True enough, not for the dead—but Gray then felt as if it were for the dying—and chose to say so—the parting day. Was it quick and "merry as a marriage-bell?" I can't think it—nor did Milton, "swinging slow with sullen roar." Gray was Il Penseroso. Prospero calls it the "solemn curfew." Toll is right.
NORTH.
But, says my friend Mitford, "there is another error, a confusion of time. The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and 'the glimmering landscape' has 'long ceased to fade' before the curfew. The 'parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the word Curfew is taken simply for 'the Evening Bell,' then also is the time incorrect—and a knell is not tolled for the parting, but for the parted—'and leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incidents, instead of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and inharmonious; especially as it appears soon after that it was not dark. For 'the moping owl does to the moon complain.'"
SEWARD.
Pardon me, sir, I cannot venture to answer all that—but if Mitford be right, Gray must be very wrong indeed. Let me see—give us it over again—sentence by sentence—
BULLER.
No—no—no. Once is enough—and enough is as good as a feast.
NORTH.
Talboys?
TALBOYS.