GRAY’S ELEGY.
Never the verse approve and hold as good
Till many a day and many a blot has wrought
The polished work, and chastened every thought
By tenfold labor to perfection brought.—Horace.
The original MS. of this immortal poem was lately sold at auction in London. At a former sale (1845) it was purchased, together with the “Odes,” by a Mr. Penn. He gave $500 for the Elegy alone. He was proud, says the London Athenæum, of his purchase,—so proud, indeed, that binders were employed to inlay them on fine paper, bind them up in volumes of richly-tooled olive morocco with silk linings, and finally enclose each volume in a case of plain purple morocco. The order was carefully carried out, and the volumes were deposited at Stoke Pogis, in the great house adjoining the grave of Gray. The MS. of the Elegy is full of verbal alterations: it is the only copy known to exist, and is evidently Gray’s first grouping together of the stanzas as a whole. As the Elegy is known and admired by almost every one conversant with the English language, we select some of the verses, to show the alterations made by the author. The established text is printed in Roman type, the MS. readings as originally written, in Italics:—
Of such as wandering near her secret bower
stray too
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep
village
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
Forever sleep; the breezy call of
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn
Or Chanticleer so shrill,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share
coming
doubtful
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
homely
Their homely joys
rustic
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault
Forgive, ye proud, th’ involuntary fault
Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust
awake
Chill penury repress’d their noble rage
had damp’d
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Tully
Some Cromwell
Cæsar
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined
struggling
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way
silent
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires
And buried ashes glow with social
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
With hasty footsteps brush
There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech
Oft hoary
spreading
Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn
With gestures quaint
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove
fond conceits, he wont to
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree
By the heath side
The next, with dirges due, in sad array
meet
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn
Wrote that
Carved
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere
heart
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
Nor seek to draw them
There they alike in trembling hope repose
His frailties there
In the original manuscript copy, after the eighteenth stanza, are the four following verses, which were evidently intended to complete the poem, but the idea of the hoary-headed swain occurring to the author, he rejected them:—
The thoughtless world to majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave and idolize success;
But more to innocence their safety owe,
Than power or genius ere conspired to bless.
And thou who, mindful of the unhonored 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 breathing 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 sequestered vale of life
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom.
After the twenty-fifth stanza was the following:—
Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o’er the heath we hied, our labor done,
Oft as the woodlark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun.
Preceding the epitaph was the following beautiful allusion to the rustic tomb of the village scholar:—
There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
Gray began the composition of this exquisite poem in 1742; but so carefully did he proceed, that it remained on his hands for seven years. It is believed to have been mostly written within the precincts of the church at Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge; and the curfew in the poet’s mind was accordingly the great bell of St. Mary’s, tolled regularly every evening at nine o’clock in Gray’s time and since.
As a piece of finished composition, possessing all the elements of true poetry, in conception, in illustration, in the mechanical structure of the verse, in the simplicity of the style, in the touching nature of the ideas, the Elegy won from the outset a fame which, as a century of time has but served to make it more certain and more illustrious, is likely to last as long as mankind have the feelings of mortality.
As illustrations of the popularity of this poem, we may cite two historical incidents that will be interesting and acceptable to the reader.
On the night of September 13, 1759,—the night before the capture of Quebec by the English,—as the boats were floating down the river to the appointed landing, under cover of the night, and in the stillness of a silence constrained on pain of death, Gen. Wolfe, just arisen from a bed of sickness, harassed with the anxieties of a protracted yet fruitless campaign, and his mind filled with the present hazard, slowly and softly repeated its soothing lines; and he added to the officers around him, “Now, gentlemen, I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow.”
On the night of October 23, 1852,—the night before Daniel Webster’s death,—the great statesman, having already been informed by his medical attendant that nothing further could be done, except to render his last hours more quiet, said, somewhat indistinctly, the words, “Poetry, poetry,—Gray, Gray!” His son repeated the opening line of the Elegy, and Mr. Webster said, “That is it! that is it!” The volume was brought, and several stanzas of the poem were read to him, which gave him evident pleasure.
Among the many who have sought notoriety by pinning themselves to the skirts of Gray is a Mr. Edwards, author of The Canons of Criticism. This gentleman, though a bachelor, was more attentive to the fair sex than the pindaric Elegist, and, thinking there was a defect in the immortal poem that should be supplied, wrote the following creditable stanzas, which remind one of Maud Muller, to be introduced immediately after “some Cromwell guiltless,” &c.
Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms
Shone forth, attraction in herself unknown,
Whose beauty might have blest a monarch’s arms,
And virtue cast a lustre on a throne.
That humble beauty warmed an honest heart
And cheered the labors of a faithful spouse;
That virtue formed for every decent part
The healthful offspring that adorned their house.
The following beautiful imitation, by an American poet, is the best that has ever been offered to supply another remarkable deficiency,—the absence of such reflections on the sublime truths and inspiring hopes of Christianity as the scene would naturally awaken in a pious mind. With the exception of two or three somewhat equivocal expressions, Gray says scarcely a word which might not have been said by any one who believed that death is an eternal sleep, and who was disposed to regard the humble tenants of those tombs as indeed “each in his narrow cell forever laid.” A supplement according so well with the Elegy, both in elevation of sentiment and force of diction, as the following, might appropriately have followed the stanza,—
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”
No airy dreams their simple fancies fired,
No thirst for wealth, nor panting after fame;
But truth divine sublimer hopes inspired,
And urged them onward to a nobler aim.
From every cottage, with the day, arose
The hallowed voice of spirit-breathing prayer;
And artless anthems, at its peaceful close,
Like holy incense, charmed the evening air.
Though they, each tome of human lore unknown,
The brilliant path of science never trod,
The sacred volume claimed their hearts alone,
Which taught the way to glory and to God.
Here they from truth’s eternal fountain drew
The pure and gladdening waters, day by day;
Learned, since our days are evil, fleet, and few,
To walk in Wisdom’s bright and peaceful way.
In yon lone pile o’er which hath sternly passed
The heavy hand of all-destroying Time,
Through whose low mouldering aisles now sigh the blest,
And round whose altars grass and ivy climb,
They gladly thronged, their grateful hymns to raise,
Oft as the calm and holy Sabbath shone;
The mingled tribute of their prayers and praise
In sweet communion rose before the throne.
Here, from those honored lips which sacred fire
From Heaven’s high chancery hath touched, they hear
Truths which their zeal inflame, their hopes inspire,
Give wings to faith, and check affliction’s tear.
When life flowed by, and, like an angel, Death
Came to release them to the world on high,
Praise trembled still on each expiring breath,
And holy triumph beamed from every eye.
Then gentle hands their “dust to dust” consign;
With quiet tears, the simple rites are said,
And here they sleep, till at the trump divine
The earth and ocean render up their dead.