THE BARD.
"This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death" (Gray).
The original argument of the ode, as Gray had set it down in his commonplace-book, was as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its feet."
Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the bards; to convince him that neither his power nor situation could save him from the natural and necessary consequences of his guilt; that not even the virtues which he possessed could atone for the vices with which they were accompanied:
| 'Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail, Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail.' |
This is the real tendency of the poem; and well worthy it was of being adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images and beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral feeling increases as we approach the close; how the poem rises in dignity; and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject ascends. The Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his departed brethren and his desolate country. This despondence, however, has given way to emotions of a nobler and more exalted nature. What can be more magnificent than the vision which opens before him to display the triumph of justice and the final glory of his cause? And it may be added, what can be more forcible or emphatic than the language in which it is conveyed?
| 'But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height, Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? Visions of glory, spare my aching sight! Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!' |
The fine apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin completes the picture of exultation:
| 'Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear; They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.' |
The triumph of justice, therefore, is now complete. The vanquished has risen superior to his conqueror, and the reader closes the poem with feelings of content and satisfaction. He has seen the Bard uplifted both by a divine energy and by the natural superiority of virtue; and the conqueror has shrunk into a creature of hatred and abhorrence:
| 'Be thine despair, and sceptred care; To triumph, and to die, are mine.'" |
With regard to the obscurity of the poem, the same writer remarks that "it is such only as of necessity arises from the plan and conduct of a prophecy." "In the prophetic poem," he adds, "one point of history alone is told, and the rest is to be acquired previously by the reader; as in the contemplation of an historical picture, which commands only one moment of time, our memory must supply us with the necessary links of knowledge; and that point of time selected by the painter must be illustrated by the spectator's knowledge of the past or future, of the cause or the consequences."
He refers, for corroboration of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says: "I know no style to which darkness of a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical: many reasons might be assigned which render it improper that prophecy should be perfectly understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we are certain that a prediction may be very dark before the accomplishment, and yet so plain afterwards as scarcely to admit a doubt in regard to the events suggested. It does not belong to critics to give laws to prophets, nor does it fall within the confines of any human art to lay down rules for a species of composition so far above art. Thus far, however, we may warrantably observe, that when the prophetic style is imitated in poetry, the piece ought, as much as possible, to possess the character above mentioned. This character, in my opinion, is possessed in a very eminent degree by Mr. Gray's ode called The Bard. It is all darkness to one who knows nothing of the English history posterior to the reign of Edward the First, and all light to one who is acquainted with that history. But this is a kind of writing whose peculiarities can scarcely be considered as exceptions from ordinary rules."
Farther on in the same essay, Mitford remarks: "The skill of Gray is, I think, eminently shown in the superior distinctness with which he has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be accomplished; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper shadowings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of Edward the Second. In that the Bard has pointed out the very night in which he is to be destroyed; has named the river that flowed around his prison, and the castle that was the scene of his sufferings:
| 'Be thine despair, and sceptred care; When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king.' |
How different is the imagery when Richard the Second is described; and how indistinctly is the luxurious monarch marked out in the form of the morning, and his country in the figure of the vessel!
| 'The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born? Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the morn,' etc. |
The last prophecy is that of the civil wars, and of the death of the two young princes. No place, no name is now noted: and all is seen through the dimness of figurative expression:
| 'Above, below, the rose of snow, Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade.'" |
Hales remarks: "It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the tradition on which The Bard is founded is wholly groundless. Edward I. never did massacre Welsh bards. Their name is legion in the beginning of the 14th century. Miss Williams, the latest historian of Wales, does not even mention the old story."1
1 The Saturday Review, for June 19, 1875, in the article from which we have elsewhere quoted (see [above], foot-note), refers to this point as follows:
"Gray was one of the first writers to show that earlier parts of English history were not only worth attending to, but were capable of poetic treatment. We can almost forgive him for dressing up in his splendid verse a foul and baseless calumny against Edward the First, when we remember that to most of Gray's contemporaries Edward the First must have seemed a person almost mythical, a benighted Popish savage, of whom there was very little to know, and that little hardly worth knowing. Our feeling towards Gray in this matter is much the same as our feeling towards Mitford in the matter of Greek history. We are angry with Mitford for misrepresenting Demosthenes and a crowd of other Athenian worthies, but we do not forget that he was the first to deal with Demosthenes and his fellows, neither as mere names nor as demi-gods, but as real living men like ourselves. It was a pity to misrepresent Demosthenes, but even the misrepresentation was something; it showed that Demosthenes could be made the subject of human feeling one way or another. It is unpleasant to hear the King whose praise it was that
'Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus,'
spoken of as 'ruthless,' and the rest of it. But Gray at least felt that Edward was a real man, while to most of his contemporaries he could have been little more than 'the figure of an old Gothic king,' such as Sir Roger de Coverley looked when he sat in Edward's own chair."
