Note 18 — SAPPHO TO PHAON.[1]
Reading edition
Scrope is pleasing here:
Oh! let me once more see those eyes of thine! Thy love I ask not; do but suffer mine.—Wakefield.
Pope's couplet was as follows in the MS.:
Thy love I ask not to forsaken me, All that I ask is but to doat on thee.
"Scrope melius hic," wrote Cromwell, and though Pope altered the lines the remark of Cromwell remains true.