WINDSOR-FOREST: TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN. Non injussa cano: Te nostræ, Vare, myricæ, Virg. THE design of Windsor-forest is evidently derived from Coopershill, with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of interchanging description, narration, and morality. The objection made by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts, terminating in the principal and original design. There is this want in most descriptive poems; because as the scenes, which they must exhibit successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which they are shewn must, by necessity, be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last part than from the first. The attention therefore, which cannot be detained by suspence, must be excited by diversity, such as this poem offers to its reader. But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged. The parts of Windsor-forest which deserve least praise, are those which were added to enliven the stillness of the scene; the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of Lodona. Addison had, in his Campaign, derided the rivers, that "rise from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes, and it is therefore strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural, but lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient. Nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin, or a rock an obdurate tyrant. Johnson. The poem of Windsor-forest, although properly ranked as descriptive, contains in itself strong indications that the powers of the author were calculated for more elevated subjects and loftier flights. No sooner has he announced the scene of his poem, than he breaks through the narrow bounds by which he is apparently confined, and engages in an historical deduction of the effects produced by the tyranny of our early kings; terminating in the establishment of liberty, and the diffusion of national happiness. To this subject he recurs towards the close of his poem, where he brings down his historical notices to the reign of Queen Ann, and celebrates the peace of Utrecht, then just concluded. Many other passages indicate the attention he had paid to graver and more 4 important subjects, which soon superseded his lighter performances, and shewed, That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long, But stoop'd to truth and moralized his song. The observations of Dr. Johnson, on the personification of Father Thames, and on the story of Lodona would, if assented to, deprive poetry of one of her chief auxiliaries. That such representations are unnatural must, in a strict sense, be allowed; but poetry employs for her purpose not only what exists in nature, but what may, in possibility, be supposed to exist; and to deprive her of this power, is to prohibit her flights altogether. Neither Caliban nor Ariel exist in nature, and in Johnson's phraseology may therefore be said to be unnatural; but although not in nature, they are not contradictory to our conceptions of what might exist; and it is in effecting this verisimilitude that the art of the poet consists. To restrain poetry to what is strictly natural, is to reduce it essentially to prose. It has been said that the conclusion of this poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a politician; on which Johnson (in his Life of Pope) asks, “why Addison should receive any particular disturbance from the last lines of Windsor-forest?" To which it may be answered, that Addison could scarcely fail to be mortified on finding such splendid talents engaged in the cause of a party in direct opposition to his own, and employed to celebrate a peace, which, in his opinion, was not only inconsistent with the honour and interests of his country, but injurious to the liberty and safety of Europe in general. WINDSOR-FOREST. * TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.† THY forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats, NOTES. *This Poem was written at two different times: the first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals; the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published. P. Notwithstanding the many praises lavished on this celebrated nobleman as a poet, by Dryden, by Addison, by Bolingbroke, by our Author, and others, yet candid criticism must oblige us to confess, that he was but a feeble imitator of the feeblest parts of Waller. In his tragedy of Heroic Love, he seems not to have had a true relish for Homer whom he copied; and in the British Enchanters, very little fancy is to be found in a subject fruitful of romantic imagery. It was fortunate for him, says Mr. Walpole, in his Anecdotes, that in an age when persecution raged so fiercely against lukewarm authors, that he had an intimacy with the Inquisitor General; how else would such lines as these escape the Bathos; they are in his Heroic Love: -Why thy Gods Enlighten thee to speak their dark decrees. VARIATIONS. Ver. 3, &c. Originally thus (and indeed much better): Chaste Goddess of the woods, Nymphs of the vales, and Naïads of the floods, Lead me through arching bow'rs, and glimm'ring glades, P. His |