[1.] A good example of alliteration.
[2.] Cf. Shakes. K. John, iv. 2: "and vast confusion waits."
[4.] Gray quotes K. John, v. 1: "Mocking the air with colours idly spread."
[5.] "The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion" (Gray).
Cf. Robert of Gloucester: "With helm and hauberk;" and Dryden, Pal. and Arc. iii. 603: "Hauberks and helms are hewed with many a wound."
[7.] Nightly. Nocturnal, as often in poetry. Cf. Il Pens. 84, etc.
[9.] The crested pride. Gray quotes Dryden, Indian Queen: "The crested adder's pride."
[11.] "Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryri: it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the castle of Conway, built by King Edward the First, says: 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery;' and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283), 'Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniae fecit erigi castrum forte'" (Gray).
It was in the spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes and heights intact until his death in the preceding December. The surrender of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened a way for the invader; and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at once advanced by it (Hales).
The epithet shaggy is highly appropriate, as Leland (Itin.) says that great woods clothed the mountain in his time. Cf. Dyer, Ruins of Rome:
|
"as Britannia's oaks On Merlin's mount, or Snowdon's rugged sides, Stand in the clouds." |
See also Lycidas, 54: "Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high;" and P. L. vi. 645: "the shaggy tops."
[13.] Stout Gloster. "Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hereford, son-in-law to King Edward" (Gray). He had, in 1282, conducted the war in South Wales; and after overthrowing the enemy near Llandeilo Fawr, had reinforced the king in the northwest.
[14.] Mortimer. "Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore" (Gray). It was by one of his knights, named Adam de Francton, that Llewellyn, not at first known to be he, was slain near Pont Orewyn (Hales).
On quivering lance, cf. Virgil, Æn. xii. 94: "hastam quassatque trementem."
[15.] On a rock whose haughty brow. Cf. Daniel, Civil Wars: "A huge aspiring rock, whose surly brow."
The rock is probably meant for Penmaen-mawr, the northern termination of the Snowdon range. It is a mass of rock, 1545 feet high, a few miles from the mouth of the Conway, the valley of which it overlooks. Towards the sea it presents a rugged and almost perpendicular front. On its summit is Braich-y-Dinas, an ancient fortified post, regarded as the strongest hold of the Britons in the district of Snowdon. Here the reduced bands of the Welsh army were stationed during the negotiation between their prince Llewellyn and Edward I. Within the inner enclosure is a never-failing well of pure water. The rock is now pierced with a tunnel 1890 feet long for the Chester and Holyhead railway.
[17.] Rob'd in the sable garb of woe. It would appear that Wharton had criticised this line, for in a letter to him, dated Aug. 21, 1757, Gray writes: "You may alter that 'Robed in the sable,' etc., almost in your own words, thus,
| 'With fury pale, and pale with woe, Secure of Fate, the Poet stood,' etc. |
Though haggard, which conveys to you the idea of a witch, is indeed only a metaphor taken from an unreclaimed hawk, which is called a haggard, and looks wild and farouche, and jealous of its liberty." Gray seems to have afterwards returned to his first (and we think better) reading.
[19.] "The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel. There are two of these paintings (both believed originals), one at Florence, the other in the Duke of Orleans's collection at Paris" (Gray).
[20.] Like a meteor. Gray quotes P. L. i. 537: "Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind."
[21, 22.] Wakefield remarks: "This is poetical language in perfection; and breathes the sublime spirit of Hebrew poetry, which delights in this grand rhetorical substitution."
[23.] Desert caves. Cf. Lycidas, 39: "The woods and desert caves."
[26.] Hoarser murmurs. That is, perhaps, with continually increasing hoarseness, hoarser and hoarser; or it may mean with unwonted hoarseness, like the comparative sometimes in Latin (Hales).
