the Thames,
that he had in view Denham's description in Cooper's Hill:

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold.--WAKEFIELD.

The sisters of Phaeton, according to the classical fable, were, upon the
death of their brother, turned into poplars on the banks of the Po, and
the tears which dropt from these trees were said to be converted into
amber.]

[Footnote 46: This couplet is a palpable imitation of Virgil, Ecl. vii.
67:

Saepius at si me, Lycida formose, revisas,
Fraxinus in silvis cedet tibi, pinus in hortis.--WAKEFIELD.

The entire speech is a parody of the lines quoted by Wakefield, and of
the lines which immediately precede them in Virgil's Eclogue. The
passage omitted by Wakefield is thus translated in vol. i. of Tonson's
Miscellany:

Bacchus the vine, the laurel Phoebus loves;
Fair Venus cherishes the myrtle groves;
Phyllis the hazel loves, while Phyllis loves that tree,
Myrtles and laurels of less fame shall be.]

[Footnote 47: Virg. Ecl. vii. 57:

Aret ager, vitio moriens sitit aeris herba [&c.]
Phyllidis adventu nostrae nemus omne virebit.--POPE.]

[Footnote 48: These verses were thus at first:

All nature mourns, the birds their songs deny,
Nor wasted brooks the thirsty flow'rs supply;
If Delia smile, the flow'rs begin to spring,
The brooks to murmur, and the birds to sing.--POPE.

Wakefield remarks that the last couplet of the original version, which
is but slightly modified in the text, was closely imitated from
Addison's Epilogue to the British Enchanters:

The desert smiles, the woods begin to grow,
The birds to warble, and the springs to flow.]

[Footnote 49: Dryden, Ecl. vii. 76:

And lavish nature laughs.]

[Footnote 50: Pope had at first written,

If Sylvia smiles she brightens all the shore,
The sun's outshined, and nature charms no more.

This he submitted to Walsh. Pope. "Quaere, whether to say the sun is
outshined be too bold and hyperbolical?" Walsh. "For pastoral it is."
Pope. "If it should be softened with _seems_? Do you approve any of
these alterations?

If Sylvia smile, she brightens all the shore,
{ All nature seems outshined, and charms no more.
{ Light seems outshined, and nature charms no more.
{ And vanquished nature seems to shine no more.

Quaere, which of these three?" Walsh. "The last of these three I like
best