Note 13 — THE TEMPLE OF FAME.
Reading edition
Dryden's translation of Ovid's Met. book xii.:
Confused and chiding, like the hollow roar Of tides, receding from th' insulted shore; Or like the broken thunder heard from far When Jove at distance drives the rolling war.
This is more poetically expressed than the same image in our author. Dryden's lines are superior to the original.—Warton.
Pope copied Dryden's translation of Ovid, and for this reason did not quote the parallel passage from Chaucer's second book of the House of Fame, where the eagle, when they come within hearing of the swell of indistinct voices, holds a colloquy with the poet on the phenomenon:
"And what sound is it like?" quoth he. "Peter! beating of the sea," Quoth I, "against the rockes hollow, When tempest doth the shippes swallow, Or elles like the last humbling After the clap of a thundring."
"Peter" is an exclamation; and the sense is, "By St. Peter it is like the beating of the sea against the hollow rocks." In Pope's poem no cause is assigned for the "wild promiscuous sound." In Chaucer it is produced by the confluence of the talk upon earth, every word of which is conveyed to the House of Fame.