[28.] Hoel is called high-born, being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales, by Finnog, an Irish damsel. He was one of his father's generals in his wars against the English, Flemings, and Normans, in South Wales; and was a famous bard, as his poems that are extant testify.
Soft Llewellyn's lay. "The lay celebrating the mild Llewellyn," says Hales, though he afterwards remarks that, "looking at the context, it would be better to take Llewellyn here for a bard." Many bards celebrated the warlike prowess and princely qualities of Llewellyn. A poem by Einion the son of Guigan calls him "a tender-hearted prince;" and another, by Llywarch Brydydd y Moch, says: "Llewellyn, though in battle he killed with fury, though he burned like an outrageous fire, yet was a mild prince when the mead-horns were distributed." In an ode by Llygard Gwr he is also called "Llewellyn the mild."
[29.] Cadwallo and Urien were bards of whose songs nothing has been preserved. Taliessin (see [121] below) dedicated many poems to the latter, and wrote an elegy on his death: he was slain by treachery in the year 560.
[30.] That hush'd the stormy main. Cf. Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 2:
| "Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song." |
[33.] Modred. This name is not found in the lists of the old bards. It may have been borrowed from the Arthurian legends; or, as Mitford suggests, it may refer to "the famous Myrddin ab Morvyn, called Merlyn the Wild, a disciple of Taliessin, the form of the name being changed for the sake of euphony."
[34.] Plinlimmon. One of the loftiest of the Welsh mountains, being 2463 feet in height. It is really a group of mountains, three of which tower high above the others, and on each of these is a carnedd, or pile of stones. The highest of the three is further divided into two peaks, and on these, as well as on another prominent part of the same height, are other piles of stones. These five piles, according to the common tradition, mark the graves of slain warriors, and serve as memorials of their exploits; but some believe that they were intended as landmarks or military signals, and that from them the mountain was called Pump-lumon or Pum-lumon, "the five beacons"—a name somehow corrupted into Plinlimmon. Five rivers take their rise in the recesses of Plinlimmon—the Wye, the Severn, the Rheidol, the Llyfnant, and the Clywedog.
[35.] Arvon's shore. "The shores of Caernarvonshire, opposite the isle of Anglesey" (Gray). Caernarvon, or Caer yn Arvon, means the camp in Arvon.
[38.] "Camden and others observe that eagles used annually to build their aerie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryri, or the crags of the eagles. At this day (I am told) the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's Nest. That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots, and the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, etc., can testify; it even has built its nest in the peak of Derbyshire [see Willoughby's Ornithology, published by Ray]" (Gray).
[40.] Dear as the light. Cf. Virgil, Æn. iv. 31: "O luce magis dilecta sorori."
[41.] Dear as the ruddy drops. Gray quotes Shakes. J. C. ii. 1:
| "As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart." |
Cf. also Otway, Venice Preserved:
| "Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee." |
[42.] Wakefield quotes Pope: "And greatly falling with a fallen state;" and Dryden: "And couldst not fall but with thy country's fate."
[44.] Grisly. See on Eton Coll. [82.] Cf. Lycidas, 52:
|
"the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie." |
[48.] "See the Norwegian ode that follows" (Gray). This ode (The Fatal Sisters, translated from the Norse) describes the Valkyriur, "the choosers of the slain," or warlike Fates of the Gothic mythology, as weaving the destinies of those who were doomed to perish in battle. It begins thus:
| "Now the storm begins to lower (Haste, the loom of hell prepare), Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air. "Glittering lances are the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane. * * * * * * "Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore, Shoot the trembling cords along; Swords, that once a monarch bore, Keep the tissue close and strong. * * * * * * "(Weave the crimson web of war) Let us go, and let us fly, Where our friends the conflict share, Where they triumph, where they die." |
[51.] Cf. Dryden, Sebastian, i. 1:
| "I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more." |
[55.] "Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkeley Castle" (Gray). The 1st ed. and that of 1768 have "roofs;" the modern eds. "roof."
