Gray has

    The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
    The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.

Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a classical circumstance, but not a natural one, in an English landscape, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon.  I think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the hare in his Annus Mirabilis:—­

Stanza 131. 
So I have seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay,
Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.

132. 
With his loll’d tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies: 
She trembling creeps upon the ground away
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.

Thomson paints the stag in a similar situation:—­

——­Fainting breathless toil
Sick seizes on his heart—­he stands at bay: 
The big round tears run down his dappled face,
He groans in anguish.

          
                                                Autumn, v. 451.

Shakspeare exhibits the same object:—­

The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.

Of these three pictures the beseeching eyes of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than the big round tears, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical.  The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself.  Thomson adroitly drops the innocent nose, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. The dappled face is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poetically expressed.

EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.

The manuscripts of Pope’s version of the Iliad and Odyssey are preserved in the British Museum in three volumes, the gift of David Mallet.  They are written chiefly on the backs of letters, amongst which are several from Addison, Steele, Jervaise, Rowe, Young, Caryl, Walsh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Fenton, Craggs, Congreve, Hughes, his mother Editha, and Lintot and Tonson the booksellers.[26]