LD.]

[Footnote 42: I think these two lines would not have passed without
animadversion in any of our great schools.--WARTON.

Another couplet followed in the manuscript:

Here Tereus mourns, and Itys tells his pain,
Of Progne they, and I of you complain.

The horrible mythological story of Progne killing her son Itys, and
serving up his flesh to her husband Tereus out of revenge for his
violence to her sister Philomela, had no connection with the plaintive
sighs of a love-sick swain for an absent mistress. The inappropriateness
of the allusion was no doubt the reason why Pope omitted the couplet.]

[Footnote 43: Virg. Ecl. vii. 45:

Muscosi fontes--mossy fountains.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 44: This thought occurs in several authors. Persius, Sat. ii.
39,

Quicquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat.

Butler finely ridicules this trite fancy of the poets:

Where'er you tread your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 45: The six lines from ver. 71 to ver. 76 stood thus in the
original manuscript:

Oh, deign to grace our happy rural seats,
Our mossy fountains, and our green retreats;
While you your presence to the groves deny,
Our flowers are faded, and our brooks are dry;
Though with'ring herbs lay dying on the plain,
At your return they shall be green again.

The two last couplets were copied from Dryden's Virg. Ecl. vii. 77:

But if Alexis from our mountains fly,
Ev'n running rivers leave their channels dry.

And ver. 81:

But, if returning Phyllis bless the plain,
The grass revives, the woods are green again.

In Pope's next version, the four lines "While you, &c.," ran as follows:

Winds, where you walk, shall gently fan the glade,

Or,

Where'er you walk fresh gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Flow'rs where you tread in painted pride shall rise,

Or,

Where'er you tread the purple flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes!

Walsh preferred the second form of the passage to the original draught;
and of the variations in the second form he preferred the lines
beginning "Where'er you walk," and "Where'er you tread."]

[Footnote 46: He had in view Virg. Ecl. x. 43:

hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 47:

Your praise the tuneful birds to heav'n shall bear,
And list'ning wolve