Berkeley Castle is on the southeast side of the town of Berkeley, on a height commanding a fine view of the Severn and the surrounding country, and is in a state of perfect preservation. It is said to have been founded by Roger de Berkeley soon after the Norman Conquest. About the year 1150 it was granted by Henry II. to Robert Fitzhardinge, Governor of Bristol, who strengthened and enlarged it. On the right of the great staircase leading to the keep, and approached by a gallery, is the room in which it is supposed that Edward II. was murdered, Sept. 21, 1327. The king, during his captivity here, composed a dolorous poem, of which the following is an extract:
| "Moste blessed Jesu, Roote of all vertue, Graunte I may the sue, In all humylyte, Sen thou for our good, Lyste to shede thy blood, An stretche the upon the rood, For our iniquyte. I the beseche, Most holsome leche, That thou wylt seche For me such grace, That when my body vyle My soule shall exyle Thou brynge in short wyle It in reste and peace." |
Walpole, who visited the place in 1774, says: "The room shown for the murder of Edward II., and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at the top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, and from that descends a large flight of steps, that terminates on strong gates; exactly a situation for a corps de garde."
[56.] Cf. Hume's description: "The screams with which the agonizing king filled the castle."
[57.] She-wolf of France. "Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous queen" (Gray). Cf. Shakes. 3 Hen. VI. i. 4: "She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France;" and read the context.
[60.] "Triumphs of Edward the Third in France" (Gray).
[61.] Cf. Cowley: "Ruin behind him stalks, and empty desolation;" and Oldham, Ode to Homer:
| "Where'er he does his dreadful standard bear, Horror stalks in the van, and slaughter in the rear." |
[63.] For victor the MS. has "conqueror;" also in next line "the" for his; and in 65, "what ... what" for no ... no.
[64.] "Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed in his last moments by his courtiers and his mistress" (Gray).
[67.] "Edward the Black Prince, dead some time before his father" (Gray).
[69.] The MS. has "hover'd in thy noontide ray," and in the next line "the rising day."
In Agrippina, a fragment of a tragedy, published among the posthumous poems of Gray, we have the same figure:
|
"around thee call The gilded swarm that wantons in the sunshine Of thy full favour." |
[71.] "Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Froissard and other contemporary writers" (Gray).
For this line and the remainder of the stanza, the MS. has the following:
| "Mirrors of Saxon truth and loyalty, Your helpless, old, expiring master view! They hear not: scarce religion does supply Her mutter'd requiems, and her holy dew. Yet thou, proud boy, from Pomfret's walls shalt send A sigh, and envy oft thy happy grandsire's end." |
On the passage as it stands, cf. Shakes. M. of V. ii. 6:
| "How like a younger, or a prodigal, The scarfed bark puts from her native bay," etc. |
Also Spenser, Visions of World's Vanitie, ix:
| "Looking far foorth into the Ocean wide, A goodly ship with banners bravely dight, And flag in her top-gallant, I espide Through the maine sea making her merry flight. Faire blew the winde into her bosome right; And th' heavens looked lovely all the while That she did seeme to daunce, as in delight, And at her owne felicitie did smile," etc.; |
and again, Visions of Petrarch, ii.:
| "After, at sea a tall ship did appeare, Made all of heben and white yvorie; The sailes of golde, of silke the tackle were: Milde was the winde, calme seem'd the sea to bee, The skie eachwhere did show full bright and faire: With rich treasures this gay ship fraighted was: But sudden storme did so turmoyle the aire, And tumbled up the sea, that she (alas) Strake on a rock, that under water lay, And perished past all recoverie." |
See also Milton, S. A. 710 foll.
[72.] The azure realm. Cf. Virgil, Ciris, 483: "Caeruleo pollens conjunx Neptunia regno."
[73.] Note the alliteration. Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirab. st. 151:
| "The goodly London, in her gallant trim, The phoenix-daughter of the vanish'd old, Like a rich bride does to the ocean swim, And on her shadow rides in floating gold." |
[75.] Sweeping whirlwind's sway. Cf. the posthumous fragment by Gray on Education and Government, 48: "And where the deluge burst with sweepy sway." The expression is from Dryden, who uses it repeatedly; as in Geo. i. 483: "And rolling onwards with a sweepy sway;" Ov. Met.: "Rushing onwards with a sweepy sway;" Æn. vii.: "The branches bend beneath their sweepy sway," etc.
[76.] That hush'd in grim repose, etc. Cf. Dryden, Sigismonda and Guiscardo, 242:
| "So, like a lion that unheeded lay, Dissembling sleep, and watchful to betray, With inward rage he meditates his prey;" |
and Absalom and Achitophel, 447:
| "And like a lion, slumbering in the way, Or sleep dissembling, while he waits his prey." |
[77.] "Richard the Second (as we are told by Archbishop Scroop and the confederate Lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsingham, and all the older writers) was starved to death. The story of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exon is of much later date" (Gray).
