WINDSOR FOREST. GEORGE TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE LORD LANSDOWN E. Non injussa cano: te nostræ, Vare, myricæ, Virg. Ecl. vi. 9. POPE. II. A The close of the poem is said to have given peculiar offence to Addison, as both a poet and a politician. The offence may fairly be conceived to have lain in Pope's open espousal of a cause fatal to Addison's party, and his advocacy of a negociation which tarnished all the laurels of the noblest war of England. WINDSOR FOREST. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE GEORGE LORD LANSDOWNE. THY forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats, 6 5 Granville commands. Lord Lansdowne was an author of more variety than skill, and more diligence than success: tragedy and romance, description and criticism, served only to exercise his pen and the prudence of his friends: poetry was his mistress, but she never returned his flame; and the poet had no resource but to take refuge in the politician. There mediocrity of parts was less felt, and diligence more. From a private station he gradually advanced through successive offices, until, in 1710, he attained the peerage: but even then he was to feel the uncertainty of fortune. He was charged with disaffection to the Brunswick line, and in the next year was committed to the Tower; there succeeding a still more memorable example of the chances of public life; for his apartment was the one in which sir Robert Walpole had been confined. Horace Walpole, with his usual wit, observes of lord Lansdowne's authorship, that it was lucky 70 The fields are ravish'd from the industrious swains, 80 65 The fields are ravish'd. Pope tells us that this was 'translated from the Templa adimit Divis, fora civibus, arva colonis, of an old monkish writer, I forget who.' Warton gives the contrasted line from Camden, speaking of Edgar : Templa Deo, templis monachos, monachis dedit agros. 80 Himself denied a grave! It is difficult to discover to what incident the poet alludes here. Warton conceives it a reference to the story in St. Foix, that when the body of William the Conqueror was about to be interred, a bystander cried out against suffering him to be laid in that peculiar piece of ground; asserting that William, when duke, had seized the spot from his father without an equivalent; and that prince Henry agreed to pay the claimant, who was only a farrier, a hundred crowns for the land: but this could scarcely be called the denial of a grave. The modern scepticism which meets all the facts of history only with an intention to dispute them, doubts the ravages of William and his son in Hampshire. It is true, that it is not easy, in the absence of minute records, to prove the specific Stretch'd on the lawn his second hope survey, O'er sandy wilds were yellow harvests spread; 91 And purer spirits swell the sprightly flood, waste committed by those tyrants; but the returns of the population, property, and tillage, of those districts before and after the reigns of the Conqueror and his son, amply show that a devastation must have been exercised there of the most sweeping kind. 81 Second hope. William, second son of William the Conqueror. 83 The spot on which the king was slain is still pointed out in the New Forest: even the oak, against which sir Walter Tyrrel's arrow glanced, survived within memory. The moment sir Walter Tyrrel had shot him, he instantly hastened to the sea-shore, without speaking of the accident, and embarked for France, and thence hurried to Jerusalem to do penance for his involuntary crime. The body of Rufus was found in the forest by a countryman, whose family are said to be still living near the spot; and was buried, without any pomp, before the altar of Winchester cathedral, where the monument remains. |