COWLEY AND GRAY, NO. II.
Gray, when alluding to Shakspeare, in his Pindaric ode on "The Progress of Poesy," had probably Cowley in memory:
"Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd.
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd."
Wakefield, in one of his notes, remarks on this—
"An allusion perhaps, to that verse of Virgil,
'Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem.'"
Instead of Virgil, I suspect that Gray was thinking of the first Nemean Ode of Pindar, wherein the infant Hercules is described as strangling the snakes sent to destroy him by Juno:
"ὁ δ' ὀρθὸν
μὲν ἄντεινεν κάρα,
πειρᾶτο δὲ πρῶτον μάχας,
δισσαῖσι δοιοὺς αὐχένων
μάρψας ἀφύκτοις χερσὶν ἑαῖς ὄφιας."
Let me give a portion of Cowley's translation:
"The big-limb'd babe in his huge cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by nurse's hands,
Wrapt in purple swaddling bands;
When, lo! by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents come.
"All naked from her bed the passionate mother lept
To save, or perish with her child,
She trembled, and she cry'd; the mighty infant smiled:
The mighty infant seem'd well pleased
At his gay gilded foes,
And as their spotted necks up to the cradle rose,
With his young warlike hands on both he seiz'd."
The stretching forth of the child's hands he found in Pindar and Cowley; his "smiling" in Cowley alone, for there is no trace of it in the original. While speaking of Gray, one scarcely likes alluding to that great whetstone, Dr. Johnson; for certainly the darkest shade on his well-merited literary reputation arises from his unjust, ill-natured, and unscholarlike criticisms upon a poet whose sole transgression was to have been his cotemporary. But Johnson eulogises Shakspeare, as did Gray, and I cannot help thinking that he, as well as Gray, was indebted to Cowley: e.g. Johnson writes:
"When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspeare rose;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain."
Prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick at the opening of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1747.
"He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find;
He found them not so large as was his mind,
But, like the large Pellaean youth, did mone
Because that art had no more worlds than one.
And when he saw that he through all had past,
He dy'd, lest he should idle grow at last."
Cowley, On the Death of Sir Henry Wooton, page 6.: Lond. 1668, fol.
And with Dr. Johnson's sixth line—
"Panting Time toil'd after him in vain,"
we may, I think, compare Cowley's description of King David's earlier years:
"Bless me! how swift and growing was his wit!
The wings of Time flag'd dully after it."
Davideis, lib. iii. p. 92.
But to return to Gray, Ode VI. "The Bard:"
"With haggard eyes the poet stood,
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air."
Wakefield quotes Paradise Lost, lib. i. 535.:
"The imperial ensign, which full high advanc'd,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind."
Campbell, in The Pleasures of Hope, Part I., does borrow from Milton in the above passage:
"Where Andes, giant of the western star,
With meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd;"
but Gray is alluding to hair, and not to a standard; to the original derivation of the word comet (κόμη), and possibly to a different passage in Milton, viz. Par. Lost, ii. 706.:
"on the other side,
Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified: and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge,
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."
Or as Virgil before him, Æneid, lib. x. 270.:
"Ardet apex capiti, cristisque a vertici flamma
Funditur, et vastos umbo vomit aureus ignes:
Non secus, ac liquida si quando nocti cometæ
Sanguinei lugubre rubent, aut Sirius ardor," &c.
One of the meanings of κόμη is "the luminous tail of a comet;" and Suidas mentions from the LXX, καὶ ἕσπερον τὸν ἀστέρα ἐπὶ κόμης αὐτοῦ ἄξεις αὐτον (Job xxxviii. 32.). See Scott and Liddell's Lexicon at the words Κόμη, and Πώγων and Πωγωνίας, which latter words are used in reference to the beard of a comet.
Gray must now speak for himself. He says in a note:
"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 at Paris."
And Mr. Mason adds, in a note to his edition of Gray, vol. i. p. 75. Lond. 1807:
"Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, by Parmegiano, was a figure which Mr. Gray used to say came still nearer to his meaning than the picture of Raphael."
I cannot help thinking that Cowley too was not forgotten. Speaking of the angel Gabriel, he says:
"An harmless flaming meteor shone for haire,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care."
