[31.] Gray here quotes Green, Grotto: "While insects from the threshold preach." In a letter to Walpole, he says: "I send you a bit of a thing for two reasons: first, because it is of one of your favourites, Mr. M. Green; and next, because I would do justice. The thought on which my second Ode turns [this Ode, afterwards placed first by Gray] is manifestly stole from hence; not that I knew it at the time, but having seen this many years before, to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, and, forgetting the Author, I took it for my own." Then comes the quotation from Green's Grotto. The passage referring to the insects is as follows:
| "To the mind's ear, and inward sight, There silence speaks, and shade gives light: While insects from the threshold preach, And minds dispos'd to musing teach; Proud of strong limbs and painted hues, They perish by the slightest bruise; Or maladies begun within Destroy more slow life's frail machine: From maggot-youth, thro' change of state, They feel like us the turns of fate: Some born to creep have liv'd to fly, And chang'd earth's cells for dwellings high: And some that did their six wings keep, Before they died, been forc'd to creep. They politics, like ours, profess; The greater prey upon the less. Some strain on foot huge loads to bring, Some toil incessant on the wing: Nor from their vigorous schemes desist Till death; and then they are never mist. Some frolick, toil, marry, increase, Are sick and well, have war and peace; And broke with age in half a day, Yield to successors, and away." |
[47.] Painted plumage. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 118: "His painted wings; and Milton, P. L. vii. 433:
| "From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings." |
See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 243, and Æn. iv. 525: "pictaeque volucres;" and Phædrus, Fab. iii. 18: "pictisque plumis."
ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT.
This ode first appeared in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the ode for an inscription.
In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the subject of the ode in the following jocose strain: "As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. I knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima?), or rather I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your handsome Cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in the survivor; oh no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not begin to cry,
Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris.