The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "_Homes and Haunts of the British Poets_" have also been sadly changed. "Steam," he says, "as little as time, has respected the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn its roaring iron steeds opposite to its gate and has menaced to rush through it and lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stages of a projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn and before the windows of Elleray." I believe the whole place has been purchased by a Railway Company.
[038] In Churton's _Rail Book of England_, published about three years ago, Pope's Villa is thus noticed--"Not only was this temple of the Muses--this abode of genius--the resort of the learned and the wittiest of the land--levelled to the earth, but all that the earth produced to remind posterity of its illustrious owner, and identify the dead with the living strains he has bequeathed to us, was plucked up by the roots and scattered to the wind." On the authority of William Hewitt I have stated on an earlier page that some splendid Spanish chesnut trees and some elms and cedars planted by Pope at Twickenham were still in existence. But Churton is a later authority. Howitt's book was published in 1847.
[039] _One would have thought &c._ See the garden of Armida, as described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.
"In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."
Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.
"And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace, "The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place."
"E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce à l'opre, "L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."
The next stanza is likewise translated from Tasso, C. xvi 10. And, if the reader likes the comparing of the copy with the original, he may see many other beauties borrowed from the Italian poet. The fountain, and the two bathing damsels, are taken from Tasso, C. xv, st. 55, &c. which he calls, _Il fonte del riso_. UPTON.
[040] Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.
_Flowers of all hue_, and without thorns the rose.