THOMAS GRAY.

Many editions of Gray have been published in the last fifty years, some of them very elegant, and some showing considerable editorial labor, but not one, so far as I am aware, critically exact either in text or in notes. No editor since Mathias (A.D. 1814) has given the 2d line of the Elegy as Gray wrote and printed it; while Mathias's mispunctuation of the 123d line has been copied by his successors, almost without exception. Other variations from the early editions are mentioned in the notes.

It is a curious fact that the most accurate edition of Gray's collected poems is the editio princeps of 1768, printed under his own supervision. The first edition of the two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard (Strawberry-Hill, 1757), was printed with equal care, and the proofs were probably read by the poet. The text of the present edition has been collated, line by line, with that of these early editions, and in no instance have I adopted a later reading. All the MS. variations, and the various readings I have noted in the modern editions, are given in the notes.

Pickering's edition of 1835, edited by Mitford, has been followed blindly in nearly all the more recent editions, and its many errors (see foot-note below and also) have been faithfully reproduced. Even its blunders in the "indenting" of the lines in the corresponding stanzas of the two Pindaric odes, which any careful proof-reader ought to have corrected, have been copied again and again—as in the Boston (1853) reprint of Pickering, the pretty little edition of Bickers & Son (London, n. d.), the fac-simile of the latter printed at our University Press, Cambridge (1866), etc.

Of former editions of Gray, the only one very fully annotated is Mitford's (Pickering, 1835), already mentioned. I have drawn freely from that, correcting many errors, and also from Wakefield's and Mason's editions, and from Hales's notes (Longer English Poems, London, 1872) on the Elegy and the Pindaric odes. To all this material many original notes and illustrations have been added.

The facts concerning the first publication of the Elegy are not given correctly by any of the editors, and even the "experts" of Notes and Queries have not been able to disentangle the snarl of conflicting evidence. I am not sure that I have settled the question myself (see below and foot-note), but I have at least shown that Gray is a more credible witness in the case than any of his critics. Their testimony is obviously inconsistent and inconclusive; he may have confounded the names of two magazines, but that remains to be proved.¹

¹ Since writing the above to-day, I have found by the merest chance in my own library another bit of evidence in the case, which fully confirms my surmise that the Elegy was printed in The Magazine of Magazines before it appeared in the Grand Magazine of Magazines. Chambers's Book of Days (vol. ii. p. 146), in an article on "Gray and his Elegy," says:

"It first saw the light in The Magazine of Magazines, February, 1751. Some imaginary literary wag is made to rise in a convivial assembly, and thus announce it: 'Gentlemen, give me leave to soothe my own melancholy, and amuse you in a most noble manner, with a full copy of verses by the very ingenious Mr. Gray, of Peterhouse, Cambridge. They are stanzas written in a country churchyard.' Then follow the verses. A few days afterwards, Dodsley's edition appeared," etc.

The same authority gives the four stanzas omitted after the 18th (see below) as they appear in the North American Review, except that the first line of the third is "Hark how the sacred calm that reigns around," a reading which I have found nowhere else. The stanza "There scattered oft," etc. (see below), is given as in the review. The reading further below must be a later one.

I have retained most of the "parallel passages" from the poets given by the editors, and have added others, without regard to the critics who have sneered at this kind of annotations. Whether Gray borrowed from the others, or the others from him, matters little; very likely, in most instances, neither party was consciously the borrower. Gray, in his own notes, has acknowledged certain debts to other poets, and probably these were all that he was aware of. Some of these he contracted unwittingly (see what he says of one of them in a letter to Walpole, quoted in the note on the Ode on the Spring, 31), and the same may have been true of some apparently similar cases pointed out by modern editors. To me, however, the chief interest of these coincidences and resemblances of thought or expression is as studies in the "comparative anatomy" of poetry. The teacher will find them useful as pegs to hang questions upon, or texts for oral instruction. The pupil, or the young reader, who finds out who all these poets were, when they lived, what they wrote, etc., will have learned no small amount of English literary history. If he studies the quotations merely as illustrations of style and expression, or as examples of the poetic diction of various periods, he will have learned some lessons in the history and the use of his mother-tongue.

The wood-cuts, illustrations 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, and 29 are from Birket Foster's designs; illustrations 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, and 16 are from the graceful drawings of "E. V. B." (the Hon. Mrs. Boyle); the rest are from various sources.

    Cambridge, Feb. 29, 1876.

THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY, BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS

STOKE-POGIS, BY WILLIAM HOWITT

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

ON THE SPRING

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE

THE PROGRESS OF POESY

THE BARD

HYMN TO ADVERSITY

NOTES

APPENDIX TO NOTES

INDEX

Thomas Gray, the author of the celebrated Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, was born in Cornhill, London, December 26, 1716. His father, Philip Gray, an exchange broker and scrivener, was a wealthy and nominally respectable citizen, but he treated his family with brutal severity and neglect, and the poet was altogether indebted for the advantages of a learned education to the affectionate care and industry of his mother, whose maiden name was Antrobus, and who, in conjunction with a maiden sister, kept a millinery shop. A brother of Mrs. Gray was assistant to the Master of Eton, and was also a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Under his protection the poet was educated at Eton, and from thence went to Peterhouse, attending college from 1734 to September, 1738. At Eton he had as contemporaries Richard West, son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Horace Walpole, son of the triumphant Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole. West died early in his 26th year, but his genius and virtues and his sorrows will forever live in the correspondence of his friend. In the spring of 1739, Gray was invited by Horace Walpole to accompany him as travelling companion in a tour through France and Italy. They made the usual route, and Gray wrote remarks on all he saw in Florence, Rome, Naples, etc. His observations on arts and antiquities, and his sketches of foreign manners, evince his admirable taste, learning, and discrimination. Since Milton, no such accomplished English traveller had visited those classic shores. In their journey through Dauphiny, Gray's attention was strongly arrested by the wild and picturesque site of the Grande Chartreuse, surrounded by its dense forest of beech and fir, its enormous precipices, cliffs, and cascades. He visited it a second time on his return, and in the album of the mountain convent he wrote his famous Alcaic Ode. At Reggio the travellers quarrelled and parted. Walpole took the whole blame on himself. He was fond of pleasure and amusements, "intoxicated by vanity, indulgence, and the insolence of his situation as a prime minister's son"—his own confession—while Gray was studious, of a serious disposition, and independent spirit. The immediate cause of the rupture is said to have been Walpole's clandestinely opening, reading, and resealing a letter addressed to Gray, in which he expected to find a confirmation of his suspicions that Gray had been writing unfavourably of him to some friends in England. A partial reconciliation was effected about three years afterwards by the intervention of a lady, and Walpole redeemed his youthful error by a life-long sincere admiration and respect for his friend. From Reggio Gray proceeded to Venice, and thence travelled homewards, attended by a laquais de voyage. He arrived in England in September, 1741, having been absent about two years and a half. His father died in November, and it was found that the poet's fortune would not enable him to prosecute the study of the law. He therefore retired to Cambridge, and fixed his residence at the university. There he continued for the remainder of his life, with the exception of about two years spent in London, when the treasures of the British Museum were thrown open. At Cambridge he had the range of noble libraries. His happiness consisted in study, and he perused with critical attention the Greek and Roman poets, philosophers, historians, and orators. Plato and the Anthologia he read and annotated with great care, as if for publication. He compiled tables of Greek chronology, added notes to Linnæus and other naturalists, wrote geographical disquisitions on Strabo; and, besides being familiar with French and Italian literature, was a zealous archæological student, and profoundly versed in architecture, botany, painting, and music. In all departments of human learning, except mathematics, he was a master. But it follows that one so studious, so critical, and so fastidious, could not be a voluminous writer. A few poems include all the original compositions of Gray—the quintessence, as it were, of thirty years of ceaseless study and contemplation, irradiated by bright and fitful gleams of inspiration. In 1742 Gray composed his Ode to Spring, his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, and his Ode to Adversity—productions which most readers of poetry can repeat from memory. He commenced a didactic poem, On the Alliance of Education and Government, but wrote only about a hundred lines. Every reader must regret that this philosophical poem is but a fragment. It is in the style and measure of Dryden, of whom Gray was an ardent admirer and close student. His Elegy written in a Country Churchyard was completed and published in 1751. In the form of a sixpenny brochure it circulated rapidly, four editions being exhausted the first year. This popularity surprised the poet. He said sarcastically that it was owing entirely to the subject, and that the public would have received it as well if it had been written in prose. The solemn and affecting nature of the poem, applicable to all ranks and classes, no doubt aided its sale; it required high poetic sensibility and a cultivated taste to appreciate the rapid transitions, the figurative language, and lyrical magnificence of the odes; but the elegy went home to all hearts; while its musical harmony, originality, and pathetic train of sentiment and feeling render it one of the most perfect of English poems. No vicissitudes of taste or fashion have affected its popularity. When the original manuscript of the poem was lately (1854) offered for sale, it brought the almost incredible sum of £131. The two great odes of Gray, The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, were published in 1757, and were but coldly received. His name, however, stood high, and on the death of Cibber, the same year, he was offered the laureateship, which he wisely declined. He was ambitious, however, of obtaining the more congenial and dignified appointment of Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, which fell vacant in 1762, and, by the advice of his friends, he made application to Lord Bute, but was unsuccessful. Lord Bute had designed it for the tutor of his son-in-law, Sir James Lowther. No one had heard of the tutor, but the Bute influence was all-prevailing. In 1765 Gray took a journey into Scotland, penetrating as far north as Dunkeld and the Pass of Killiecrankie; and his account of his tour, in letters to his friends, is replete with interest and with touches of his peculiar humour and graphic description. One other poem proceeded from his pen. In 1768 the Professorship of Modern History was again vacant, and the Duke of Grafton bestowed it upon Gray. A sum of £400 per annum was thus added to his income; but his health was precarious—he had lost it, he said, just when he began to be easy in his circumstances. The nomination of the Duke of Grafton to the office of Chancellor of the University enabled Gray to acknowledge the favour conferred on himself. He thought it better that gratitude should sing than expectation, and he honoured his grace's installation with an ode. Such occasional productions are seldom happy; but Gray preserved his poetic dignity and select beauty of expression. He made the founders of Cambridge, as Mr. Hallam has remarked, "pass before our eyes like shadows over a magic glass." When the ceremony of the installation was over, the poet-professor went on a tour to the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and few of the beauties of the lake-country, since so famous, escaped his observation. This was to be his last excursion. While at dinner one day in the college-hall he was seized with an attack of gout in his stomach, which resisted all the powers of medicine, and proved fatal in less than a week. He died on the 30th of July, 1771, and was buried, according to his own desire, beside the remains of his mother at Stoke-Pogis, near Slough, in Buckinghamshire, in a beautiful sequestered village churchyard that is supposed to have furnished the scene of his elegy.¹ The literary habits and personal peculiarities of Gray are familiar to us from the numerous representations and allusions of his friends. It is easy to fancy the recluse-poet sitting in his college-chambers in the old quadrangle of Pembroke Hall. His windows are ornamented with mignonette and choice flowers in China vases, but outside may be discerned some iron-work intended to be serviceable as a fire-escape, for he has a horror of fire. His furniture is neat and select; his books, rather for use than show, are disposed around him. He has a harpsichord in the room. In the corner of one of the apartments is a trunk containing his deceased mother's dresses, carefully folded up and preserved. His fastidiousness, bordering upon effeminacy, is visible in his gait and manner—in his handsome features and small, well-dressed person, especially when he walks abroad and sinks the author and hard student in "the gentleman who sometimes writes for his amusement." He writes always with a crow-quill, speaks slowly and sententiously, and shuns the crew of dissonant college revellers, who call him "a prig," and seek to annoy him. Long mornings of study, and nights feverish from ill-health, are spent in those chambers; he is often listless and in low spirits; yet his natural temper is not desponding, and he delights in employment. He has always something to learn or to communicate—some sally of humour or quiet stroke of satire for his friends and correspondents—some note on natural history to enter in his journal—some passage of Plato to unfold and illustrate—some golden thought of classic inspiration to inlay on his page—some bold image to tone down—some verse to retouch and harmonize. His life is on the whole innocent and happy, and a feeling of thankfulness to the Great Giver is breathed over all.

