Select Poems of Thomas Gray

by Thomas Gray

NOTES.

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ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until 1750, when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12, 1750) in which he says: "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer), and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it: a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like to want." It was shown in manuscript to some of the author's friends, and was published in 1751 only because it was about to be printed surreptitiously.

February 11, 1751, Gray wrote to Walpole that the proprietors of "the Magazine of Magazines" were about to publish his Elegy, and added, "I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself,¹ and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be—'Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard.' If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better." Walpole did as requested, and wrote an advertisement to the effect that accident alone brought the poem before the public, although an apology was unnecessary to any but the author. On which Gray wrote, "I thank you for your advertisement, which saves my honour."

¹ Dodsley's proof-reading must have been somewhat careless, for there are many errors of the press in this editio princeps. Gray writes to Walpole, under date of "Ash-Wednesday, Cambridge, 1751," as follows: "Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter: we have ourselves suffered under her hands before now; and besides, it will only look the more careless and by accident as it were." Again, March 3, 1751, he writes: "I do not expect any more editions; as I have appeared in more magazines than one. The chief errata were sacred for secret; hidden for kindred (in spite of dukes and classics); and 'frowning as in scorn' for smiling. I humbly propose, for the benefit of Mr. Dodsley and his matrons, that take awake [in line 92, which at first read "awake and faithful to her wonted fires">[ for a verb, that they should read asleep, and all will be right." Other errors were, "Their harrow oft the stubborn glebe," "And read their destiny in a nation's eyes," "With uncouth rhymes and shapeless culture decked," "Slow through the churchway pass," and many of minor importance.

A writer in Notes and Queries, June 12, 1875, states that the poem first appeared in the London Magazine, March, 1751, p. 134, and that "the Magazine of Magazines" is "a gentle term of scorn used by Gray to indicate" that periodical, and not the name of any actual magazine. But in the next number of Notes and Queries (June 19, 1875) Mr. F. Locker informs us that he has in his possession a title-page of the Grand Magazine of Magazines, and the page of the number for April, 1751, which contains the Elegy. The magazine is said to be "collected and digested by Roger Woodville, Esq.," and "published by Cooper at the Globe, in Pater Noster Row."

Gray says nothing in his letters of the appearance of the Elegy in the London Magazine. The full title of that periodical was "The London Magazine: or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer." The editor's name was not given; the publisher was "R. Baldwin, jun. at the Rose in Pater-Noster Row." The volume for 1751 was the 20th, and the Preface (written at the close of the year) begins thus: "As the two most formidable Enemies we have ever had, are now extinct, we have great Reason to conclude, that it is only the Merit, and real Usefulness of our COLLECTION, that hath supported its Sale and Reputation for Twenty Years." A foot-note informs us that the "Enemies" are the "Magazine of Magazines and Grand Magazine of Magazines;" from which it would appear that there were two periodicals of similar name published in London in 1751.²

² May not the Elegy have been printed in both of these? We do not know how otherwise to reconcile the conflicting statements concerning the "Magazine of Magazines," as Gray calls it. In the first place, Gray appears (from other portions of his letter to Walpole) to be familiar with this magazine, and would not be likely to confound it with another of similar name. Then, as we have seen, he writes early in March to Walpole that the poem has been printed "in more magazines than one." This cannot refer to the Grand Magazine of Magazines, if, as Mr. Locker states, it was the April number of that periodical in which the poem appeared. Nor can it refer to the London Magazine, as it is clear from internal evidence that the March number, containing the Elegy, was not issued until early in April. It contains a summary of current news down to Sunday, March 31, and the price of stocks in the London market for March 30. The February number, in its "monthly catalogue" of new books, records the publication of the Elegy by Dodsley thus: "An Elegy wrote in a Church-yard, pr. 6d. Dodsley."

If, then, the Elegy did not appear in either the London Magazine or the Grand Magazine of Magazines until more than a month (in the case of the latter, perhaps two months) after Dodsley had issued it, in what magazine was it that it did appear just before he issued it? The N. A. Review says that "it was a close race between the Magazine and Dodsley; but the former, having a little the start, came out a few days ahead." If so, it must have been the March number; or the February one, if it was published, like the London, at the end of the month. Gray calls it "the Magazine of Magazines," and we shall take his word for it until we have reason for doubting it. What else was included in his "more magazines than one" we cannot even guess.

We have not been able to find the Magazine of Magazines or the Grand Magazine of Magazines in the libraries, and know nothing about either "of our own knowledge." The London Magazine is in the Harvard College Library, and the statements concerning that we can personally vouch for.

The author's name is not given with the Elegy as printed in the London Magazine. The poem is sandwiched between an "Epilogue to Alfred, a Masque" and some coarse rhymes entitled "Strip-Me-Naked, or Royal Gin for ever." There is not even a printer's "rule" or "dash" to separate the title of the latter from the last line of the Elegy. The poem is more correctly printed than in Dodsley's authorized edition; though, queerly enough, it has "winds" in the second line and the parenthesis "(all he had)" in the Epitaph. Of Dodsley's misprints noted above it has only "Their harrow oft" and "shapeless culture." These four errors, indeed, are the only ones worth noting, except "Or wake to extasy the living lyre."

The "Magazine of Magazines" (as the writer in the North American Review tells us) printed the Elegy with the author's name. The authorized though anonymous edition was thus briefly noticed by The Monthly Review, the critical Rhadamanthus of the day: "An Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 4to. Dodsley's. Seven pages.—The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity."

"Soon after its publication," says Mason, "I remember, sitting with Mr. Gray in his College apartment, he expressed to me his surprise at the rapidity of its sale. I replied:

'Sunt lacrymae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.'

He paused awhile, and taking his pen, wrote the line on a printed copy of it lying on his table. 'This,' said he, 'shall be its future motto.' 'Pity,' cried I, 'that Dr. Young's Night Thoughts have preoccupied it.' 'So,' replied he, 'indeed it is.'" Gray himself tells the story of its success on the margin of the manuscript copy of the Elegy preserved at Cambridge among his papers, and reproduced in fac-simile in Mathias's elegant edition of the poet. The following is a careful transcript of the memorandum:

"publish'd in
Feb:^ry, 1751.
by Dodsley: &
went thro' four
Editions; in two
months; and af-
terwards a fifth
6^th 7^th & 8^th 9^th & 10^th
& 11^th
printed also in 1753
with M^r Bentley's
Designs, of w^ch
there is a 2^d Edition
& again by Dodsley
in his Miscellany,
Vol: 4^th & in a
Scotch Collection
call'd the Union.
translated into
Latin by Chr: Anstey
Esq, & the Rev^d M^r
Roberts, & publish'd
in 1762; & again
in the same year
by Rob: Lloyd, M: A:"

"One peculiar and remarkable tribute to the merit of the Elegy," says Professor Henry Reed, "is to be noticed in the great number of translations which have been made of it into various languages, both of ancient and modern Europe. It is the same kind of tribute which has been rendered to Robinson Crusoe and to The Pilgrim's Progress, and is proof of the same universality of interest, transcending the limits of language and of race. To no poem in the English language has the same kind of homage been paid so abundantly. Of what other poem is there a polyglot edition? Italy and England have competed with their polyglot editions of the Elegy: Torri's, bearing the title, 'Elegia di Tomaso Gray sopra un Cimitero di Campagna, tradotta dall' Inglese in più lingue: Verona, 1817; Livorno, 1843;' and Van Voorst's London edition." Professor Reed adds a list of the translations (which, however, is incomplete), including one in Hebrew, seven in Greek, twelve in Latin, thirteen in Italian, fifteen in French, six in German, and one in Portuguese.

"Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy," remarks Byron, "high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the cornerstone of his glory."

The tribute paid the poem by General Wolfe is familiar to all, but we cannot refrain from quoting Lord Mahon's beautiful account of it in his History of England. On the night of September 13th, 1759, the night before the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Wolfe was descending the St. Lawrence with a part of his troops. The historian says: "Swiftly, but silently, did the boats fall down with the tide, unobserved by the enemy's sentinels at their posts along the shore. Of the soldiers on board, how eagerly must every heart have throbbed at the coming conflict! how intently must every eye have contemplated the dark outline, as it lay pencilled upon the midnight sky, and as every moment it grew closer and clearer, of the hostile heights! Not a word was spoken—not a sound heard beyond the rippling of the stream. Wolfe alone—thus tradition has told us—repeated in a low tone to the other officers in his boat those beautiful stanzas with which a country churchyard inspired the muse of Gray. One noble line,

'The paths of glory lead but to the grave,'

must have seemed at such a moment fraught with mournful meaning. At the close of the recitation Wolfe added, 'Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec.'"

Hales, in his Introduction to the poem, remarks: "The Elegy is perhaps the most widely known poem in our language. The reason of this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that it expresses in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are universal. In the current of ideas in the Elegy there is perhaps nothing that is rare, or exceptional, or out of the common way. The musings are of the most rational and obvious character possible; it is difficult to conceive of any one musing under similar circumstances who should not muse so; but they are not the less deep and moving on this account. The mystery of life does not become clearer, or less solemn and awful, for any amount of contemplation. Such inevitable, such everlasting questions as rise on the mind when one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their freshness, never cease to fascinate and to move. It is with such questions, that would have been commonplace long ages since if they could ever be so, that the Elegy deals. It deals with them in no lofty philosophical manner, but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always with the truest and the broadest humanity. The poet's thoughts turn to the poor; he forgets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the 'mouldering heaps' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that especially suggests itself is the potential greatness, when they lived, of the 'rude forefathers' that now lie at his feet. He does not, and cannot solve it, though he finds considerations to mitigate the sadness it must inspire; but he expresses it in all its awfulness in the most effective language and with the deepest feeling; and his expression of it has become a living part of our language."

The writer in the North American Review (vol. 96) from whom we have elsewhere quoted says of the Elegy: "It is upon this that Gray's fame as a poet must chiefly rest. By this he will be known forever alike to the lettered and the unlettered. Many, in future ages, who may never have heard of his classic Odes, his various learning, or his sparkling letters, will revere him only as the author of the Elegy. For this he will be enshrined through all time in the hearts of the myriads who shall speak our English tongue. For this his name will be held in glad remembrance in the far-off summer isles of the Pacific, and amidst the waste of polar snows. If he had written nothing else, his place as a leading poet in our language would still be assured. Many have asserted, with Johnson, that he was a mere mechanical poet—one who brought from without, but never found within; that the gift of inspiration was not native to him; that his imagination was borrowed finery, his fancy tinsel, and his invention the world's well-worn jewels; that whatever in his verse was poetic was not new, and what was new was not poetic; that he was only an unworldly dyspeptic, living amid many books, and laboriously delving for a lifetime between musty covers, picking out now and then another's gems and bits of ore, and fashioning them into ill-compacted mosaics, which he wrongly called his own. To all this the Elegy is a sufficient answer. It is not old—it is not bookish; it is new and human. Books could not make its maker: he was born of the divine breath alone. Consider all the commentators, the scholiasts, the interpreters, the annotators, and other like book-worms, from Aristarchus down to Döderlein; and may it not be said that, among them all, 'Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum?'

"Gray wrote but little, yet he wrote that little well. He might have done far more for us; the same is true of most men, even of the greatest. The possibilities of a life are always in advance of its performance. But we cannot say that his life was a wasted one. Even this little Elegy alone should go for much. For, suppose that he had never written this, but instead had done much else in other ways, according to his powers: that he had written many learned treatises; that he had, with keen criticism, expounded and reconstructed Greek classics; that he had, perchance, sat upon the woolsack, and laid rich offerings at the feet of blind Justice;—taking the years together, would it have been, on the whole, better for him or for us? Would he have added so much to the sum of human happiness? He might thus have made himself a power for a time, to be dethroned by some new usurper in the realm of knowledge; now he is a power and a joy forever to countless thousands."

Two manuscripts of the Elegy, in Gray's handwriting, still exist. Both were bequeathed by the poet, together with his library, letters, and many miscellaneous papers, to his friends the Rev. William Mason and the Rev. James Browne, as joint literary executors. Mason bequeathed the entire trust to Mr. Stonhewer. The latter, in making his will, divided the legacy into two parts. The larger share went to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke Hall. Among the papers, which are still in the possession of the College, was found a copy of the Elegy. An excellent fac-simile of this manuscript appears in Mathias's edition of Gray, published in 1814. In referring to it hereafter we shall designate it as the "Pembroke" MS.

The remaining portion of Gray's literary bequest, including the other manuscript of the Elegy, was left by Mr. Stonhewer to his friend, Mr. Bright. In 1845 Mr. Bright's sons sold the collection at auction. The MS. of the Elegy was bought by Mr. Granville John Penn, of Stoke Park, for one hundred pounds—the highest sum that had ever been known to be paid for a single sheet of paper. In 1854 this manuscript came again into the market, and was knocked down to Mr. Robert Charles Wrightson, of Birmingham, for £131. On the 29th of May, 1875, it was once more offered for sale in London, and was purchased by Sir William Fraser for £230, or about $1150. A photographic reproduction of it was published in London in 1862. For convenience we shall refer to it as the "Wrightson" MS.

There can be little doubt that the Wrightson MS. is the original one, and that the Pembroke MS. is a fair copy made from it by the poet. The former contains a greater number of alterations, and varies more from the printed text. It bears internal evidence of being the rough draft, while the other represents a later stage of the poem. We will give the variations of both from the present version.³

³ For the readings of the Wrightson MS. we have had to depend on Mason, Mitford, and other editors of the poem, and on the article in the North American Review, already referred to. The readings of the Pembroke MS. are taken from the engraved fac-simile in Mathias's edition.

The two stanzas of which a fac-simile is given [above] are from the Pembroke MS., but the wood-cut hardly does justice to the feminine delicacy of the poet's handwriting.

The Wrightson MS. has in the [first stanza], "The lowing herd wind slowly," etc. See our note on this line, [below].

In the [2d stanza], it reads, "And now the air," etc.

The [5th stanza] is as follows:

"For ever sleep: the breezy call of morn, Or swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, Or Chanticleer so shrill, or echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."

In [8th stanza], "Their rustic joys," etc.

In [10th stanza], the first two lines read,

"Forgive, ye proud, th' involuntary fault, If memory to these no trophies raise."

In [12th stanza], "Hands that the reins of empire," etc.

In [13th stanza], "Chill Penury depress'd," etc.

The [15th stanza] reads thus:

"Some village Cato, who, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest, Some Cæsar guiltless of his country's blood."4

⁴ The Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, has a long article on the change made by Gray in this stanza, entitled, "A Lesson from Gray's Elegy," from which we cull the following paragraphs:

"Gray, having first of all put down the names of three Romans as illustrations of his meaning, afterwards deliberately struck them out and put the names of three Englishmen instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the age, a change with which Gray himself had a good deal to do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, seems to us so obviously a change for the better that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would have thought the matter equally clear. We suspect that to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring novelty to draw illustrations from English history, especially from parts of English history which, it must be remembered, were then a great deal more recent than they are now. To be sure, in choosing English illustrations, a poet of Gray's time was in rather a hard strait. If he chose illustrations from the century or two before his own time, he could only choose names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent politics. If, in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had drawn illustrations from earlier times of English history, he would have found but few people in his day likely to understand him....

"The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general improvement in taste. He wrote first according to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his own better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to the fact that they were Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. But there is another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who would have regretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Cæsar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar. The 'classic' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Pardonable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when 'classic' studies and objects had the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly fashion."

In [18th stanza], "Or crown the shrine," etc.

After this stanza, the MS. has the following four stanzas, now omitted:

"The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow, Exalt the brave, and idolize success; But more to innocence their safety owe Than Pow'r, or Genius, e'er conspir'd to bless. "And thou who, mindful of the unhonour'd Dead, Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, By night and lonely contemplation led To wander in the gloomy walks of fate: "Hark! how the sacred Calm, that breathes around, Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease; In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground A grateful earnest of eternal peace. "No more, with reason and thyself at strife, Give anxious cares and endless wishes room; But through the cool sequester'd vale of life Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom."5

⁵ We follow Mason (ed. 1778) in the text of these stanzas. The North American Review has "Power and Genius" in the first, and "linger in the lonely walks" in the second.

The second of these stanzas has been remodelled and used as the 24th of the present version. Mason thought that there was a pathetic melancholy in all four which claimed preservation. The third he considered equal to any in the whole Elegy. The poem was originally intended to end here, the introduction of "the hoary-headed swain" being a happy after-thought.

In the [19th stanza], the MS. has "never learn'd to stray."

In the [21st stanza], "fame and epitaph," etc.

In the [23d stanza], the last line reads,

"And buried ashes glow with social fires."

"Social" subsequently became "wonted," and other changes were made (see [above], foot-note) before the line took its present form.

The [24th stanza] reads,

"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more, By sympathetic musings here delay'd, With vain, though kind inquiry shall explore Thy once-lov'd haunt, this long-deserted shade."6

⁶ Mitford (Eton ed.) gives "sympathizing" in the second line, and for the last,

"Thy ever loved haunt—this long deserted shade."

The latter is obviously wrong (Gray was incapable of such metre), and the former is probably wrong also.

The last line of the [25th stanza] reads,

"On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."

Then comes the following stanza, afterwards omitted:

"Him have we seen the greenwood side along, While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song, With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."7

Mason remarked: "I rather wonder that he rejected this stanza, as it not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which charms us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but also completes the account of his whole day; whereas, this evening scene being omitted, we have only his morning walk, and his noontide repose."

⁷ Here also we follow Mason; the North American Review reads "our labours done."

The first line of the [27th stanza] reads,

"With gestures quaint, now smiling as in scorn."

After the [29th stanza], and before the Epitaph, the MS. contains the following omitted stanza:

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are frequent violets found; The robin loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

This—with two or three verbal changes only⁸—was inserted in all the editions up to 1753, when it was dropped. The omission was not made from any objection to the stanza in itself, but simply because it was too long a parenthesis in this place; on the principle which he states in a letter to Dr. Beattie: "As to description, I have always thought that it made the most graceful ornament of poetry, but never ought to make the subject." The part was sacrificed for the good of the whole. Mason very justly remarked that "the lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation."

⁸ See [below]. The writer in the North American Review is our only authority for the stanza as given above. He appears to have had the photographic reproduction of the Wrightson MS., but we cannot vouch for the accuracy of his transcripts from it.

The first line of the [31st stanza] has "and his heart sincere."

The [32d and last stanza] is as follows:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose, Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode— (His frailties there in trembling hope repose); The bosom of his Father and his God."9

⁹ The above are all the variations from the present text in the Wrightson MS. which are noted by the authorities on whom we have depended; but we suspect that the following readings, mentioned by Mitford as in the MS., belong to that MS., as they are not found in the other: in the [7th stanza], "sickles" for "sickle;" in [18th], "shrines" for "shrine." Two others (in stanzas 9th and 27th) are referred to in our account of the Pembroke MS. below.

The Pembroke MS. has the following variations from the present version:

In the [1st stanza], "wind" for "winds."

[2d stanza], "Or drowsy," etc.

[5th stanza], "and the ecchoing horn."

[6th stanza], "Nor climb his knees."

[9th stanza], "Awaits alike." Probably this is also the reading of the Wrightson MS. Mitford gives it as noted by Mason, and it is retained by Gray in the ed. of 1768.

The [10th stanza] begins,

"Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary fault If Memory to these," etc.,

the present readings ("Nor you," "impute to these," and "Mem'ry o'er their tomb") being inserted in the margin.

The [12th stanza] has "reins of empire," with "rod" in the margin.

In the [15th stanza], the word "lands" has been crossed out, and "fields" written above it.

The [17th] has "Or shut the gates," etc.

In the [21st] we have "fame and epitaph supply."

The [23d] has "And in our ashes glow," the readings "Ev'n" and "live" being inserted in the margin.

The [27th stanza] has "would he rove." We suspect that this is also the reading of the Wrightson MS., as Mitford says it is noted by Mason.

In the [28th stanza], the first line reads "from the custom'd hill."

In the [29th] a word which we cannot make out has been erased, and "aged" substituted.

Before the Epitaph, two asterisks refer to the bottom of the page, where the following stanza is given, with the marginal note, "Omitted in 1753:"

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the Year, By Hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found; The Red-breast loves to build, and warble there, And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground."

The last two lines of the [31st stanza] (see note [below]) are pointed as follows:

"He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear, He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend."

Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following: "Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Huswife;" "Ile" (aisle); "wast" (waste); "village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;" "spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc.

Mitford, in his Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton" edition of his Poems (edited by Rev. John Moultrie, 1847), says: "I possess many curious variations from the printed text, taken from a copy of it in his own handwriting." He adds specimens of these variations, a few of which differ from both the Wrightson and Pembroke MSS. We give these in our notes below. See on [12], [24], and [93].

Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene of the Elegy, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, been in favor of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in 1742; and there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In that churchyard his mother was buried, and there, at his request, his own remains were afterwards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, in all respects in perfect keeping with the spirit of the poem.

According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parish about two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in the habit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of the poem; and the great bell of St. Mary's is the "curfew" of the first stanza. Another tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, some three miles and a half northwest of Cambridge. Both places have churchyards such as the Elegy describes; and this is about all that can be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parish called Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at least has suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason than that Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, and casually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot of which he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a whole morning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poet often visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fond and tender associations that gathered about Stoke.

[1.] The curfew. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to suppose that the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark of Norman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest, it only shows that the old English police was less well-regulated than that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior civilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of the timber-built towns of the Middle Ages: 'Solae pestes Londoniae sunt stultorum immodica potatio et frequens incendium' (Fitzstephen). The enforced extinction of domestic lights at an appointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them."

Warton wanted to have this line read

"The curfew tolls!—the knell of parting day."

It is sufficient to say that Gray, as the manuscript shows, did not want it to read so, and that we much prefer his way to Warton's.

Mitford says that toll is "not the appropriate verb," as the curfew was rung, not tolled. We presume that depended, to some extent, on the fancy of the ringer. Milton (Il Pens. 76) speaks of the curfew as

"Swinging slow with sullen roar."

Gray himself quotes here Dante, Purgat. 8:

—"squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore;"

and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation:

—"from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day."

Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, 22:

"That tolls the knell for their departed sense."

On parting=departing, cf. Shakes. Cor. v. 6: "When I parted hence;" Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid," etc.

[2.] The lowing herd wind, etc. Wind, and not winds, is the reading of the MS. (see fac-simile of this stanza [above]) and of all the early editions—that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's, Mathias's, etc.—but we find no note of the fact in Mitford's or any other of the more recent editions, which have substituted winds. Whether the change was made as an amendment or accidentally, we do not know;¹⁰ but the original reading seems to us by far the better one. The poet does not refer to the herd as an aggregate, but to the animals that compose it. He sees, not it, but "them on their winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the meaning and the melody of the line.

¹⁰ Very likely the latter, as we have seen that winds appears in the unauthorized version of the London Magazine (March, 1751), where it may be a misprint, like the others noted above.

We may remark here that the edition of 1768—the editio princeps of the collected Poems—was issued under Gray's own supervision, and is printed with remarkable accuracy. We have detected only one indubitable error of the type in the entire volume. Certain peculiarities of spelling were probably intentional, as we find the like in the fac-similes of the poet's manuscripts. The many quotations from Greek, Latin, and Italian are correctly given (according to the received texts of the time), and the references to authorities, so far as we have verified them, are equally exact. The book throughout bears the marks of Gray's scholarly and critical habits, and we may be sure that the poems appear in precisely the form which he meant they should retain. In doubtful cases, therefore, we have generally followed this edition. Mason's (the second edition: York, 1778) is also carefully edited and printed, and its readings seldom vary from Gray's. All of Mitford's that we have examined swarm with errors, especially in the notes. Pickering's (1835), edited by Mitford, is perhaps the worst of all. The Boston ed. (Little, Brown, & Co., 1853) is a pretty careful reproduction of Pickering's, with all its inaccuracies.

[3.] The critic of the N. A. Review points out that this line "is quite peculiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he adds, "twenty different versions preserving the rhythm, the general sentiment and the rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be, not inappropriately, substituted for the original reading."

Luke quotes Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7, 39: "And now she was uppon the weary way."

[6.] Air is of course the object, not the subject of the verb.

[7.] Save where the beetle, etc. Cf. Collins, Ode to Evening:

"Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum."

and Macbeth, iii. 2:

"Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal," etc.

[10.] The moping owl. Mitford quotes Ovid, Met. v. 550: "Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, Winter, 114:

"Assiduous in his bower the wailing owl Plies his sad song;"

and Mallet, Excursion:

"the wailing owl
Screams solitary to the mournful moon."

[12.] Her ancient solitary reign. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iii. 476: "desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."

[13.] "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tennyson (In Mem. x.) speaks of resting

'beneath the clover sod That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God.'

In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.) when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be 'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's White Devil). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral reasons gave no choice" (Hales).

[17.] Cf. Milton, Arcades, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" P. L. ix. 192:

"Now when as sacred light began to dawn In Eden on the humid flowers that breath'd Their morning incense," etc.

[18.] Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, Æn. viii. 455:

"Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma, Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus."

[19.] The cock's shrill clarion. Cf. Philips, Cyder, i. 753:

"When chanticleer with clarion shrill recalls The tardy day;"

Milton, P. L. vii. 443:

"The crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours;"

Hamlet, i. 1:

"The cock that is the trumpet to the morn;"

Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia:

"I slept not till the early bugle-horn Of chaunticlere had summon'd in the morn;"

and Thomas Kyd, England's Parnassus:

"The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter, Wayting upon the rising of the sunne; The wandering swallow with her broken song," etc.

[20.] Their lowly bed. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter."

[21.] Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894:

"Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent;"

and Horace, Epod. ii. 39:

"Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet Domum atque dulces liberos * * * * * * * Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum Lassi sub adventum viri," etc.

Mitford quotes Thomson, Winter, 311:

"In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence."

Wakefield cites The Idler, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last."

[22.] Ply her evening care. Mitford says, "To ply a care is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme share." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the Elegy unintelligible. Compare his own

'And she I cherished turned her wheel Beside an English fire.'"

[23.] No children run, etc. Hales quotes Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night, 21:

"Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee."

[24.] Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield compares Virgil, Geo. ii. 523:

"Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;"

and Mitford adds from Dryden,

"Whose little arms about thy legs are cast, And climbing for a kiss prevent their mother's haste."

Cf. Thomson, Liberty, iii. 171:

"His little children climbing for a kiss."

[26.] The stubborn glebe. Cf. Gay, Fables, ii. 15:

"'Tis mine to tame the stubborn glebe."

Broke=broken, as often in poetry, especially in the Elizabethan writers. See Abbott, Shakes. Gr. 343.

[27.] Drive their team afield. Cf. Lycidas, 27: "We drove afield;" and Dryden, Virgil's Ecl. ii. 38: "With me to drive afield."

[28.] Their sturdy stroke. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Feb.:

"But to the roote bent his sturdy stroake, And made many wounds in the wast [wasted] Oake;"

and Dryden, Geo. iii. 639:

"Labour him with many a sturdy stroke."

[30.] As Mitford remarks, obscure and poor make "a very imperfect rhyme;" and the same might be said of toil and smile.

[33.] Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind these verses from his friend West's Monody on Queen Caroline:

"Ah, me! what boots us all our boasted power, Our golden treasure, and our purple state; They cannot ward the inevitable hour, Nor stay the fearful violence of fate."

Hurd compares Cowley:

"Beauty, and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power, Have their short flourishing hour; And love to see themselves, and smile, And joy in their pre-eminence a while: Even so in the same land Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand; Alas! Death mows down all with an impartial hand."

[35.] Awaits. The reading of the ed. of 1768, as of the Pembroke (and probably the other) MS. Hour is the subject, not the object, of the verb.

[36.] Hayley, in the Life of Crashaw, Biographia Britannica, says that this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus in his Danish Antiquities."

[39.] Fretted. The fret is, strictly, an ornament used in classical architecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at right angles. Parker (Glossary of Architecture) derives the word from the Latin fretum, a strait; and Hales from ferrum, iron, through the Italian ferrata, an iron grating. It is more likely (see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. S. frætu, an ornament.

Cf. Hamlet, ii. 2:

"This majestical roof fretted with golden fire;"

and Cymbeline, ii. 4:

"The roof o' the chamber With golden cherubins is fretted."

[40.] The pealing anthem. Cf. Il Penseroso, 161:

"There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthem clear," etc.

[41.] Storied urn. Cf. Il Pens. 159: "storied windows richly dight." On animated bust, cf. Pope, Temple of Fame, 73: "Heroes in animated marble frown;" and Virgil, Æn. vi. 847: "spirantia aera."

