Note 31 — WINTER:[1]
Reading edition
Oldham's translation of Moschus:
The feathered choir that used to throng In list'ning flocks to learn his well-tuned song.
The line in the text was the earliest reading in the manuscript, but did not appear in print till the edition of Warburton. The reading in the previous editions was,
No more the nightingales repeat her lays.
This idea of the nightingale repeating the lays is amplified by Philips in his Fifth Pastoral, who copied it, according to Pope in the Guardian, from Strada. Thence also it must have been borrowed by Pope, and he may have restored the primitive version to get rid of the coincidence.