¹ A claim has been put up for the churchyard of Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge, the great bell of St. Mary's serving for the "curfew." But Stoke-Pogis is more likely to have been the spot, if any individual locality were indicated. The poet often visited the village, his aunt and mother residing there, and his aunt was interred in the churchyard of the place. Gray's epitaph on his mother is characterized not only by the tenderness with which he always regarded her memory, but by his style and cast of thought. It runs thus: "Beside her friend and sister here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died March 11, 1753, aged 72." She had lived to read the Elegy, which was perhaps an ample recompense for her maternal cares and affection. Mrs. Gray's will commences in a similar touching strain: "In the name of God, amen. This is the last will and desire of Dorothy Gray to her son Thomas Gray." [Cunningham's edit. of Johnson's Lives.] They were all in all to each other. The father's cruelty and neglect, their straitened circumstances, the sacrifices made by the mother to maintain her son at the university, her pride in the talents and conduct of that son, and the increasing gratitude and affection of the latter, nursed in his scholastic and cloistered solitude—these form an affecting but noble record in the history of genius.

[One would infer from the above that Mrs. Gray was not "interred in the churchyard of the place," though the epitaph given immediately after shows that she was. Gray in his will directed that he should be laid beside her there. The passage in the will reads thus: "First, I do desire that my body may be deposited in the vault, made by my dear mother in the churchyard of Stoke-Pogeis, near Slough in Buckinghamshire, by her remains, in a coffin of seasoned oak, neither lined nor covered, and (unless it be inconvenient) I could wish that one of my executors may see me laid in the grave, and distribute among such honest and industrious poor persons in said parish as he thinks fit, the sum of ten pounds in charity."—Ed.]

Various editions of the collected works of Gray have been published. The first, including memoirs of his life and his correspondence, edited by his friend, the Rev. W. Mason, appeared in 1775. It has been often reprinted, and forms the groundwork of the editions by Mathias (1814) and Mitford (1816). Mr. Mitford, in 1843, published Gray's correspondence with the Rev. Norton Nicholls; and in 1854 another collection of Gray's letters was published, edited also by Mr. Mitford. Every scrap of the poet's MSS. is eagerly sought after, and every year seems to add to his popularity as a poet and letter-writer.

In 1778 a monument to Gray was erected in Westminster Abbey by Mason, with the following inscription:

The cenotaph afterwards erected in Stoke Park by Mr. Penn is described below.

¹ Harper's edition, vol. i. p. 314 foll.

It is at Stoke-Pogis that we seek the most attractive vestiges of Gray. Here he used to spend his vacations, not only when a youth at Eton, but during the whole of his future life, while his mother and his aunts lived. Here it was that his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, his celebrated Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and his Long Story were not only written, but were mingled with the circumstances and all the tenderest feelings of his own life.

His mother and aunts lived at an old-fashioned house in a very retired spot at Stoke, called West-End. This house stood in a hollow, much screened by trees. A small stream ran through the garden, and it is said that Gray used to employ himself when here much in this garden, and that many of the trees still remaining are of his planting. On one side of the house extended an upland field, which was planted round so as to give a charming retired walk; and at the summit of the field was raised an artificial mound, and upon it was built a sort of arcade or summer-house, which gave full prospect of Windsor and Eton. Here Gray used to delight to sit; here he was accustomed to read and write much; and it is just the place to inspire the Ode on Eton College, which lay in the midst of its fine landscape, beautifully in view. The old house inhabited by Gray and his mother has just been pulled down, and replaced by an Elizabethan mansion by the present proprietor, Mr. Penn, of Stoke Park, just by.² The garden, of course, has shared in the change, and now stands gay with its fountain and its modern greenhouse, and, excepting for some fine trees, no longer reminds you of Gray. The woodland walk still remains round the adjoining field, and the summer-house on its summit, though now much cracked by time, and only held together by iron cramps. The trees are now so lofty that they completely obstruct the view, and shut out both Eton and Windsor.

² This was written (or published, at least) in 1846; but Mitford, in the Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton edition" of his Poems, published in 1847, says: "The house, which is now called West-End, lies in a secluded part of the parish, on the road to Fulmer. It has lately been much enlarged and adorned by its present proprietor [Mr. Penn], but the room called 'Gray's' (distinguished by a small balcony) is still preserved; and a shady walk round an adjoining meadow, with a summer-house on the rising land, are still remembered as favourite places frequented by the poet."—Ed.

Stoke Park is about a couple of miles from Slough. The country is flat, but its monotony is broken up by the noble character and disposition of its woods. Near the house is a fine expanse of water, across which the eye falls on fine views, particularly to the south, of Windsor Castle, Cooper's Hill, and the Forest Woods. About three hundred yards from the north front of the house stands a column, sixty-eight feet high, bearing on the top a colossal statue of Sir Edward Coke, by Rosa. The woods of the park shut out the view of West-End House, Gray's occasional residence, but the space is open from the mansion across the park, so as to take in the view both of the church and of a monument erected by the late Mr. Penn to Gray. Alighting from the carriage at a lodge, we enter the park just at the monument. This is composed of fine freestone, and consists of a large sarcophagus, supported on a square pedestal, with inscriptions on each side. Three of them are selected from the Ode on Eton College and the Elegy. They are:

The second is from the Ode:

The third is again from the Elegy:

The fourth bears this inscription:

This monument is in a neatly kept garden-like enclosure, with a winding walk approaching from the shade of the neighbouring trees. To the right, across the park, at some little distance, backed by fine trees, stands the rural little church and churchyard where Gray wrote his Elegy, and where he lies. As you walk on to this, the mansion closes the distant view between the woods with fine effect. The church has often been engraved, and is therefore tolerably familiar to the general reader. It consists of two barn-like structures, with tall roofs, set side by side, and the tower and finely tapered spire rising above them at the northwest corner. The church is thickly hung with ivy, where

The structure is as simple and old-fashioned, both without and within, as any village church can well be. No village, however, is to be seen. Stoke consists chiefly of scattered houses, and this is now in the midst of the park. In the churchyard,

All this is quite literal; and the tomb of the poet himself, near the southeast window, completes the impression of the scene. It is a plain brick altar tomb, covered with a blue slate slab, and, besides his own ashes, contains those of his mother and aunt. On the slab are inscribed the following lines by Gray himself: "In the vault beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow; the careful, tender mother of many children, ONE of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died, March 11, 1753, aged LXXII."