[43.] Provoke. Mitford considers this use of the word "unusually bold, to say the least." It is simply the etymological meaning, to call forth (Latin, provocare). See Wb. Cf. Pope, Ode:

"But when our country's cause provokes to arms."

[44.] Dull cold ear. Cf. Shakes. Hen. VIII. iii. 2: "And sleep in dull, cold marble."

[46.] Pregnant with celestial fire. This phrase has been copied by Cowper in his Boadicea, which is said (see notes of "Globe" ed.) to have been written after reading Hume's History, in 1780:

"Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre."

[47.] Mitford quotes Ovid, Ep. v. 86:

"Sunt mihi quas possint sceptra decere manus."

[48.] Living lyre. Cf. Cowley:

"Begin the song, and strike the living lyre;"

and Pope, Windsor Forest, 281:

"Who now shall charm the shades where Cowley strung His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?"

[50.] Cf. Browne, Religio Medici: "Rich with the spoils of nature."

[51.] "Rage is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm" (Hales). Cf. Cowley:

"Who brought green poesy to her perfect age, And made that art which was a rage?"

and Tickell, Prol.:

"How hard the task! How rare the godlike rage!"

Cf. also the use of the Latin rabies for the "divine afflatus," as in Æneid, vi. 49.

[53.] Full many a gem, etc. Cf. Bishop Hall, Contemplations: "There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never was seene, nor never shall bee."

Purest ray serene. As Hales remarks, this is a favourite arrangement of epithets with Milton. Cf. Hymn on Nativity: "flower-inwoven tresses torn;" Comus: "beckoning shadows dire;" "every alley green," etc.; L'Allegro: "native wood-notes wild;" Lycidas: "sad occasion dear;" "blest kingdoms meek," etc.

[55.] Full many a flower, etc. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, iv. 158:

"Like roses that in deserts bloom and die."

Mitford cites Chamberlayne, Pharonida, ii. 4:

"Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent Of odours in unhaunted deserts;"

and Young, Univ. Pass. sat. v.:

"In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race;"

and Philip, Thule:

"Like woodland flowers, which paint the desert glades, And waste their sweets in unfrequented shades."

Hales quotes Waller's

"Go, lovely rose, Tell her that's young And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide Thou must have uncommended died."

On desert air, cf. Macbeth, iv. 3: "That would be howl'd out in the desert air."

[57.] It was in 1636 that John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire (a cousin of Oliver Cromwell), refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. was levying without the authority of Parliament.

[58.] Little tyrant. Cf. Thomson, Winter:

"With open freedom little tyrants raged."

The artists who have illustrated this passage (see, for instance, Favourite English Poems, p. 305, and Harper's Monthly, vol. vii. p. 3) appear to understand "little" as equivalent to juvenile. If that had been the meaning, the poet would have used some other phrase than "of his fields," or "his lands," as he first wrote it.

[59.] Some mute inglorious Milton. Cf. Phillips, preface to Theatrum Poetarum: "Even the very names of some who having perhaps been comparable to Homer for heroic poesy, or to Euripides for tragedy, yet nevertheless sleep inglorious in the crowd of the forgotten vulgar."

[60.] Some Cromwell, etc. Hales remarks: "The prejudice against Cromwell was extremely strong throughout the 18th century, even amongst the more liberal-minded. That cloud of 'detractions rude,' of which Milton speaks in his noble sonnet to our 'chief of men' as in his own day enveloping the great republican leader, still lay thick and heavy over him. His wise statesmanship, his unceasing earnestness, his high-minded purpose, were not yet seen."

After this stanza Thomas Edwards, the author of the Canons of Criticism, would add the following, to supply what he deemed a defect in the poem:

"Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms Shone with attraction to herself alone; Whose beauty might have bless'd a monarch's arms, Whose virtue cast a lustre on a throne. "That humble beauty warm'd an honest heart, And cheer'd the labours of a faithful spouse; That virtue form'd for every decent part The healthful offspring that adorn'd their house."

Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet.

[63.] Mitford quotes Tickell:

"To scatter blessings o'er the British land;"

and Mrs. Behn:

"Is scattering plenty over all the land."

[66.] Their growing virtues. That is, the growth of their virtues.

[67.] To wade through slaughter, etc. Cf. Pope, Temp. of Fame, 347:

"And swam to empire through the purple flood."

[68.] Cf. Shakes. Hen. V. iii. 3:

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up."

[70.] To quench the blushes, etc. Cf. Shakes. W. T. iv. 3:

"Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself."

[73.] Far from the madding crowd's, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:

"Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords."

Mitford points out "the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which one must break the grammatical construction." The poet's meaning is, however, clear enough.

[75.] Wakefield quotes Pope, Epitaph on Fenton:

"Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, Content with science in the vale of peace."

[77.] These bones. "The bones of these. So is is often used in Latin, especially by Livy, as in v. 22: 'Ea sola pecunia,' the money derived from that sale, etc." (Hales).

[84.] That teach. Mitford censures teach as ungrammatical; but it may be justified as a "construction according to sense."

[85.] Hales remarks: "At the first glance it might seem that to dumb Forgetfulness a prey was in apposition to who, and the meaning was, 'Who that now lies forgotten,' etc.; in which case the second line of the stanza must be closely connected with the fourth; for the question of the passage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who ever died without wishing to be remembered?' But in this way of interpreting this difficult stanza (i.) there is comparatively little force in the appositional phrase, and (ii.) there is a certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbal though apparently coördinate) in which, as has just been noticed, the point of the question really lies. Perhaps therefore it is better to take the phrase to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as in fact the completion of the predicate resign'd, and interpret thus: Who ever resigned this life of his with all its pleasures and all its pains to be utterly ignored and forgotten?=who ever, when resigning it, reconciled himself to its being forgotten? In this case the second half of the stanza echoes the thought of the first half."

We give the note in full, and leave the reader to take his choice of the two interpretations. For ourself, we incline to the first rather than the second. We prefer to take to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as appositional and proleptic, and not as the grammatical complement of resigned: Who, yielding himself up a prey to dumb Forgetfulness, ever resigned this life without casting a longing, lingering look behind?

[90.] Pious is used in the sense of the Latin pius. Ovid has "piae lacrimae." Mitford quotes Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, 49:

"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd."

"In this stanza," says Hales, "he answers in an exquisite manner the two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding stanza.... What he would say is that every one while a spark of life yet remains in him yearns for some kindly loving remembrance; nay, even after the spark is quenched, even when all is dust and ashes, that yearning must still be felt."

[91, 92.] Mitford paraphrases the couplet thus: "The voice of Nature still cries from the tomb in the language of the epitaph inscribed upon it, which still endeavours to connect us with the living; the fires of former affection are still alive beneath our ashes."

Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 3880:

"Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken."

Gray himself quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 169:

"Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, Fredda una lingua e due begli occhi chiusi, Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville,"

translated by Nott as follows:

"These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, Clos'd thy bright eye, and mute thy poet's tongue, E'en after death shall still with sparks be fraught,"

the "these" meaning his love and his songs concerning it. Gray translated this sonnet into Latin elegiacs, the last line being rendered,

"Ardebitque urna multa favilla mea."

[93.] On a MS. variation of this stanza given by Mitford, see [above], footnote.

