[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."