No testimony of the interment of Gray in the same tomb was inscribed anywhere till Mr. Penn, in 1799, erected the monument already mentioned, and placed a small slab in the wall, under the window, opposite to the tomb itself, recording the fact of Gray's burial there. The whole scene is well worthy of a summer day's stroll, especially for such as, pent in the metropolis, know how to enjoy the quiet freshness of the country and the associations of poetry and the past.

A. S., Anglo-Saxon.

Arc., Milton's Arcades.

C. T., Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Cf. (confer), compare.

D. V., Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Ep., Epistle, Epode.

Foll., following.

F. Q., Spenser's Faërie Queene.

H., Haven's Rhetoric (Harper's edition).

Hales, Longer English Poems, edited by Rev. J. W. Hales (London, 1872).

Il Pens., Milton's Il Penseroso.

L'All., Milton's L'Allegro.

Ol., Pindar's Olympian Odes.

P. L., Milton's Paradise Lost.

P. R., Milton's Paradise Regained.

S. A., Milton's Samson Agonistes.

Shakes. Gr., Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (the references are to sections, not pages).

Shep. Kal., Spenser's Shepherd's Kalendar.

st., stanza.

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto edition).

Worc., Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition).

Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, works of Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, etc.) need no explanation.

This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until 1750, when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12, 1750) in which he says: "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer), and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it: a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like to want." It was shown in manuscript to some of the author's friends, and was published in 1751 only because it was about to be printed surreptitiously.

February 11, 1751, Gray wrote to Walpole that the proprietors of "the Magazine of Magazines" were about to publish his Elegy, and added, "I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself,¹ and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be—'Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard.' If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better." Walpole did as requested, and wrote an advertisement to the effect that accident alone brought the poem before the public, although an apology was unnecessary to any but the author. On which Gray wrote, "I thank you for your advertisement, which saves my honour."

¹ Dodsley's proof-reading must have been somewhat careless, for there are many errors of the press in this editio princeps. Gray writes to Walpole, under date of "Ash-Wednesday, Cambridge, 1751," as follows: "Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter: we have ourselves suffered under her hands before now; and besides, it will only look the more careless and by accident as it were." Again, March 3, 1751, he writes: "I do not expect any more editions; as I have appeared in more magazines than one. The chief errata were sacred for secret; hidden for kindred (in spite of dukes and classics); and 'frowning as in scorn' for smiling. I humbly propose, for the benefit of Mr. Dodsley and his matrons, that take awake [in line 92, which at first read "awake and faithful to her wonted fires"] for a verb, that they should read asleep, and all will be right." Other errors were, "Their harrow oft the stubborn glebe," "And read their destiny in a nation's eyes," "With uncouth rhymes and shapeless culture decked," "Slow through the churchway pass," and many of minor importance.

A writer in Notes and Queries, June 12, 1875, states that the poem first appeared in the London Magazine, March, 1751, p. 134, and that "the Magazine of Magazines" is "a gentle term of scorn used by Gray to indicate" that periodical, and not the name of any actual magazine. But in the next number of Notes and Queries (June 19, 1875) Mr. F. Locker informs us that he has in his possession a title-page of the Grand Magazine of Magazines, and the page of the number for April, 1751, which contains the Elegy. The magazine is said to be "collected and digested by Roger Woodville, Esq.," and "published by Cooper at the Globe, in Pater Noster Row."

Gray says nothing in his letters of the appearance of the Elegy in the London Magazine. The full title of that periodical was "The London Magazine: or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer." The editor's name was not given; the publisher was "R. Baldwin, jun. at the Rose in Pater-Noster Row." The volume for 1751 was the 20th, and the Preface (written at the close of the year) begins thus: "As the two most formidable Enemies we have ever had, are now extinct, we have great Reason to conclude, that it is only the Merit, and real Usefulness of our COLLECTION, that hath supported its Sale and Reputation for Twenty Years." A foot-note informs us that the "Enemies" are the "Magazine of Magazines and Grand Magazine of Magazines;" from which it would appear that there were two periodicals of similar name published in London in 1751.²

² May not the Elegy have been printed in both of these? We do not know how otherwise to reconcile the conflicting statements concerning the "Magazine of Magazines," as Gray calls it. In the first place, Gray appears (from other portions of his letter to Walpole) to be familiar with this magazine, and would not be likely to confound it with another of similar name. Then, as we have seen, he writes early in March to Walpole that the poem has been printed "in more magazines than one." This cannot refer to the Grand Magazine of Magazines, if, as Mr. Locker states, it was the April number of that periodical in which the poem appeared. Nor can it refer to the London Magazine, as it is clear from internal evidence that the March number, containing the Elegy, was not issued until early in April. It contains a summary of current news down to Sunday, March 31, and the price of stocks in the London market for March 30. The February number, in its "monthly catalogue" of new books, records the publication of the Elegy by Dodsley thus: "An Elegy wrote in a Church-yard, pr. 6d. Dodsley."

If, then, the Elegy did not appear in either the London Magazine or the Grand Magazine of Magazines until more than a month (in the case of the latter, perhaps two months) after Dodsley had issued it, in what magazine was it that it did appear just before he issued it? The N. A. Review says that "it was a close race between the Magazine and Dodsley; but the former, having a little the start, came out a few days ahead." If so, it must have been the March number; or the February one, if it was published, like the London, at the end of the month. Gray calls it "the Magazine of Magazines," and we shall take his word for it until we have reason for doubting it. What else was included in his "more magazines than one" we cannot even guess.

We have not been able to find the Magazine of Magazines or the Grand Magazine of Magazines in the libraries, and know nothing about either "of our own knowledge." The London Magazine is in the Harvard College Library, and the statements concerning that we can personally vouch for.

The author's name is not given with the Elegy as printed in the London Magazine. The poem is sandwiched between an "Epilogue to Alfred, a Masque" and some coarse rhymes entitled "Strip-Me-Naked, or Royal Gin for ever." There is not even a printer's "rule" or "dash" to separate the title of the latter from the last line of the Elegy. The poem is more correctly printed than in Dodsley's authorized edition; though, queerly enough, it has "winds" in the second line and the parenthesis "(all he had)" in the Epitaph. Of Dodsley's misprints noted above it has only "Their harrow oft" and "shapeless culture." These four errors, indeed, are the only ones worth noting, except "Or wake to extasy the living lyre."

The "Magazine of Magazines" (as the writer in the North American Review tells us) printed the Elegy with the author's name. The authorized though anonymous edition was thus briefly noticed by The Monthly Review, the critical Rhadamanthus of the day: "An Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 4to. Dodsley's. Seven pages.—The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity."

"Soon after its publication," says Mason, "I remember, sitting with Mr. Gray in his College apartment, he expressed to me his surprise at the rapidity of its sale. I replied:

He paused awhile, and taking his pen, wrote the line on a printed copy of it lying on his table. 'This,' said he, 'shall be its future motto.' 'Pity,' cried I, 'that Dr. Young's Night Thoughts have preoccupied it.' 'So,' replied he, 'indeed it is.'" Gray himself tells the story of its success on the margin of the manuscript copy of the Elegy preserved at Cambridge among his papers, and reproduced in fac-simile in Mathias's elegant edition of the poet. The following is a careful transcript of the memorandum:

"publish'd in
Feb:^ry, 1751.
by Dodsley: &
went thro' four
Editions; in two
months; and af-
terwards a fifth
6^th 7^th & 8^th 9^th & 10^th
& 11^th
printed also in 1753
with M^r Bentley's
Designs, of w^ch
there is a 2^d Edition
& again by Dodsley
in his Miscellany,
Vol: 4^th & in a
Scotch Collection
call'd the Union.
translated into
Latin by Chr: Anstey
Esq, & the Rev^d M^r
Roberts, & publish'd
in 1762; & again
in the same year
by Rob: Lloyd, M: A:"

"One peculiar and remarkable tribute to the merit of the Elegy," says Professor Henry Reed, "is to be noticed in the great number of translations which have been made of it into various languages, both of ancient and modern Europe. It is the same kind of tribute which has been rendered to Robinson Crusoe and to The Pilgrim's Progress, and is proof of the same universality of interest, transcending the limits of language and of race. To no poem in the English language has the same kind of homage been paid so abundantly. Of what other poem is there a polyglot edition? Italy and England have competed with their polyglot editions of the Elegy: Torri's, bearing the title, 'Elegia di Tomaso Gray sopra un Cimitero di Campagna, tradotta dall' Inglese in più lingue: Verona, 1817; Livorno, 1843;' and Van Voorst's London edition." Professor Reed adds a list of the translations (which, however, is incomplete), including one in Hebrew, seven in Greek, twelve in Latin, thirteen in Italian, fifteen in French, six in German, and one in Portuguese.

"Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy," remarks Byron, "high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the cornerstone of his glory."

The tribute paid the poem by General Wolfe is familiar to all, but we cannot refrain from quoting Lord Mahon's beautiful account of it in his History of England. On the night of September 13th, 1759, the night before the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Wolfe was descending the St. Lawrence with a part of his troops. The historian says: "Swiftly, but silently, did the boats fall down with the tide, unobserved by the enemy's sentinels at their posts along the shore. Of the soldiers on board, how eagerly must every heart have throbbed at the coming conflict! how intently must every eye have contemplated the dark outline, as it lay pencilled upon the midnight sky, and as every moment it grew closer and clearer, of the hostile heights! Not a word was spoken—not a sound heard beyond the rippling of the stream. Wolfe alone—thus tradition has told us—repeated in a low tone to the other officers in his boat those beautiful stanzas with which a country churchyard inspired the muse of Gray. One noble line,

must have seemed at such a moment fraught with mournful meaning. At the close of the recitation Wolfe added, 'Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec.'"

Hales, in his Introduction to the poem, remarks: "The Elegy is perhaps the most widely known poem in our language. The reason of this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that it expresses in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are universal. In the current of ideas in the Elegy there is perhaps nothing that is rare, or exceptional, or out of the common way. The musings are of the most rational and obvious character possible; it is difficult to conceive of any one musing under similar circumstances who should not muse so; but they are not the less deep and moving on this account. The mystery of life does not become clearer, or less solemn and awful, for any amount of contemplation. Such inevitable, such everlasting questions as rise on the mind when one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their freshness, never cease to fascinate and to move. It is with such questions, that would have been commonplace long ages since if they could ever be so, that the Elegy deals. It deals with them in no lofty philosophical manner, but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always with the truest and the broadest humanity. The poet's thoughts turn to the poor; he forgets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the 'mouldering heaps' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that especially suggests itself is the potential greatness, when they lived, of the 'rude forefathers' that now lie at his feet. He does not, and cannot solve it, though he finds considerations to mitigate the sadness it must inspire; but he expresses it in all its awfulness in the most effective language and with the deepest feeling; and his expression of it has become a living part of our language."

The writer in the North American Review (vol. 96) from whom we have elsewhere quoted says of the Elegy: "It is upon this that Gray's fame as a poet must chiefly rest. By this he will be known forever alike to the lettered and the unlettered. Many, in future ages, who may never have heard of his classic Odes, his various learning, or his sparkling letters, will revere him only as the author of the Elegy. For this he will be enshrined through all time in the hearts of the myriads who shall speak our English tongue. For this his name will be held in glad remembrance in the far-off summer isles of the Pacific, and amidst the waste of polar snows. If he had written nothing else, his place as a leading poet in our language would still be assured. Many have asserted, with Johnson, that he was a mere mechanical poet—one who brought from without, but never found within; that the gift of inspiration was not native to him; that his imagination was borrowed finery, his fancy tinsel, and his invention the world's well-worn jewels; that whatever in his verse was poetic was not new, and what was new was not poetic; that he was only an unworldly dyspeptic, living amid many books, and laboriously delving for a lifetime between musty covers, picking out now and then another's gems and bits of ore, and fashioning them into ill-compacted mosaics, which he wrongly called his own. To all this the Elegy is a sufficient answer. It is not old—it is not bookish; it is new and human. Books could not make its maker: he was born of the divine breath alone. Consider all the commentators, the scholiasts, the interpreters, the annotators, and other like book-worms, from Aristarchus down to Döderlein; and may it not be said that, among them all, 'Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum?'

"Gray wrote but little, yet he wrote that little well. He might have done far more for us; the same is true of most men, even of the greatest. The possibilities of a life are always in advance of its performance. But we cannot say that his life was a wasted one. Even this little Elegy alone should go for much. For, suppose that he had never written this, but instead had done much else in other ways, according to his powers: that he had written many learned treatises; that he had, with keen criticism, expounded and reconstructed Greek classics; that he had, perchance, sat upon the woolsack, and laid rich offerings at the feet of blind Justice;—taking the years together, would it have been, on the whole, better for him or for us? Would he have added so much to the sum of human happiness? He might thus have made himself a power for a time, to be dethroned by some new usurper in the realm of knowledge; now he is a power and a joy forever to countless thousands."

Two manuscripts of the Elegy, in Gray's handwriting, still exist. Both were bequeathed by the poet, together with his library, letters, and many miscellaneous papers, to his friends the Rev. William Mason and the Rev. James Browne, as joint literary executors. Mason bequeathed the entire trust to Mr. Stonhewer. The latter, in making his will, divided the legacy into two parts. The larger share went to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke Hall. Among the papers, which are still in the possession of the College, was found a copy of the Elegy. An excellent fac-simile of this manuscript appears in Mathias's edition of Gray, published in 1814. In referring to it hereafter we shall designate it as the "Pembroke" MS.

The remaining portion of Gray's literary bequest, including the other manuscript of the Elegy, was left by Mr. Stonhewer to his friend, Mr. Bright. In 1845 Mr. Bright's sons sold the collection at auction. The MS. of the Elegy was bought by Mr. Granville John Penn, of Stoke Park, for one hundred pounds—the highest sum that had ever been known to be paid for a single sheet of paper. In 1854 this manuscript came again into the market, and was knocked down to Mr. Robert Charles Wrightson, of Birmingham, for £131. On the 29th of May, 1875, it was once more offered for sale in London, and was purchased by Sir William Fraser for £230, or about $1150. A photographic reproduction of it was published in London in 1862. For convenience we shall refer to it as the "Wrightson" MS.

There can be little doubt that the Wrightson MS. is the original one, and that the Pembroke MS. is a fair copy made from it by the poet. The former contains a greater number of alterations, and varies more from the printed text. It bears internal evidence of being the rough draft, while the other represents a later stage of the poem. We will give the variations of both from the present version.³

³ For the readings of the Wrightson MS. we have had to depend on Mason, Mitford, and other editors of the poem, and on the article in the North American Review, already referred to. The readings of the Pembroke MS. are taken from the engraved fac-simile in Mathias's edition.

The two stanzas of which a fac-simile is given above are from the Pembroke MS., but the wood-cut hardly does justice to the feminine delicacy of the poet's handwriting.

The Wrightson MS. has in the first stanza, "The lowing herd wind slowly," etc. See our note on this line, below.

In the 2d stanza, it reads, "And now the air," etc.

The 5th stanza is as follows:

In 8th stanza, "Their rustic joys," etc.

In 10th stanza, the first two lines read,

In 12th stanza, "Hands that the reins of empire," etc.

In 13th stanza, "Chill Penury depress'd," etc.

The 15th stanza reads thus:

⁴ The Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, has a long article on the change made by Gray in this stanza, entitled, "A Lesson from Gray's Elegy," from which we cull the following paragraphs:

"Gray, having first of all put down the names of three Romans as illustrations of his meaning, afterwards deliberately struck them out and put the names of three Englishmen instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the age, a change with which Gray himself had a good deal to do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, seems to us so obviously a change for the better that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would have thought the matter equally clear. We suspect that to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring novelty to draw illustrations from English history, especially from parts of English history which, it must be remembered, were then a great deal more recent than they are now. To be sure, in choosing English illustrations, a poet of Gray's time was in rather a hard strait. If he chose illustrations from the century or two before his own time, he could only choose names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent politics. If, in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had drawn illustrations from earlier times of English history, he would have found but few people in his day likely to understand him....

"The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general improvement in taste. He wrote first according to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his own better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to the fact that they were Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. But there is another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who would have regretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Cæsar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Cæsar. The 'classic' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Pardonable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when 'classic' studies and objects had the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly fashion."

In 18th stanza, "Or crown the shrine," etc.

After this stanza, the MS. has the following four stanzas, now omitted:

⁵ We follow Mason (ed. 1778) in the text of these stanzas. The North American Review has "Power and Genius" in the first, and "linger in the lonely walks" in the second.

The second of these stanzas has been remodelled and used as the 24th of the present version. Mason thought that there was a pathetic melancholy in all four which claimed preservation. The third he considered equal to any in the whole Elegy. The poem was originally intended to end here, the introduction of "the hoary-headed swain" being a happy after-thought.

In the 19th stanza, the MS. has "never learn'd to stray."

In the 21st stanza, "fame and epitaph," etc.

In the 23d stanza, the last line reads,

"Social" subsequently became "wonted," and other changes were made (see above, foot-note) before the line took its present form.

The 24th stanza reads,

⁶ Mitford (Eton ed.) gives "sympathizing" in the second line, and for the last,

The latter is obviously wrong (Gray was incapable of such metre), and the former is probably wrong also.

The last line of the 25th stanza reads,

Then comes the following stanza, afterwards omitted:

Mason remarked: "I rather wonder that he rejected this stanza, as it not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which charms us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but also completes the account of his whole day; whereas, this evening scene being omitted, we have only his morning walk, and his noontide repose."

⁷ Here also we follow Mason; the North American Review reads "our labours done."