[79.] Reft of a crown. Wakefield quotes Mallet's ballad of William and Margaret:
| "Such is the robe that kings must wear When death has reft their crown." |
[82.] A baleful smile. The MS. has "A smile of horror on." Cf. Milton, P. L. ii. 846: "Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile."
| THE TRAITOR'S GATE OF THE TOWER. |
[83.] "Ruinous wars of York and Lancaster" (Gray). Cf. P. L. vi. 209: "Arms on armour clashing brayed."
[84.] Cf. Shakes. 1 Hen. IV. iv. 1: "Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse;" and Massinger, Maid of Honour: "Man to man, and horse to horse."
[87.] "Henry the Sixth, George Duke of Clarence, Edward the Fifth, Richard Duke of York, etc., believed to be murdered secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part of that structure is vulgarly attributed to Julius Cæsar" (Gray). The MS. has "Grim towers."
[88.] Murther. See on [murthorous].
[89.] His consort. "Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who struggled hard to save her husband and her crown" (Gray).
His father. "Henry the Fifth" (Gray).
| HENRY V. |
[90.] The meek usurper. "Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. The line of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown" (Gray). See on Eton Coll. [4]. The MS. has "hallow'd head."
[91.] The rose of snow, etc. "The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster" (Gray).
Cf. Shakes. 1 Hen. VI. ii. 4:
|
"No, Plantagenet, 'Tis not for shame, but anger, that thy cheeks Blush for pure shame, to counterfeit our roses." |
[93.] The bristled boar. "The silver boar was the badge of Richard the Third; whence he was usually known in his own time by the name of the Boar" (Gray). Scott (notes to Lay of Last Minstrel) says: "The crest or bearing of a warrior was often used as a nom de guerre. Thus Richard III. acquired his well-known epithet, 'the Boar of York.'" Cf. Shakes. Rich. III. iv. 5: "this most bloody boar;" v. 2: "The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar," etc.
[99.] Half of thy heart. "Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the conquest of Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for her lord is well known.2 The monuments of his regret and sorrow for the loss of her3 are still to be seen at Northampton, Geddington, Waltham, and other places" (Gray). Cf. Horace, Od. i. 3, 8: "animae dimidium meae."
2 See Tennyson, Dream of Fair Women:
| "Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, Sweet as new buds in spring." |
3 Gray refers to the "Eleanor crosses," erected at the places where the funeral procession halted each night on the journey from Hardby, in Nottinghamshire (near Lincoln), where the queen died, to Westminster. Of the thirteen (or, as some say, fifteen) crosses only three now remain—at Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. The one at Charing Cross in London has been replaced by a fac-simile of the original. These monuments were all exquisite works of Gothic art, fitting memorials of la chère Reine, "the beloved of all England," as Walsingham calls her.
[101.] Nor thus forlorn. In MS. "nor here forlorn;" in next line, "Leave your despairing Caradoc to mourn;" in 103, "yon black clouds;" in 104, "They sink, they vanish;" in 105, "But oh! what scenes of heaven on Snowdon's height;" in 106, "their golden skirts."
[107.] Cf. Dryden, State of Innocence, iv. 1: "Their glory shoots upon my aching sight."
[109.] "It was the common belief of the Welsh nation that King Arthur was still alive in Fairyland, and would return again to reign over Britain" (Gray).
In the MS. this line and the next read thus:
| "From Cambria's thousand hills a thousand strains Triumphant tell aloud, another Arthur reigns." |
[110.] "Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied that the Welsh should regain their sovereignty over this island; which seemed to be accomplished in the house of Tudor" (Gray).
[111.] Many a baron bold. Cf. L'Allegro, 119: "throngs of knights and barons bold."
The reading in the MS. is,
| "Youthful knights, and barons bold, With dazzling helm, and horrent spear." |
[112.] Their starry fronts. Cf. Milton, Ode on the Passion, 18: "His starry front;" Statius, Theb. 613: "Heu! ubi siderei vultus."
