]

[Footnote 148: Addison:

Where silver lakes with verdant shadows crowned.]

[Footnote 149: Several of Pope's epithets are borrowed, although he has
not always coupled them with the same streams to which they are applied
in his originals. For "Kennet swift" Milton has "Severn swift," and for
"chalky Wey" Spenser has "chalky Kennet."]

[Footnote 150: The Wandle.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 151: Milton has "gulphy Dun" and "sedgy Lee," and Pope
combined the characteristics. The remainder of the couplet is from
Addison's translation of a passage in Claudian:

Her dropping locks the silver Tessin rears,
The blue transparent Adda next appears.]

[Footnote 152: Milton's Vacation Exercise:

Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath.--WAKEFIELD.

The Mole at particular spots, called the swallows, sinks through
crevices in the chalk, and during dry seasons, when there is not
sufficient water to till both the subterranean and the upper channel,
the bed of the river is laid bare in parts of its course. The stream
sometimes entirely disappears from Burford-bridge to the neighbourhood
of Thorncroft-bridge, a distance of nearly three miles.]

[Footnote 153: Drayton:

And the old Lee brags of the Danish blood.--BOWLES.

Pope's epithet "silent" was suggested by "the still Darent" of Spenser,
and the same poet had said of the Eden that it was

----stained with blood of many a band
Of Scots and English.]

[Footnote 154: Addison's translation of an extract from Ovid:

While thus she rested on her arm reclined,
The hoary willows waving with the wind.]

[Footnote 155: The river god bowing respectfully to his human audience,
before he commenced his speech, is a ludicrous idea, into which Pope was
seduced by his courtly desire to represent even the deities as doing
homage to Queen Anne.]

[Footnote 156: So Dryden, AEneis, x. 156:

The winds their breath restrain,
And the hushed waves lie flatted on the main.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope's lines are compiled from the passage quoted by Wakefield and a
couplet in the Court Prospect of Hopkins:

Unrolling waves steal softly to the shore,