The first line of the 27th stanza reads,

After the 29th stanza, and before the Epitaph, the MS. contains the following omitted stanza:

This—with two or three verbal changes only⁸—was inserted in all the editions up to 1753, when it was dropped. The omission was not made from any objection to the stanza in itself, but simply because it was too long a parenthesis in this place; on the principle which he states in a letter to Dr. Beattie: "As to description, I have always thought that it made the most graceful ornament of poetry, but never ought to make the subject." The part was sacrificed for the good of the whole. Mason very justly remarked that "the lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation."

⁸ See below. The writer in the North American Review is our only authority for the stanza as given above. He appears to have had the photographic reproduction of the Wrightson MS., but we cannot vouch for the accuracy of his transcripts from it.

The first line of the 31st stanza has "and his heart sincere."

The 32d and last stanza is as follows:

⁹ The above are all the variations from the present text in the Wrightson MS. which are noted by the authorities on whom we have depended; but we suspect that the following readings, mentioned by Mitford as in the MS., belong to that MS., as they are not found in the other: in the 7th stanza, "sickles" for "sickle;" in 18th, "shrines" for "shrine." Two others (in stanzas 9th and 27th) are referred to in our account of the Pembroke MS. below.

The Pembroke MS. has the following variations from the present version:

In the 1st stanza, "wind" for "winds."

2d stanza, "Or drowsy," etc.

5th stanza, "and the ecchoing horn."

6th stanza, "Nor climb his knees."

9th stanza, "Awaits alike." Probably this is also the reading of the Wrightson MS. Mitford gives it as noted by Mason, and it is retained by Gray in the ed. of 1768.

The 10th stanza begins,

the present readings ("Nor you," "impute to these," and "Mem'ry o'er their tomb") being inserted in the margin.

The 12th stanza has "reins of empire," with "rod" in the margin.

In the 15th stanza, the word "lands" has been crossed out, and "fields" written above it.

The 17th has "Or shut the gates," etc.

In the 21st we have "fame and epitaph supply."

The 23d has "And in our ashes glow," the readings "Ev'n" and "live" being inserted in the margin.

The 27th stanza has "would he rove." We suspect that this is also the reading of the Wrightson MS., as Mitford says it is noted by Mason.

In the 28th stanza, the first line reads "from the custom'd hill."

In the 29th a word which we cannot make out has been erased, and "aged" substituted.

Before the Epitaph, two asterisks refer to the bottom of the page, where the following stanza is given, with the marginal note, "Omitted in 1753:"

The last two lines of the 31st stanza (see note below) are pointed as follows:

Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following: "Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Huswife;" "Ile" (aisle); "wast" (waste); "village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;" "spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc.

Mitford, in his Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton" edition of his Poems (edited by Rev. John Moultrie, 1847), says: "I possess many curious variations from the printed text, taken from a copy of it in his own handwriting." He adds specimens of these variations, a few of which differ from both the Wrightson and Pembroke MSS. We give these in our notes below. See on 12, 24, and 93.

Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene of the Elegy, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, been in favor of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in 1742; and there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In that churchyard his mother was buried, and there, at his request, his own remains were afterwards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, in all respects in perfect keeping with the spirit of the poem.

According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parish about two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in the habit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of the poem; and the great bell of St. Mary's is the "curfew" of the first stanza. Another tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, some three miles and a half northwest of Cambridge. Both places have churchyards such as the Elegy describes; and this is about all that can be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parish called Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at least has suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason than that Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, and casually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot of which he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a whole morning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poet often visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fond and tender associations that gathered about Stoke.

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

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

Gray himself quotes here Dante, Purgat. 8:

and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation:

Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, 22:

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."

6. Air is of course the object, not the subject of the verb.

7. Save where the beetle, etc. Cf. Collins, Ode to Evening:

and Macbeth, iii. 2:

10. The moping owl. Mitford quotes Ovid, Met. v. 550: "Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, Winter, 114:

and Mallet, Excursion:

12. Her ancient solitary reign. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iii. 476: "desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."

13. "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tennyson (In Mem. x.) speaks of resting

In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.) when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be 'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's White Devil). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral reasons gave no choice" (Hales).

17. Cf. Milton, Arcades, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" P. L. ix. 192:

18. Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, Æn. viii. 455:

19. The cock's shrill clarion. Cf. Philips, Cyder, i. 753:

Milton, P. L. vii. 443:

Hamlet, i. 1:

Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia:

and Thomas Kyd, England's Parnassus:

20. Their lowly bed. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter."

21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894:

and Horace, Epod. ii. 39:

Mitford quotes Thomson, Winter, 311:

Wakefield cites The Idler, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last."

22. Ply her evening care. Mitford says, "To ply a care is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme share." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the Elegy unintelligible. Compare his own

23. No children run, etc. Hales quotes Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night, 21:

24. Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield compares Virgil, Geo. ii. 523:

and Mitford adds from Dryden,

Cf. Thomson, Liberty, iii. 171:

26. The stubborn glebe. Cf. Gay, Fables, ii. 15:

Broke=broken, as often in poetry, especially in the Elizabethan writers. See Abbott, Shakes. Gr. 343.

27. Drive their team afield. Cf. Lycidas, 27: "We drove afield;" and Dryden, Virgil's Ecl. ii. 38: "With me to drive afield."

28. Their sturdy stroke. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Feb.:

and Dryden, Geo. iii. 639:

30. As Mitford remarks, obscure and poor make "a very imperfect rhyme;" and the same might be said of toil and smile.

33. Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind these verses from his friend West's Monody on Queen Caroline:

Hurd compares Cowley:

35. Awaits. The reading of the ed. of 1768, as of the Pembroke (and probably the other) MS. Hour is the subject, not the object, of the verb.

36. Hayley, in the Life of Crashaw, Biographia Britannica, says that this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus in his Danish Antiquities."

39. Fretted. The fret is, strictly, an ornament used in classical architecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at right angles. Parker (Glossary of Architecture) derives the word from the Latin fretum, a strait; and Hales from ferrum, iron, through the Italian ferrata, an iron grating. It is more likely (see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. S. frætu, an ornament.

Cf. Hamlet, ii. 2:

and Cymbeline, ii. 4:

40. The pealing anthem. Cf. Il Penseroso, 161:

41. Storied urn. Cf. Il Pens. 159: "storied windows richly dight." On animated bust, cf. Pope, Temple of Fame, 73: "Heroes in animated marble frown;" and Virgil, Æn. vi. 847: "spirantia aera."

43. Provoke. Mitford considers this use of the word "unusually bold, to say the least." It is simply the etymological meaning, to call forth (Latin, provocare). See Wb. Cf. Pope, Ode:

44. Dull cold ear. Cf. Shakes. Hen. VIII. iii. 2: "And sleep in dull, cold marble."

46. Pregnant with celestial fire. This phrase has been copied by Cowper in his Boadicea, which is said (see notes of "Globe" ed.) to have been written after reading Hume's History, in 1780:

47. Mitford quotes Ovid, Ep. v. 86:

48. Living lyre. Cf. Cowley:

and Pope, Windsor Forest, 281:

50. Cf. Browne, Religio Medici: "Rich with the spoils of nature."

51. "Rage is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm" (Hales). Cf. Cowley:

and Tickell, Prol.:

Cf. also the use of the Latin rabies for the "divine afflatus," as in Æneid, vi. 49.

53. Full many a gem, etc. Cf. Bishop Hall, Contemplations: "There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never was seene, nor never shall bee."

Purest ray serene. As Hales remarks, this is a favourite arrangement of epithets with Milton. Cf. Hymn on Nativity: "flower-inwoven tresses torn;" Comus: "beckoning shadows dire;" "every alley green," etc.; L'Allegro: "native wood-notes wild;" Lycidas: "sad occasion dear;" "blest kingdoms meek," etc.

55. Full many a flower, etc. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, iv. 158:

Mitford cites Chamberlayne, Pharonida, ii. 4:

and Young, Univ. Pass. sat. v.:

and Philip, Thule:

Hales quotes Waller's

On desert air, cf. Macbeth, iv. 3: "That would be howl'd out in the desert air."

57. It was in 1636 that John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire (a cousin of Oliver Cromwell), refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. was levying without the authority of Parliament.

58. Little tyrant. Cf. Thomson, Winter:

The artists who have illustrated this passage (see, for instance, Favourite English Poems, p. 305, and Harper's Monthly, vol. vii. p. 3) appear to understand "little" as equivalent to juvenile. If that had been the meaning, the poet would have used some other phrase than "of his fields," or "his lands," as he first wrote it.

59. Some mute inglorious Milton. Cf. Phillips, preface to Theatrum Poetarum: "Even the very names of some who having perhaps been comparable to Homer for heroic poesy, or to Euripides for tragedy, yet nevertheless sleep inglorious in the crowd of the forgotten vulgar."

60. Some Cromwell, etc. Hales remarks: "The prejudice against Cromwell was extremely strong throughout the 18th century, even amongst the more liberal-minded. That cloud of 'detractions rude,' of which Milton speaks in his noble sonnet to our 'chief of men' as in his own day enveloping the great republican leader, still lay thick and heavy over him. His wise statesmanship, his unceasing earnestness, his high-minded purpose, were not yet seen."

