And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:—there let him lay."
The blot which disfigures the last line of this fine stanza, in the use of the word lay for lie, has, I believe, been often observed; but the question I wish to throw out for the consideration of your readers is, whether it is quite certain that Lord Byron really wrote, or intended to write, the word lay. The following reasons appear to me to render it improbable that he did. 1. His lordship is admittedly, I believe, a great master of the English language, and would therefore be very unlikely to commit the somewhat vulgar blunder of writing lay for lie, whatever might be the requirements of the rhyme. 2. This improbability is rendered much stronger by his having used the word lies in the line next but one preceding; and therefore his attention could hardly have been averted from the distinction between the two words. 3. Though not professing to be a critic, it does appear to me that the sense itself of the line (taking the word lay in the sense of lie) is weak and unmeaning, or at least far from worthy of the former part of the stanza.
I am not perhaps bound to offer any emendation of the line, but in default of anything better I will venture to suggest that his lordship may have written, or intended to write, the word pray as the concluding word of the stanza. The sense, with pray instead of lay, would not, in my judgment, be inferior to that of the line in its present form; nor would it be in itself inappropriate, as allusion has just been made to man being sent "howling to his gods;" and, at all events, by the adoption of pray, an almost unpardonable grammatical error is avoided.
PRISCIAN.
I cannot agree with T. W. as to the stanza quoted from the Hymn to the Ocean.
"Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since" (has wasted them),