[95.] Chance is virtually an adverb here = perchance.

[98.] The peep of dawn. Mitford quotes Comus, 138:

"Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn, on the Indian steep From her cabin'd loop-hole peep."

[99.] Cf. Milton, P. L. v. 428:

"though from off the boughs each morn We brush mellifluous dews;"

and Arcades, 50:

"And from the boughs brush off the evil dew."

Wakefield quotes Thomson, Spring, 103:

"Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops From the bent brush, as through the verdant maze Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk."

[100.] Upland lawn. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 25:

"Ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn."

In L'Allegro, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks "upland=country, as opposed to town." He adds, "Gray in his Elegy seems to use the word loosely for 'on the higher ground;' perhaps he took it from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Milton uses it." We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is true that upland used to mean country, as uplanders meant countrymen, and uplandish countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the other meaning is older than Milton (see Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic Words), and Johnson, Keightley, and others are probably right in considering "upland hamlets" an instance of it. Masson, in his recent edition of Milton (1875), explains the "upland hamlets" as "little villages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and the hay-making."

[101.] As Mitford remarks, beech and stretch form an imperfect rhyme.

[102.] Luke quotes Spenser, Ruines of Rome, st. 28:

"Shewing her wreathed rootes and naked armes."

[103.] His listless length. Hales compares King Lear, i. 4: "If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry." Cf. also Brittain's Ida (formerly ascribed to Spenser, but rejected by the best editors), iii. 2:

"Her goodly length stretcht on a lilly-bed."

[104.] Cf. Thomson, Spring, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, Od. iii. 13, 15:

"unde loquaces Lymphae desiliunt tuae."

Wakefield quotes As You Like It, ii. 1:

"As he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this road."

[105.] Smiling as in scorn. Cf. Shakes. Pass. Pilgrim, 14:

"Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile, In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether."

and Skelton, Prol. to B. of C.:

"Smylynge half in scorne At our foly."

[107.] Woeful-wan. Mitford says: "Woeful-wan is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the handcuffs of the hyphen." The hyphen is not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in the Pembroke MS.

Wakefield quotes Spenser, Shep. Kal. Jan.:

"For pale and wanne he was (alas the while!) May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke."

[108.] "Hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way" (Hales).

[109.] Custom'd is Gray's word, not 'custom'd, as usually printed. See either Wb. or Worc. s. v. Cf. Milton, Ep. Damonis: "Simul assueta seditque sub ulmo."

[114.] Churchway path. Cf. Shakes. M. N. D. v. 2:

"Now it is the time of night, That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite In the churchway paths to glide."

[115.] For thou canst read. The "hoary-headed swain" of course could not read.

[116.] Grav'd. The old form of the participle is graven, but graved is also in good use. The old preterite grove is obsolete.

[117.] The lap of earth. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 7, 9:

"For other beds the Priests there used none, But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie;"

and Milton, P. L. x. 777:

"How glad would lay me down, As in my mother's lap!"

Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pathetic sentence of Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater, operit."

[123.] He gave to misery all he had, a tear. This is the pointing of the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, almost without exception) to,

"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear."

This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illustration of it:

"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live."

[126.] Mitford says that Or in this line should be Nor. Yes, if "draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose, Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode."

[127.] In trembling hope. Gray quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 104: "paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;" Mallet, Funeral Hymn, 473:

"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;"

and Beaumont, Psyche, xv. 314:

"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear."

Hooker (Eccl. Pol. i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."

ODE ON THE SPRING.

The original manuscript title of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of "Ode."

[1.] The rosy-bosom'd Hours. Cf. Milton, Comus, 984: "The Graces and the rosy-bosom'd Hours;" and Thomson, Spring, 1007:

"The rosy-bosom'd Spring To weeping Fancy pines."

The Horæ, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by "the dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially spring and autumn, or "Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first there were only two Horæ, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn); but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons.

[2.] Fair Venus' train. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks: "Venus is here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of creation and beauty."

[3.] Long-expecting. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes incorrectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, Astræa Redux, 132: "To flowers that in its womb expecting lie."

[4.] The purple year. Cf. the Pervigilium Veneris, 13: "Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus;" Pope, Pastorals, i. 28: "And lavish Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, Zephyr: "Gales that wake the purple year."

[5.] The Attic warbler. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (P. R. iv. 245):

"where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."

Cf. Ovid, Hal. 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;" and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."

Pours her throat is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"

[6, 7.] Cf. Thomson, Spring, 577:

"From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings, The symphony of spring."

[9, 10.] Cf. Milton, Comus, 989:

"And west winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells."

[12.] Cf. Milton, P. L. iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers;" Pope, Eloisa, 170: "And breathes a browner horror on the woods;" Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. 38: "Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."

According to Ruskin (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not acknowledge the existence of the colour of brown at all," he goes on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know I have found that there is no brown in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue," etc.

[14.] O'ercanopies the glade. Gray himself quotes Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 1: "A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine."¹ Cf. Fletcher, Purple Island, i. 5, 30: "The beech shall yield a cool, safe canopy;" and Milton, Comus, 543: "a bank, With ivy canopied."

¹ The reading of the folio of 1623 is:

"I know a banke where the wilde time blowes, Where Oxslips and the nodding Violet growes, Quite ouer-cannoped with luscious woodbine."

Dyce and some other modern editors read,

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine."

[15.] Rushy brink. Cf. Comus, 890: "By the rushy-fringed bank."

[19, 20.] These lines, as first printed, read:

"How low, how indigent the proud! How little are the great!"

[22.] The panting herds. Cf. Pope, Past. ii. 87: "To closer shades the panting flocks remove."

[23.] The peopled air. Cf. Walton, C. A.: "Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing;" Beaumont, Psyche: "Every tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats."

[24.] The busy murmur. Cf. Milton, P. R. iv. 248: "bees' industrious murmur."

[25.] The insect youth. Perhaps suggested by a line in Green's Hermitage, quoted in a letter of Gray to Walpole: "From maggot-youth through change of state," etc. See on 31 below.

[26.] The honied spring. Cf. Milton, Il Pens. 142: "the bee with honied thigh;" and Lyc. 140: "the honied showers."

"There has of late arisen," says Johnson in his Life of Gray, "a practice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain, the daisied bank; but I am sorry to see in the lines of a scholar like Gray the honied spring." But, as we have seen, honied is found in Milton; and Shakespeare also uses it in Hen. V. i. 1: "honey'd sentences." Mellitus is used by Cicero, Horace, and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our substances into verbs, participles, and participial adjectives is of the very essence of our tongue, derived from its Saxon origin, and a main source of its energy and richness."

[27.] The liquid noon. Gray quotes Virgil, Geo. iv. 59: "Nare per aestatem liquidam."

[30.] Quick-glancing to the sun. Gray quotes Milton, P. L. vii. 405:

"Sporting with quick glance, Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold."