After this stanza Thomas Edwards, the author of the Canons of Criticism, would add the following, to supply what he deemed a defect in the poem:

Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet.

63. Mitford quotes Tickell:

and Mrs. Behn:

66. Their growing virtues. That is, the growth of their virtues.

67. To wade through slaughter, etc. Cf. Pope, Temp. of Fame, 347:

68. Cf. Shakes. Hen. V. iii. 3:

70. To quench the blushes, etc. Cf. Shakes. W. T. iv. 3:

73. Far from the madding crowd's, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:

Mitford points out "the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which one must break the grammatical construction." The poet's meaning is, however, clear enough.

75. Wakefield quotes Pope, Epitaph on Fenton:

77. These bones. "The bones of these. So is is often used in Latin, especially by Livy, as in v. 22: 'Ea sola pecunia,' the money derived from that sale, etc." (Hales).

84. That teach. Mitford censures teach as ungrammatical; but it may be justified as a "construction according to sense."

85. Hales remarks: "At the first glance it might seem that to dumb Forgetfulness a prey was in apposition to who, and the meaning was, 'Who that now lies forgotten,' etc.; in which case the second line of the stanza must be closely connected with the fourth; for the question of the passage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who ever died without wishing to be remembered?' But in this way of interpreting this difficult stanza (i.) there is comparatively little force in the appositional phrase, and (ii.) there is a certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbal though apparently coördinate) in which, as has just been noticed, the point of the question really lies. Perhaps therefore it is better to take the phrase to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as in fact the completion of the predicate resign'd, and interpret thus: Who ever resigned this life of his with all its pleasures and all its pains to be utterly ignored and forgotten?=who ever, when resigning it, reconciled himself to its being forgotten? In this case the second half of the stanza echoes the thought of the first half."

We give the note in full, and leave the reader to take his choice of the two interpretations. For ourself, we incline to the first rather than the second. We prefer to take to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as appositional and proleptic, and not as the grammatical complement of resigned: Who, yielding himself up a prey to dumb Forgetfulness, ever resigned this life without casting a longing, lingering look behind?

90. Pious is used in the sense of the Latin pius. Ovid has "piae lacrimae." Mitford quotes Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, 49:

"In this stanza," says Hales, "he answers in an exquisite manner the two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding stanza.... What he would say is that every one while a spark of life yet remains in him yearns for some kindly loving remembrance; nay, even after the spark is quenched, even when all is dust and ashes, that yearning must still be felt."

91, 92. Mitford paraphrases the couplet thus: "The voice of Nature still cries from the tomb in the language of the epitaph inscribed upon it, which still endeavours to connect us with the living; the fires of former affection are still alive beneath our ashes."

Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 3880:

Gray himself quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 169:

translated by Nott as follows:

the "these" meaning his love and his songs concerning it. Gray translated this sonnet into Latin elegiacs, the last line being rendered,

93. On a MS. variation of this stanza given by Mitford, see above, footnote.

95. Chance is virtually an adverb here = perchance.

98. The peep of dawn. Mitford quotes Comus, 138:

99. Cf. Milton, P. L. v. 428:

and Arcades, 50:

Wakefield quotes Thomson, Spring, 103:

100. Upland lawn. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 25:

In L'Allegro, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks "upland=country, as opposed to town." He adds, "Gray in his Elegy seems to use the word loosely for 'on the higher ground;' perhaps he took it from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Milton uses it." We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is true that upland used to mean country, as uplanders meant countrymen, and uplandish countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the other meaning is older than Milton (see Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic Words), and Johnson, Keightley, and others are probably right in considering "upland hamlets" an instance of it. Masson, in his recent edition of Milton (1875), explains the "upland hamlets" as "little villages among the slopes, away from the river-meadows and the hay-making."

101. As Mitford remarks, beech and stretch form an imperfect rhyme.

102. Luke quotes Spenser, Ruines of Rome, st. 28:

103. His listless length. Hales compares King Lear, i. 4: "If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry." Cf. also Brittain's Ida (formerly ascribed to Spenser, but rejected by the best editors), iii. 2:

104. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, Od. iii. 13, 15:

Wakefield quotes As You Like It, ii. 1:

105. Smiling as in scorn. Cf. Shakes. Pass. Pilgrim, 14:

and Skelton, Prol. to B. of C.:

107. Woeful-wan. Mitford says: "Woeful-wan is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the handcuffs of the hyphen." The hyphen is not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in the Pembroke MS.

Wakefield quotes Spenser, Shep. Kal. Jan.:

108. "Hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way" (Hales).

109. Custom'd is Gray's word, not 'custom'd, as usually printed. See either Wb. or Worc. s. v. Cf. Milton, Ep. Damonis: "Simul assueta seditque sub ulmo."

114. Churchway path. Cf. Shakes. M. N. D. v. 2:

115. For thou canst read. The "hoary-headed swain" of course could not read.

116. Grav'd. The old form of the participle is graven, but graved is also in good use. The old preterite grove is obsolete.

117. The lap of earth. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 7, 9:

and Milton, P. L. x. 777:

Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pathetic sentence of Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater, operit."

123. He gave to misery all he had, a tear. This is the pointing of the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, almost without exception) to,

This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illustration of it:

126. Mitford says that Or in this line should be Nor. Yes, if "draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:

127. In trembling hope. Gray quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 104: "paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;" Mallet, Funeral Hymn, 473:

and Beaumont, Psyche, xv. 314:

Hooker (Eccl. Pol. i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."

The original manuscript title of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of "Ode."

1. The rosy-bosom'd Hours. Cf. Milton, Comus, 984: "The Graces and the rosy-bosom'd Hours;" and Thomson, Spring, 1007:

The Horæ, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by "the dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially spring and autumn, or "Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first there were only two Horæ, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn); but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons.

2. Fair Venus' train. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks: "Venus is here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of creation and beauty."

3. Long-expecting. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes incorrectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, Astræa Redux, 132: "To flowers that in its womb expecting lie."

4. The purple year. Cf. the Pervigilium Veneris, 13: "Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus;" Pope, Pastorals, i. 28: "And lavish Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, Zephyr: "Gales that wake the purple year."

5. The Attic warbler. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (P. R. iv. 245):

Cf. Ovid, Hal. 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;" and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."

Pours her throat is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"

6, 7. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 577:

9, 10. Cf. Milton, Comus, 989:

12. Cf. Milton, P. L. iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers;" Pope, Eloisa, 170: "And breathes a browner horror on the woods;" Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. 38: "Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."

According to Ruskin (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not acknowledge the existence of the colour of brown at all," he goes on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know I have found that there is no brown in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue," etc.

14. O'ercanopies the glade. Gray himself quotes Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 1: "A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine."¹ Cf. Fletcher, Purple Island, i. 5, 30: "The beech shall yield a cool, safe canopy;" and Milton, Comus, 543: "a bank, With ivy canopied."

¹ The reading of the folio of 1623 is:

Dyce and some other modern editors read,

15. Rushy brink. Cf. Comus, 890: "By the rushy-fringed bank."

19, 20. These lines, as first printed, read:

22. The panting herds. Cf. Pope, Past. ii. 87: "To closer shades the panting flocks remove."

23. The peopled air. Cf. Walton, C. A.: "Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing;" Beaumont, Psyche: "Every tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats."

24. The busy murmur. Cf. Milton, P. R. iv. 248: "bees' industrious murmur."

25. The insect youth. Perhaps suggested by a line in Green's Hermitage, quoted in a letter of Gray to Walpole: "From maggot-youth through change of state," etc. See on 31 below.

26. The honied spring. Cf. Milton, Il Pens. 142: "the bee with honied thigh;" and Lyc. 140: "the honied showers."

"There has of late arisen," says Johnson in his Life of Gray, "a practice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain, the daisied bank; but I am sorry to see in the lines of a scholar like Gray the honied spring." But, as we have seen, honied is found in Milton; and Shakespeare also uses it in Hen. V. i. 1: "honey'd sentences." Mellitus is used by Cicero, Horace, and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our substances into verbs, participles, and participial adjectives is of the very essence of our tongue, derived from its Saxon origin, and a main source of its energy and richness."

27. The liquid noon. Gray quotes Virgil, Geo. iv. 59: "Nare per aestatem liquidam."

30. Quick-glancing to the sun. Gray quotes Milton, P. L. vii. 405:

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:

47. Painted plumage. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 118: "His painted wings; and Milton, P. L. vii. 433:

See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 243, and Æn. iv. 525: "pictaeque volucres;" and Phædrus, Fab. iii. 18: "pictisque plumis."

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,

"... Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows: [the Ode follows, which we need not reprint here].

"There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph."

2. Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, Town Eclogues:

3. The azure flowers that blow. Johnson and Wakefield find fault with this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usage allows. In the Progress of Poesy, i. 1, we have again: "The laughing flowers that round them blow." Cf. Comus, 992:

4. Tabby. For the derivation of this word from the French tabis, a kind of silk, see Wb. In the first ed. the 5th line preceded the 4th.