[115.] A form divine. Elizabeth. Wakefield quotes Spenser's eulogy of the queen, Shep. Kal. Apr.:
| "Tell me, have ye seene her angelick face, Like Phoebe fayre? Her heavenly haveour, her princely grace, Can you well compare? The Redde rose medled with the White yfere, In either cheeke depeincten lively chere; Her modest eye, Her Majestie, Where have you seene the like but there?" |
[117.] "Speed, relating an audience given by Queen Elizabeth to Paul Dzialinski, ambassador of Poland, says: 'And thus she, lion-like rising, daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately port and majestical deporture, than with the tartnesse of her princelie checkes'" (Gray). The MS. reads "A lion-port, an awe-commanding face."
[121.] "Taliessin, chief of the bards, flourished in the sixth century. His works are still preserved, and his memory held in high veneration among his countrymen" (Gray).
As Hales remarks, there is no authority for connecting him with Arthur, as Tennyson does in his Holy Grail.
[123.] Cf. Congreve, Ode to Lord Godolphin: "And soars with rapture while she sings."
[124.] The eye of heaven. Wakefield quotes Spenser, F. Q. 1. 3. 4,
|
"Her angel's face As the great eye of heaven shined bright." |
Cf. Shakes. Rich. II. iii. 2: "the searching eye of heaven."
Many-colour'd wings. Cf. Shakes. Temp. iv. 1: "Hail, many-colour'd messenger;" and Milton, P. L. iii. 642:
|
"Wings he wore Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold." |
[126.] Gray quotes Spenser, F. Q. Proeme, 9:
"Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song."
[128.] "Shakespeare" (Gray). Cf. Il Penseroso, 102: "the buskin'd stage;" that is, the tragic stage.
[129.] Pleasing pain. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. vi. 9, 10: "sweet pleasing payne;" and Dryden, Virg. Ecl. iii. 171: "Pleasing pains of love."
[131.] "Milton" (Gray).
[133.] "The succession of poets after Milton's time" (Gray).
[135.] Fond. Foolish. See on Prog. of Poesy, [46.]
On the couplet, cf. Dekker, If this be not a good play, etc.:
|
"Thinkest thou, base lord, Because the glorious Sun behind black clouds Has awhile hid his beams, he's darken'd forever, Eclips'd never more to shine?" |
[137.] Cf. Lycidas, 169: "And yet anon repairs his drooping head;" and Fletcher, Purple Island, vi. 64: "So soon repairs her light, trebling her new-born raies."
[141.] Mitford remarks that there is a passage (which he misquotes, as usual) in the Thebaid of Statius (iii. 81) similar to this, describing a bard who had survived his companions:
|
"Sed jam nudaverat ensem Magnanimus vates, et nunc trucis ora tyranni, Nunc ferrum adspectans: 'Nunquam tibi sanguinis hujus Jus erit, aut magno feries imperdita Tydeo Pectora; vado equidem exsultans et ereptaque fata Insequor, et comites feror expectatus ad umbras; Te Superis, fratrique.' Et jam media orsa loquentis Abstulerat plenum capulo latus." |
Cf. also a passage in Pindar (Olymp. i. 184), which Gray seems to have had in mind:
[143.] Cf. Virgil, Ecl. viii. 59:
| "Praeceps aërii specula de montis in undas Deferar; extremum hoc munus morientis habeto." |
As we have given Johnson's criticism on The Progress of Poesy, we append his comments on this "Sister Ode:"
"'The Bard' appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti thinks it superior to its original; and, if preference depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right. There is in 'The Bard' more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. Incredulus odi.
"To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that 'The Bard' promotes any truth, moral or political.
"His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its measures, and consequently before it can receive pleasure from their consonance and recurrence.
"Of the [first stanza] the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the ballad of 'Johnny Armstrong,'
'Is there ever a man in all Scotland—'
"The initial resemblances, or alliterations, 'ruin, ruthless, helm or hauberk,' are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity.
"In the [second stanza] the Bard is well described; but in the [third] we have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that 'Cadwallo hush'd the stormy main,' and that 'Modred made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head,' attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn.
"The [weaving] of the winding-sheet he borrowed, as he owns, from the Northern Bards; but their texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life is another mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to 'Weave the warp, and weave the woof,' perhaps with no great propriety; for it is by crossing the woof with the warp that men weave the web or piece; and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched correspondent, 'Give ample room and verge enough.' He has, however, no other line as bad.
"The [third stanza] of the second ternary is commended, I think, beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and Hunger are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how 'towers are fed.' But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example; but suicide is always to be had, without expense of thought."
| "Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame!" |
| HEAD OF OLYMPIAN JOVE. |