[31.] Gray here quotes Green, Grotto: "While insects from the threshold preach." In a letter to Walpole, he says: "I send you a bit of a thing for two reasons: first, because it is of one of your favourites, Mr. M. Green; and next, because I would do justice. The thought on which my second Ode turns [this Ode, afterwards placed first by Gray] is manifestly stole from hence; not that I knew it at the time, but having seen this many years before, to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, and, forgetting the Author, I took it for my own." Then comes the quotation from Green's Grotto. The passage referring to the insects is as follows:

"To the mind's ear, and inward sight, There silence speaks, and shade gives light: While insects from the threshold preach, And minds dispos'd to musing teach; Proud of strong limbs and painted hues, They perish by the slightest bruise; Or maladies begun within Destroy more slow life's frail machine: From maggot-youth, thro' change of state, They feel like us the turns of fate: Some born to creep have liv'd to fly, And chang'd earth's cells for dwellings high: And some that did their six wings keep, Before they died, been forc'd to creep. They politics, like ours, profess; The greater prey upon the less. Some strain on foot huge loads to bring, Some toil incessant on the wing: Nor from their vigorous schemes desist Till death; and then they are never mist. Some frolick, toil, marry, increase, Are sick and well, have war and peace; And broke with age in half a day, Yield to successors, and away."

[47.] Painted plumage. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 118: "His painted wings; and Milton, P. L. vii. 433:

"From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings."

See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 243, and Æn. iv. 525: "pictaeque volucres;" and Phædrus, Fab. iii. 18: "pictisque plumis."

ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT.

This ode first appeared in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the ode for an inscription.

In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the subject of the ode in the following jocose strain: "As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. I knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima?), or rather I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your handsome Cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in the survivor; oh no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not begin to cry,

Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris.

"... Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows: [the Ode follows, which we need not reprint here].

"There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph."

[2.] Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, Town Eclogues:

"Where the tall jar erects its stately pride, With antic shapes in China's azure dyed."

[3.] The azure flowers that blow. Johnson and Wakefield find fault with this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usage allows. In the Progress of Poesy, i. 1, we have again: "The laughing flowers that round them blow." Cf. Comus, 992:

"Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew."

[4.] Tabby. For the derivation of this word from the French tabis, a kind of silk, see Wb. In the first ed. the 5th line preceded the 4th.

[6.] The lake. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the whole poem.

[11.] Jet. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town in Lycia, where the mineral was first obtained.

[14.] Two angel forms. In the first ed. "two beauteous forms," which Mitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of angel and genii interfere with each other, and bring different associations to the mind."

[16.] Tyrian hue. Explained by the "purple" in next line; an allusion to the famous Tyrian dye of the ancients. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 142: "with fins of Tyrian dye."

[17.] Cf. Virgil, Geo. iv. 274:

"Aureus ipse; sed in foliis, quae plurima circum Funduntur, violae sublucet purpura nigrae."

See also Pope, Windsor Forest, 332: "His shining horns diffus'd a golden glow;" Temple of Fame, 253: "And lucid amber casts a golden gleam."

[24.] In the 1st ed. "What cat's a foe to fish?" and in the next line, "with eyes intent."

[31.] Eight times. Alluding to the proverbial "nine lives" of the cat.

[34.] No dolphin came. An allusion to the story of Arion, who when thrown overboard by the sailors for the sake of his wealth was borne safely to land by a dolphin.

No Nereid stirr'd. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 50:

"Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?"

[35, 36.] The reading of 1st ed. is,

"Nor cruel Tom nor Harry heard. What favourite has a friend?"

[40.] The 1st ed. has "Not all that strikes," etc.

[42.] Nor all that glisters gold. A favourite proverb with the old English poets. Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 16430:

"But all thing which that shineth as the gold Ne is no gold, as I have herd it told;"

Spenser, F. Q. ii. 8, 14:

"Yet gold all is not, that doth golden seeme;"

Shakes. M. of V. ii. 7:

"All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told;"

Dryden, Hind and Panther:

"All, as they say, that glitters is not gold."

Other examples might be given. Glisten is not found in Shakes. or Milton, but both use glister several times. See W. T. iii. 2; Rich. II. iii. 3; T. A. ii. 1, etc.; Lycidas, 79; Comus, 219; P. L. iii. 550; iv. 645, 653, etc.

ETON COLLEGE.

ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.

This, as Mason informs us, was the first English¹ production of Gray's that appeared in print. It was published, in folio, in 1747; and appeared again in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 267, without the name of the author.

¹ A Latin poem by him, a "Hymeneal" on the Prince of Wales's Marriage, had appeared in the Cambridge Collection in 1736.

Hazlitt (Lectures on English Poets) says of this Ode: "It is more mechanical and commonplace [than the Elegy]; but it touches on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's 'stately heights,' or sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that we should think of him; for he thought of others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad music of humanity.'"

The writer in the North American Review (vol. xcvi.), after referring to the publication of this Ode, which, "according to the custom of the time, was judiciously swathed in folio," adds:

"About this time Gray's portrait was painted, at Walpole's request; and on the paper which he is represented as holding, Walpole wrote the title of the Ode, with a line from Lucan:

'Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.'

The poem met with very little attention until it was republished in 1751, with a few other of his Odes. Gray, in speaking of it to Walpole, in connection with the Ode to Spring, merely says that to him 'the latter seems not worse than the former.' But the former has always been the greater favourite—perhaps more from the matter than the manner. It is the expression of the memories, the thoughts, and the feelings which arise unbidden in the mind of the man as he looks once more on the scenes of his boyhood. He feels a new youth in the presence of those old joys. But the old friends are not there. Generations have come and gone, and an unknown race now frolic in boyish glee. His sad, prophetic eye cannot help looking into the future, and comparing these careless joys with the inevitable ills of life. Already he sees the fury passions in wait for their little victims. They seem present to him, like very demons. Our language contains no finer, more graphic personifications than these almost tangible shapes. Spenser is more circumstantial, Collins more vehement, but neither is more real. Though but outlines in miniature, they are as distinct as Dutch art. Every epithet is a lifelike picture; not a word could be changed without destroying the tone of the whole. At last the musing poet asks himself, Cui bono? Why thus borrow trouble from the future? Why summon so soon the coming locusts, to poison before their time the glad waters of youth?

'Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late. And happiness too quickly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more;—where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.'

So feeling and the want of feeling come together for once in the moral. The gay Roman satirist—the apostle of indifferentism—reaches the same goal, though he has travelled a different road. To Thaliarchus he says:

'Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere: et Quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro Appone.'

The same easy-going philosophy of life forms the key-note of the Ode to Leuconoë:

'Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero;'

of that to Quinctius Hirpinus:

'Quid aeternis minorem Consiliis animum fatigas?'

of that to Pompeius Grosphus:

'Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est, Oderit curare.'

And so with many others. 'Take no thought of the morrow.'"

Wakefield translates the Greek motto, "Man is an abundant subject of calamity."

[2.] That crown the watery glade. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 128: "And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade."

[4.] Her Henry's holy shade. Henry the Sixth, founder of the college. Cf. The Bard, ii. 3: "the meek usurper's holy head;" Shakes. Rich. III. v. 1: "Holy King Henry;" Id. iv. 4: "When holy Harry died." The king, though never canonized, was regarded as a saint.

[5.] And ye. Ye "towers;" that is, of Windsor Castle. Cf. Thomson, Summer, 1412:

"And now to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow."

[8.] Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among. "That is, the turf of whose lawn, the shade of whose groves, the flowers of whose mead" (Wakefield). Cf. Hamlet, iii. 1: "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword."