Indeed, I must give the entire passage, however fantastic or unconnected with my purpose; for the last four lines, which describe the angel's wings, appear beyond measure dreamy and beautiful:
"When Gabriel (no blest spirit more kind or fair)
Bodies and cloathes himself with thicken'd air,
All like a comely youth in life's fresh bloom;
Rare workmanship, and wrought by heavenly loom!
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That ere the mid day sun pierc'd through with light:
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash't from the morning's beauties deepest red.
An harmless flaming meteor shone for haire
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes.
This he with starry vapours spangles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall.
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece took out, a scarf is made.
Small streaming clouds he does for wings display,
Not virtuous lovers' sighs more soft than they.
These he gilds o'er with the sun's richest rays,
Caught gliding o'er pure streams on which he plays."
Davideis, lib. ii. ad finem.
Again, in a verse which was inserted in the Elegy as it originally stood (and the subsequent rejection of which we must ever grieve over, as it almost surpasses any verse of the entire poem; and besides would have saved it from the imputation of having been written as a heathen poet would have written it), the words "sacred calm" occur, which are not unfrequent in Cowley:
"Hark how the sacred calm that breathes around
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease;
In still small accents whispering from the ground,
A grateful earnest of eternal peace."—
Gray.
"They came, but a new spirit their hearts possest,
Scattering a sacred calm through every breast."
Davideis, lib. i. ad finem.
"All earth-bred fears and sorrows take their flight;
In rushes joy divine, and hope, and rest;
A sacred calm shines through his peaceful breast."
Davideis, lib. ii. ad finem.
Again, does not Mr. Gray's Ode to Spring—
"Methinks I hear," &c.
remind one a little of Cowley's "Anacreontic to the Grasshopper?"
"To thee of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect, happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know.
But when thou'st drunk, and danc'd, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among
(Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal!)
Sated with thy summer feast
Thou retir'st to endless rest."
or the following lines
"Their raptures now that wildly flow,
No yesterday nor morrow know;
Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward, and reverted eyes."
Gray's Ode on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude.
In his notes to "Spring," Wakefield gets quite pathetic at the words—
"Poor moralist, and what art thou?
A solitary fly," &c.
I have always believed that Gray was imitating Bishop Jeremy Taylor:
"Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity."—Sermon XVII. The Marriage Ring, Part I.
If these random notes be interesting to any of your readers, they are only a portion out of many I could send; and any one who doubts Gray's partiality for Cowley may compare his second verse of the "Ode to Spring" with Cowley's lines on "Solitude," found amongst his Essays, especially verses 4. and 5.:
"Here let me careless and unthoughtful lying
Hear the soft winds above me flying,
With all their wanton boughs dispute,
And the more tuneful birds to both replying,
Nor be my self too mute.
"A silver stream shall roll his waters near;
Gilt with the sunbeams here and there,
On whose enamel'd bank I'll walk,
And see how prettily they smile, and hear
How prettily they talk."
And—
"Soft-footed winds with tuneful voices there
Dance through the perfumed air,
There silver rivers through enamel'd meadows glide,
And golden trees enrich their side."
Translation of Pindar's Second Olympic Ode.
Or let him compare Gray's Latin and English verses upon the death of his friend Mr. West with Cowley's upon the death of Mr. William Harvey and Mr. Crashaw:
"Hail, Bard Triumphant! and some care bestow
On us the Poets Militant below," &c.
Cowley on Mr. Crashaw.
"At Tu, sancta anima, et nostri non indiga luctus," &c.
Gray.
To these lines on Crashaw Pope is indebted for a sentiment which in his hands assumes a very infidel form:
"For modes of faith let senseless bigots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
Crashaw had become a Roman Catholic, and was a canon of Loretto when he died; but Cowley's Protestant feelings could not blind him to his worth, and he says:
"His Faith perhaps in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his Life, his soul were in the Right."
How much the two last-mentioned poems of Gray's owe to Milton's "Lines to Mansus" and his "Epitaphium Damonis," any one acquainted with them may remember. I have only been alluding to Gray's reproductions of Cowley.
RT.
Warmington.