A CORRECTION.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The writer of "The Pacificiet Vision in America" in your number of July 24th has the gift of thrilling quotation; and I for one thank him for introduction to four noble lines by Pope. It may be that not only I but many others at once resolved to commit these lines to memory. The writer will, then, bear me no grudge for pointing out three departures from Pope's text in his transcript. In line two the word "teach" should be "prompt," and in line three read "in honour's nobler bed," not "on honour's noble bed." Accordingly the stanza should run as follows "Beneath thy roof, Argyle, are bred Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie Stretch'd out in honour's nobler bed, Beneath a nobler roof—the sky."
The variations of the Spectator's text are of consequence. "Honour's nobler bed" is the grave, for in makes that sense.
"Nobler" contrasts the grave with the bed occupied, July 9th, 1739, by Pope at Adderbury—the bed which the "celebrated Earl of Rochester " had slept in, more than sixty years before. Not only is "prompt" Pope's word, but the inevitable word —and, by the way, "such" and "teach" would not be good to hear together in one line.
Had this noble stanza been alone the reading "on honour's noble bed " would have made a plausible and admirable sense —the bivouac, the battlefield. But context, taken with Pope's words "in" and "nobler," make certain a darker and sterner meaning—the grave.—I am, Sir, &c., T. W. LYBTER.
Dublin.
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