In Anglo-Saxon and Early English prepositions were often placed after their objects. In the Elizabethan period the transposition of the weaker prepositions was not allowed, except in the compounds whereto, herewith, etc. (cf. the Latin quocum, secum), but the longer forms were still, though rarely, transposed (see Shakes. Gr. 203); and in more recent writers this latter license is extremely rare. Even the use of the preposition after the relative, which was very common in Shakespeare's day, is now avoided, except in colloquial style.

[9.] The hoary Thames. The river-god is pictured in the old classic fashion. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 103: "Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow." See also quotation from Dryden in note on 21 below.

THE RIVER-GOD TIBER.

[10.] His silver-winding way. Cf. Thomson, Summer, 1425: "The matchless vale of Thames, Fair-winding up," etc.

[12.] Ah, fields belov'd in vain! Mitford remarks that this expression has been considered obscure, and adds the following explanation: "The poem is written in the character of one who contemplates this life as a scene of misfortune and sorrow, from whose fatal power the brief sunshine of youth is supposed to be exempt. The fields are beloved as the scene of youthful pleasures, and as affording the promise of happiness to come; but this promise never was fulfilled. Fate, which dooms man to misery, soon overclouded these opening prospects of delight. That is in vain beloved which does not realize the expectations it held out. No fruit but that of disappointment has followed the blossoms of a thoughtless hope."

[13.] Where once my careless childhood stray'd. Wakefield cites Thomson, Winter, 6:

"with frequent foot Pleas'd have I, in my cheerful morn of life, When nurs'd by careless Solitude I liv'd, And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleas'd have I wander'd," etc.

[15.] That from ye blow. In Early English ye is nominative, you accusative (objective). This distinction, though observed in our version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan writers (Shakes. Gr. 236), as it has occasionally been by the poets even to our own day. Cf. Shakes. Hen. VIII. iii. 1: "The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye;" Milton, Comus, 216: "I see ye visibly," etc. Dryden, in a couplet quoted by Guest, uses both forms in the same line:

"What gain you by forbidding it to tease ye? It now can neither trouble you nor please ye."

[19.] Gray quotes Dryden, Fable on Pythag. Syst.: "And bees their honey redolent of spring."

[21.] Say, father Thames, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's Grotto:

"Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace Gives leave to view, what beauties grace Your flowery banks, if you have seen."

Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 232: "Old father Thames raised up his reverend head."

Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says: "His supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking, "Are we by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of Rasselas? 'As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before her: "Answer," said she, "great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."'"

[23.] Margent green. Cf. Comus, 232: "By slow Mæander's margent green."

[24.] Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 233: "To Virtue, in the paths of Pleasure, trod."

[26.] Thy glassy wave. Cf. Comus, 861: "Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave."

[27.] The captive linnet. The adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before it can be called "captive."

[28.] In the MS. this line reads, "To chase the hoop's illusive speed," which seems to us better than the revised form in the text.

[30.] Cf. Pope, Dunciad, iv. 592: "The senator at cricket urge the ball."

[37.] Cf. Cowley, Ode to Hobbes, iv. 7: "Till unknown regions it descries."

[40.] A fearful joy. Wakefield quotes Matt. xxviii. 8 and Psalms ii. 11. Cf. Virgil, Æn. i. 513:

"Obstupuit simul ipse simul perculsus Achates Laetitiaque metuque."

See also Lear, v. 3: "'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief."

[44.] Cf. Pope, Eloisa, 209: "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind;" and Essay on Man, iv. 168: "The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy."

[45.] Buxom. Used here in its modern sense. It originally meant pliant, flexible, yielding (from A. S. búgan, to bow); then, gay, frolicsome, lively; and at last it became associated with the "cheerful comeliness" of vigorous health. Chaucer has "buxom to ther lawe," and Spenser (State of Ireland), "more tractable and buxome to his government." Cf. also F. Q. i. 11, 37: "the buxome aire;" an expression which Milton uses twice (P. L. ii. 842, v. 270). In L'Allegro, 24: "So buxom, blithe, and debonaire;" the only other instance in which he uses the word, it means sprightly or "free" (as in "Come thou goddess, fair and free," a few lines before). Cf. Shakes. Pericles, i. prologue:

"So buxom, blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all his grace."

The word occurs nowhere else in Shakes. except Hen. V. iii. 6: "Of buxom valour;" that is, lively valour.

Dr. Johnson appears to have had in mind the original meaning of buxom in his comment on this passage: "His epithet buxom health is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word."

[47.] Lively cheer. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Apr.: "In either cheeke depeincten lively chere;" Milton, Ps. lxxxiv. 27: "With joy and gladsome cheer."

[49.] Wakefield quotes Milton, P. L. v. 3:

"When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep Was airy light, from pure digestion bred, And temperate vapours bland."

[51.] Regardless of their doom. Collins, in the first manuscript of his Ode on the Death of Col. Ross, has

"E'en now, regardful of his doom, Applauding Honour haunts his tomb."2

² Mitford gives the first line as "E'en now, regardless of his doom;" and just below, on verse 61, he makes the line from Pope read, "The fury Passions from that flood began." We have verified his quotations as far as possible, and have corrected scores of errors in them. Quite likely there are some errors in those we have not been able to verify.

[55.] Yet see, etc. Mitford cites Broome, Ode on Melancholy:

"While round stern ministers of fate, Pain and Disease and Sorrow, wait;"

and Otway, Alcibiades, v. 2: "Then enter, ye grim ministers of fate." See also Progress of Poesy, ii. 1: "Man's feeble race," etc.

[59.] Murtherous. The obsolete spelling of murderous, still used in Gray's time.

[61.] The fury Passions. The passions, fierce and cruel as the mythical Furies. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 167: "The fury Passions from that blood began."

[66.] Mitford quotes Spenser, F. Q.:

"But gnawing Jealousy out of their sight, Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bite."

[68.] Wakefield quotes Milton, Sonnet to Mr. Lawes: "With praise enough for Envy to look wan."

[69.] Grim-visag'd, comfortless Despair. Cf. Shakes. Rich. III. i. 1: "Grim-visag'd War;" and C. of E. v. 1: "grim and comfortless Despair."

[76.] Unkindness' altered eye. "An ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness with an alter'd face."

[79.] Gray quotes Dryden, Pal. and Arc.: "Madness laughing in his ireful mood." Cf. Shakes. Hen. VI. iv. 2: "But rather moody mad;" and iii. 1: "Moody discontented fury."

[81.] The vale of years. Cf. Othello, iii. 3: "Declin'd Into the vale of years."

[82.] Grisly. Not to be confounded with grizzly. See Wb.

[83.] The painful family of death. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, ii. 118: "Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, State of Innocence, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the whole passage cf. Milton, P. L. xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, Æn. vi. 275.

[86.] That every labouring sinew strains. An example of the "correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (Essay on Criticism, 371),

"The line too labours, and the words move slow."

[90.] Slow-consuming Age. Cf. Shenstone, Love and Honour: "His slow-consuming fires."

[95.] As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in Comus, 359:

"Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; For grant they be so, while they rest unknown What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?"

[97.] Happiness too swiftly flies. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, Geo. iii. 66:

"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit."

[98.] Thought would destroy their paradise. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, Ajax, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

[99.] Cf. Prior, Ep. to Montague, st. 9:

"From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise."

and Davenant, Just Italian: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it is not safe to know."

WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE END OF THE LONG WALK.

HOMER ENTHRONED.