6. The lake. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the whole poem.

11. Jet. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town in Lycia, where the mineral was first obtained.

14. Two angel forms. In the first ed. "two beauteous forms," which Mitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of angel and genii interfere with each other, and bring different associations to the mind."

16. Tyrian hue. Explained by the "purple" in next line; an allusion to the famous Tyrian dye of the ancients. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 142: "with fins of Tyrian dye."

17. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iv. 274:

See also Pope, Windsor Forest, 332: "His shining horns diffus'd a golden glow;" Temple of Fame, 253: "And lucid amber casts a golden gleam."

24. In the 1st ed. "What cat's a foe to fish?" and in the next line, "with eyes intent."

31. Eight times. Alluding to the proverbial "nine lives" of the cat.

34. No dolphin came. An allusion to the story of Arion, who when thrown overboard by the sailors for the sake of his wealth was borne safely to land by a dolphin.

No Nereid stirr'd. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 50:

35, 36. The reading of 1st ed. is,

40. The 1st ed. has "Not all that strikes," etc.

42. Nor all that glisters gold. A favourite proverb with the old English poets. Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 16430:

Spenser, F. Q. ii. 8, 14:

Shakes. M. of V. ii. 7:

Dryden, Hind and Panther:

Other examples might be given. Glisten is not found in Shakes. or Milton, but both use glister several times. See W. T. iii. 2; Rich. II. iii. 3; T. A. ii. 1, etc.; Lycidas, 79; Comus, 219; P. L. iii. 550; iv. 645, 653, etc.

This, as Mason informs us, was the first English¹ production of Gray's that appeared in print. It was published, in folio, in 1747; and appeared again in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 267, without the name of the author.

¹ A Latin poem by him, a "Hymeneal" on the Prince of Wales's Marriage, had appeared in the Cambridge Collection in 1736.

Hazlitt (Lectures on English Poets) says of this Ode: "It is more mechanical and commonplace [than the Elegy]; but it touches on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's 'stately heights,' or sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that we should think of him; for he thought of others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad music of humanity.'"

The writer in the North American Review (vol. xcvi.), after referring to the publication of this Ode, which, "according to the custom of the time, was judiciously swathed in folio," adds:

"About this time Gray's portrait was painted, at Walpole's request; and on the paper which he is represented as holding, Walpole wrote the title of the Ode, with a line from Lucan:

The poem met with very little attention until it was republished in 1751, with a few other of his Odes. Gray, in speaking of it to Walpole, in connection with the Ode to Spring, merely says that to him 'the latter seems not worse than the former.' But the former has always been the greater favourite—perhaps more from the matter than the manner. It is the expression of the memories, the thoughts, and the feelings which arise unbidden in the mind of the man as he looks once more on the scenes of his boyhood. He feels a new youth in the presence of those old joys. But the old friends are not there. Generations have come and gone, and an unknown race now frolic in boyish glee. His sad, prophetic eye cannot help looking into the future, and comparing these careless joys with the inevitable ills of life. Already he sees the fury passions in wait for their little victims. They seem present to him, like very demons. Our language contains no finer, more graphic personifications than these almost tangible shapes. Spenser is more circumstantial, Collins more vehement, but neither is more real. Though but outlines in miniature, they are as distinct as Dutch art. Every epithet is a lifelike picture; not a word could be changed without destroying the tone of the whole. At last the musing poet asks himself, Cui bono? Why thus borrow trouble from the future? Why summon so soon the coming locusts, to poison before their time the glad waters of youth?

So feeling and the want of feeling come together for once in the moral. The gay Roman satirist—the apostle of indifferentism—reaches the same goal, though he has travelled a different road. To Thaliarchus he says:

The same easy-going philosophy of life forms the key-note of the Ode to Leuconoë:

of that to Quinctius Hirpinus:

of that to Pompeius Grosphus:

And so with many others. 'Take no thought of the morrow.'"

Wakefield translates the Greek motto, "Man is an abundant subject of calamity."

2. That crown the watery glade. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 128: "And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade."

4. Her Henry's holy shade. Henry the Sixth, founder of the college. Cf. The Bard, ii. 3: "the meek usurper's holy head;" Shakes. Rich. III. v. 1: "Holy King Henry;" Id. iv. 4: "When holy Harry died." The king, though never canonized, was regarded as a saint.

5. And ye. Ye "towers;" that is, of Windsor Castle. Cf. Thomson, Summer, 1412:

8. Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among. "That is, the turf of whose lawn, the shade of whose groves, the flowers of whose mead" (Wakefield). Cf. Hamlet, iii. 1: "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword."

In Anglo-Saxon and Early English prepositions were often placed after their objects. In the Elizabethan period the transposition of the weaker prepositions was not allowed, except in the compounds whereto, herewith, etc. (cf. the Latin quocum, secum), but the longer forms were still, though rarely, transposed (see Shakes. Gr. 203); and in more recent writers this latter license is extremely rare. Even the use of the preposition after the relative, which was very common in Shakespeare's day, is now avoided, except in colloquial style.

9. The hoary Thames. The river-god is pictured in the old classic fashion. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 103: "Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow." See also quotation from Dryden in note on 21 below.

10. His silver-winding way. Cf. Thomson, Summer, 1425: "The matchless vale of Thames, Fair-winding up," etc.

12. Ah, fields belov'd in vain! Mitford remarks that this expression has been considered obscure, and adds the following explanation: "The poem is written in the character of one who contemplates this life as a scene of misfortune and sorrow, from whose fatal power the brief sunshine of youth is supposed to be exempt. The fields are beloved as the scene of youthful pleasures, and as affording the promise of happiness to come; but this promise never was fulfilled. Fate, which dooms man to misery, soon overclouded these opening prospects of delight. That is in vain beloved which does not realize the expectations it held out. No fruit but that of disappointment has followed the blossoms of a thoughtless hope."

13. Where once my careless childhood stray'd. Wakefield cites Thomson, Winter, 6:

15. That from ye blow. In Early English ye is nominative, you accusative (objective). This distinction, though observed in our version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan writers (Shakes. Gr. 236), as it has occasionally been by the poets even to our own day. Cf. Shakes. Hen. VIII. iii. 1: "The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye;" Milton, Comus, 216: "I see ye visibly," etc. Dryden, in a couplet quoted by Guest, uses both forms in the same line:

19. Gray quotes Dryden, Fable on Pythag. Syst.: "And bees their honey redolent of spring."

21. Say, father Thames, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's Grotto:

Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 232: "Old father Thames raised up his reverend head."

Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says: "His supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking, "Are we by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of Rasselas? 'As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before her: "Answer," said she, "great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."'"

23. Margent green. Cf. Comus, 232: "By slow Mæander's margent green."

24. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 233: "To Virtue, in the paths of Pleasure, trod."

26. Thy glassy wave. Cf. Comus, 861: "Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave."

27. The captive linnet. The adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before it can be called "captive."

28. In the MS. this line reads, "To chase the hoop's illusive speed," which seems to us better than the revised form in the text.

30. Cf. Pope, Dunciad, iv. 592: "The senator at cricket urge the ball."

37. Cf. Cowley, Ode to Hobbes, iv. 7: "Till unknown regions it descries."

40. A fearful joy. Wakefield quotes Matt. xxviii. 8 and Psalms ii. 11. Cf. Virgil, Æn. i. 513:

See also Lear, v. 3: "'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief."

44. Cf. Pope, Eloisa, 209: "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind;" and Essay on Man, iv. 168: "The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy."

45. Buxom. Used here in its modern sense. It originally meant pliant, flexible, yielding (from A. S. búgan, to bow); then, gay, frolicsome, lively; and at last it became associated with the "cheerful comeliness" of vigorous health. Chaucer has "buxom to ther lawe," and Spenser (State of Ireland), "more tractable and buxome to his government." Cf. also F. Q. i. 11, 37: "the buxome aire;" an expression which Milton uses twice (P. L. ii. 842, v. 270). In L'Allegro, 24: "So buxom, blithe, and debonaire;" the only other instance in which he uses the word, it means sprightly or "free" (as in "Come thou goddess, fair and free," a few lines before). Cf. Shakes. Pericles, i. prologue:

The word occurs nowhere else in Shakes. except Hen. V. iii. 6: "Of buxom valour;" that is, lively valour.

Dr. Johnson appears to have had in mind the original meaning of buxom in his comment on this passage: "His epithet buxom health is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word."

47. Lively cheer. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Apr.: "In either cheeke depeincten lively chere;" Milton, Ps. lxxxiv. 27: "With joy and gladsome cheer."

49. Wakefield quotes Milton, P. L. v. 3:

51. Regardless of their doom. Collins, in the first manuscript of his Ode on the Death of Col. Ross, has

² Mitford gives the first line as "E'en now, regardless of his doom;" and just below, on verse 61, he makes the line from Pope read, "The fury Passions from that flood began." We have verified his quotations as far as possible, and have corrected scores of errors in them. Quite likely there are some errors in those we have not been able to verify.

55. Yet see, etc. Mitford cites Broome, Ode on Melancholy:

and Otway, Alcibiades, v. 2: "Then enter, ye grim ministers of fate." See also Progress of Poesy, ii. 1: "Man's feeble race," etc.

