s grow milder as they hear.

So the verses were originally written. But the author, young as he was,
soon found the absurdity which Spenser himself overlooked, of
introducing wolves into England.--POPE.

There was no absurdity upon the principle of Pope, that the scene of
pastorals was to be laid in the golden age, which could not be supposed
to be subsequent to the reign of Edward I. when wolves still existed in
this island. They lingered in Scotland in the reign of Charles II., and
in Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne.]

[Footnote 48: Virg. Ecl. iii. 73:

Partem aliquam, venti, Divum referatis ad aures.--POPE.]

[Footnote 49: In place of this couplet and the next, the original MS.
had these lines:

Such magic music dwells within your name,
The voice of Orpheus no such pow'r could claim;
Had you then lived, when he the forests drew,
The trees and Orpheus both had followed you.]

[Footnote 50: This verse is debased by the word _dance_. But he followed
Dryden in Ecl. iii. 69:

Where Orpheus on his lyre laments his love,
With beasts encompassed, and a dancing grove.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 51: Lucan vi. 473:

de rupe pependit
Abscissa fixus torrens; amnisque cucurrit
Non qua pronus erat.

Streams have run back at murmurs of her tongue,
And torrents from the rock suspended hung. Rowe.--STEEVENS.

"The line _And headlong streams_," says Ruffhead, "surely presents a new
image and a bold one too." Bold indeed! Pope has carried the idea into
extravagance when he makes the stream not only "listening," but "hang
listening in its headlong fall." An idea of this sort will only bear
just touching; the mind then does not perceive its violence; if it be
brought before the eyes too minutely, it becomes almost
ridiculous.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 52: In the MS.:

But see the southing sun displays his beams,
See Tityrus leads his herd to silver streams.]

[Footnote 53: Virg. Ecl. ii. 68:

Me tamen urit amor, quis enim modus adsit amori?--POPE.

He had Dryden's translation of the passage in Virgil before him:

Cool breezes now the raging heats remove:
Ah, cruel heav'n, that made no cure for love.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 54: The phrase "where his journey ends" is mean and prosaic,
nor by any means adequately conveys the sentiment required, which is
this,--The sun grows milder by degrees, and is at length extinguished in
the ocean,