Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, 22:
"That tolls the knell for their departed sense."
On parting=departing, cf. Shakes. Cor. v. 6: "When I parted hence;" Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid," etc.
[2.] The lowing herd wind, etc. Wind, and not winds, is the reading of the MS. (see fac-simile of this stanza [above]) and of all the early editions—that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's, Mathias's, etc.—but we find no note of the fact in Mitford's or any other of the more recent editions, which have substituted winds. Whether the change was made as an amendment or accidentally, we do not know;10 but the original reading seems to us by far the better one. The poet does not refer to the herd as an aggregate, but to the animals that compose it. He sees, not it, but "them on their winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the meaning and the melody of the line.
10 Very likely the latter, as we have seen that winds appears in the unauthorized version of the London Magazine (March, 1751), where it may be a misprint, like the others noted above.
We may remark here that the edition of 1768—the editio princeps of the collected Poems—was issued under Gray's own supervision, and is printed with remarkable accuracy. We have detected only one indubitable error of the type in the entire volume. Certain peculiarities of spelling were probably intentional, as we find the like in the fac-similes of the poet's manuscripts. The many quotations from Greek, Latin, and Italian are correctly given (according to the received texts of the time), and the references to authorities, so far as we have verified them, are equally exact. The book throughout bears the marks of Gray's scholarly and critical habits, and we may be sure that the poems appear in precisely the form which he meant they should retain. In doubtful cases, therefore, we have generally followed this edition. Mason's (the second edition: York, 1778) is also carefully edited and printed, and its readings seldom vary from Gray's. All of Mitford's that we have examined swarm with errors, especially in the notes. Pickering's (1835), edited by Mitford, is perhaps the worst of all. The Boston ed. (Little, Brown, & Co., 1853) is a pretty careful reproduction of Pickering's, with all its inaccuracies.
[3.] The critic of the N. A. Review points out that this line "is quite peculiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he adds, "twenty different versions preserving the rhythm, the general sentiment and the rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be, not inappropriately, substituted for the original reading."
Luke quotes Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7, 39: "And now she was uppon the weary way."