59. Murtherous. The obsolete spelling of murderous, still used in Gray's time.

61. The fury Passions. The passions, fierce and cruel as the mythical Furies. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 167: "The fury Passions from that blood began."

66. Mitford quotes Spenser, F. Q.:

68. Wakefield quotes Milton, Sonnet to Mr. Lawes: "With praise enough for Envy to look wan."

69. Grim-visag'd, comfortless Despair. Cf. Shakes. Rich. III. i. 1: "Grim-visag'd War;" and C. of E. v. 1: "grim and comfortless Despair."

76. Unkindness' altered eye. "An ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness with an alter'd face."

79. Gray quotes Dryden, Pal. and Arc.: "Madness laughing in his ireful mood." Cf. Shakes. Hen. VI. iv. 2: "But rather moody mad;" and iii. 1: "Moody discontented fury."

81. The vale of years. Cf. Othello, iii. 3: "Declin'd Into the vale of years."

82. Grisly. Not to be confounded with grizzly. See Wb.

83. The painful family of death. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, ii. 118: "Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, State of Innocence, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the whole passage cf. Milton, P. L. xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, Æn. vi. 275.

86. That every labouring sinew strains. An example of the "correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (Essay on Criticism, 371),

90. Slow-consuming Age. Cf. Shenstone, Love and Honour: "His slow-consuming fires."

95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in Comus, 359:

97. Happiness too swiftly flies. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, Geo. iii. 66:

98. Thought would destroy their paradise. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, Ajax, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

99. Cf. Prior, Ep. to Montague, st. 9:

and Davenant, Just Italian: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it is not safe to know."

This Ode, as we learn from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was finished, with the exception of a few lines, in 1755. It was not published until 1757, when it appeared with The Bard in a quarto volume, which was the first issue of Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In one of his letters Walpole writes: "I send you two copies of a very honourable opening of my press—two amazing odes of Mr. Gray. They are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime, consequently I fear a little obscure; the second particularly, by the confinement of the measure and the nature of prophetic vision, is mysterious. I could not persuade him to add more notes." In another letter Walpole says: "I found Gray in town last week; he had brought his two odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." The title-page of the volume is as follows:

Both Odes were coldly received at first. "Even my friends," writes Gray, in a letter to Hurd, Aug. 25, 1757, "tell me they do not succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In short, I have heard of nobody but an Actor [Garrick] and a Doctor of Divinity [Warburton] that profess their esteem for them. Oh yes, a Lady of quality (a friend of Mason's) who is a great reader. She knew there was a compliment to Dryden, but never suspected there was anything said about Shakespeare or Milton, till it was explained to her, and wishes that there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about."¹ In a letter to Dr. Wharton, dated Aug. 17, 1757, he says: "I hear we are not at all popular. The great objection is obscurity, nobody knows what we would be at. One man (a Peer) I have been told of, that thinks the last stanza of the 2d Ode relates to Charles the First and Oliver Cromwell; in short, the [Greek: Sunetoi] appear to be still fewer than even I expected." A writer in the Critical Review thought that "Æolian lyre" meant the Æolian harp. Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion. Gray finally had to add explanatory notes, though he intimates that his readers ought not to have needed them.²

¹ Forster remarks that Gray might have added to the admirers of the Odes "the poor monthly critic of The Dunciad"—Oliver Goldsmith, then beginning his London career as a bookseller's hack. In a review of the Odes in the London Monthly Review for Sept., 1757, after citing certain passages of The Bard, he says that they "will give as much pleasure to those who relish this species of composition as anything that has hitherto appeared in our language, the odes of Dryden himself not excepted."

² In a foot-note he says: "When the author first published this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes; but had too much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty."

In a letter to Beattie, dated Feb. 1, 1768, referring to the new edition of his poems, he says: "As to the notes, I do it out of spite, because the public did not understand the two Odes (which I have called Pindaric), though the first was not very dark, and the second alluded to a few common facts to be found in any sixpenny history of England, by way of question and answer, for the use of children." And in a letter to Walpole, Feb. 25, 1768, he says he has added "certain little Notes, partly from justice (to acknowledge the debt where I had borrowed anything), partly from ill temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward I. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor."

Mr. Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, said that "if the Bard recited his Ode only once to Edward, he was sure he could not understand it." When this was told to Gray, he said, "If he had recited it twenty times, Edward would not have been a bit wiser; but that was no reason why Mr. Fox should not."

"The metre of these Odes is constructed on Greek models. It is not uniform but symmetrical. The nine stanzas of each ode form three groups. A slight examination will show that the 1st, 4th, and 7th stanzas are exactly inter-correspondent; so the 2d, 5th, and 8th; and so the remaining three. The technical Greek names for these three parts were [Greek: strophê] (strophe), [Greek: antistrophê] (antistrophe), and [Greek: epôdos] (epodos)—the Turn, the Counter-turn, and the After-song—names derived from the theatre; the Turn denoting the movement of the Chorus from one side of the [Greek: orchêstra] (orchestra), or Dance-stage, to the other, the Counter-turn the reverse movement, the After-song something sung after two such movements. Odes thus constructed were called by the Greeks Epodic. Congreve is said to have been the first who so constructed English odes. This system cannot be said to have prospered with us. Perhaps no English ear would instinctively recognize that correspondence between distant parts which is the secret of it. Certainly very many readers of The Progress of Poesy are wholly unconscious of any such harmony" (Hales).

1. Awake, Æolian lyre. The blunder of the Critical Reviewers who supposed the "harp of Æolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpê, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidôn pnoai aulôn], Æolian song, Æolian strings, the breath of the Æolian flute."

Cf. Cowley, Ode of David: "Awake, awake, my lyre!" Gray himself quotes Ps. lvii. 8. The first reading of the line in the MS. was, "Awake, my lyre: my glory, wake." Gray also adds the following note: "The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swollen and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions."

2. And give to rapture. The first reading of the MS. was "give to transport."

3. Helicon's harmonious springs. In the mountain range of Helicon, in Boeotia, there were two fountains sacred to the Muses, Aganippe and Hippocrene, of which the former was the more famous.

7. Cf. Pope, Hor. Epist. ii. 2, 171:

and Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 11:

also Thomson, Liberty, ii. 257:

9. Cf. Shenstone, Inscr.: "Verdant vales and fountains bright;" also Virgil, Geo. i. 96: "Flava Ceres;" and Homer, Il. v. 499: [Greek: xanthê Dêmêtêr].

10. Rolling. Spelled "rowling" in the 1st and other early editions.

Amain. Cf. Lycidas, 111: "The golden opes, the iron shuts amain;" P. L. ii. 165: "when we fled amain," etc. Also Shakes. Temp. iv. 1: "Her peacocks fly amain," etc. The word means literally with main (which we still use in "might and main"), that is, with force or strength. Cf. Horace, Od. iv. 2, 8: "Immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore."

11. The first MS. reading was, "With torrent rapture see it pour."

12. Cf. Dryden, Virgil's Geo. i.: "And rocks the bellowing voice of boiling seas resound;" Pope, Iliad: "Rocks rebellow to the roar."

13. "Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar" (Gray).

14. Solemn-breathing airs. Cf. Comus, 555: "a soft and solemn-breathing sound."

15. Enchanting shell. That is, lyre; alluding to the myth of the origin of the instrument, which Mercury was said to have made from the shell of a tortoise. Cf. Collins, Passions, 3: "The Passions oft, to hear her shell," etc.

17. On Thracia's hills. Thrace was one of the chief seats of the worship of Mars. Cf. Ovid, Ars Am. ii. 588: "Mars Thracen occupat." See also Virgil, Æn. iii. 35, etc.

19. His thirsty lance. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. i. 5, 15: "his thristy [thirsty] blade."

20. Gray says, "This is a weak imitation of some beautiful lines in the same ode;" that is, in "the first Pythian of Pindar," referred to in the note on 13. The passage is an address to the lyre, and is translated by Wakefield thus:

21. The feather'd king. Cf. Shakes. Phoenix and Turtle:

23. Dark clouds. The first reading of MS. was "black clouds."

24. The terror. This is the reading of the first ed. and also of that of 1768. Most of the modern eds. have "terrors."

25. "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body" (Gray).

26. Temper'd. Modulated, "set." Cf. Lycidas, 33: "Tempered to the oaten flute;" Fletcher, Purple Island: "Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay," etc.

27. O'er Idalia's velvet-green. Idalia appears to be used for Idalium, which was a town in Cyprus, and a favourite seat of Venus, who was sometimes called Idalia. Pope likewise uses Idalia for the place, in his First Pastoral, 65: "Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's groves."

Dr. Johnson finds fault with velvet-green, apparently supposing it to be a compound of Gray's own making. But Young had used it in his Love of Fame: "She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet-green." It is also among the expressions of Pope which are ridiculed in the Alexandriad.

29. Cytherea was a name of Venus, derived from Cythera, an island in the Ægean Sea, one of the favourite residences of Aphrodite, or Venus. Cf. Virgil, Æn. i. 680: "super alta Cythera Aut super Idalium, sacrata sede," etc.