The author's name is not on the title-page. In the Brit. Mus. Cata. the poem is entered under its title. Mr. Nichols (Lit. Illus. v. 183) says that the author was the Rev. Richard Gifford [not Giffard] of Balliol College, Oxford. He adds that 'Mr. Gifford mentioned to him with much satisfaction the fact that Johnson quoted the poem in his Dictionary.' It was there very likely that Boswell had seen the lines. They are quoted under wheel (with changes made perhaps intentionally by Johnson), as follows:
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'Verse sweetens care however rude the sound; All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.' |
Contemplation, which was published two years after Gray's Elegy, was suggested by it. The rising, not the parting day, is described. The following verse precedes the one quoted by Johnson:—
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'Ev'n from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy Flows full and frequent, as the village-fair, Whose little wants the busy hour employ, Chanting some rural ditty soothes her care.' |
Bacon, in his Essay Of Vicissitude of Things (No. 58), says:—'It is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude lest we become giddy' This may have suggested Gifford's last two lines. Reflections on a Grave, &c. (ante, ii. 26), published in 1766, and perhaps written in part by Johnson, has a line borrowed from this poem:—
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'These all the hapless state of mortals show The sad vicissitude of things below.' |
Cowper, Table-Talk, ed. 1786, i. 165, writes of
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'The sweet vicissitudes of day and night.' |
The following elegant version of these lines by Mr. A. T. Barton, Fellow and Tutor of Johnson's own College, will please the classical reader:—
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Musa levat duros, quamvis rudis ore, labores; Inter opus cantat rustica Pyrrha suum; Nec meminit, secura rotam dum versat euntem, Non aliter nostris sortibus ire vices. |