59. Could a Milton have ever been mute and inglorious? Or would a genius so vast have in some sort overcome all the circumstances that obstructed it? Would he have grappled with his evil star?" (In Mem. lxiii.) 66 60. 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. As to the particular charge against him suggested here, it need only be remembered that it was not till some time after Charles had raised his standard at Nottingham (Aug. 1642) that Cromwell became of importance. It was not till the spring of 1645 that he became the real head of the army. 61. [What is the main predicate of the sentence beginning here?] The great age of Parliamentary oratory was just dawning when the Elegy was published. The elder Pitt was already famous for his eloquence. 63. As Walpole's long, peaceful administration (which ended in 1742) had done. 8 66. Their growing virtues The growth of their virtues. 69. [What is meant by conscious truth?] 71. This was but too common a fashion with poets in the days of patronage. 71, 72. [Paraphrase and fully explain these two lines.] 72. Here, in Gray's first MS., followed these four stanzas: "The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, Than pow'r or genius e'er conspired to bless. To wander in the gloomy walks of fate: "Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around, "No more with reason and thyself at strife Give anxious thoughts and endless wishes room; And so the Elegy was to have ended. 73. Are ignoble strifes confined to towns? are they impossible in villages? See Johnson's London, 5 and 6. madding. See Van. of H. W. 30. 77. these bones the bones of these. So is is often used in Latin, esp. by Livy, as V. 22: "Ea sola pecunia" only the money derived from that sale, &c. = 79. uncouth. See note to L'Alleg. 5. rhimes. This word ought to be spelt rimes. The h was inserted through a mis taken derivation from the Greek rhythmus. [deck'd. Why is the final d here sounded like t? Give similar instances.] 80. Comp. Lycid. 21. 82. This was an age much given to elaborate epitaphs and elegies. See W. Thomp son's Epitaph on my Father, Epitaph on my Mother, Smart's Epitaph on the Rev. Mr. Reynolds, Whitehead's Epitaph on a Marble Pyramid of the Monument of John Duke of Argyle, &c., &c. Part of Book iii. of Watts' Poems (died 1748) is "sacred to the memory of the dead," and contains "an Epitaph on King William," an Elegiac thought on Mrs Anne Warner," &c. Shenstone has an Elegy "on the untimely death of a certain learned acquaintance," &c. Gray himself had contributed to this funereal literature. See also Pope's works, Goldsmith's, &c., and the walls and monuments of Westminster Abbey, passim. This style of writing still survives in country places; but happily even there is growing rarer. 84. [Is the plural verb correct here! Explain rustic moralist.] 85. At the first glance it might seem that to dumb Forgetfulness a prey was in apposition to who, and the meaning was "who that lies now quite forgotten," &c.; in which case the 2nd line of the stanza must be closely connected with the 4th; 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, (ii) there is a certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbial though apparently coordinate) 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 2nd ha.f of the stanza echoes the thought of the 1st half. 86. this pleasing anxious being. See in the fine lines to Life by Mrs. Barbauld (given in part in the Golden Treasury): "Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather." 89. In this stanza he answers in an exquisite manner the two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding stanza. His answers may, as has been suggested to me by a friend, form a climax. The rst line seems to regard the near approach of death; the 2nd its actual advent; the 3rd the time immediately succeeding that advent; the 4th a still later time. 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. We would never not be loved. The passion for affection and sympathy can never, never die. Comp. Tibullus' beautiful lines to his Delia : "Te spectem, suprema mihi quum venerit hora; Mitford quotes from Solon: “μήδ' ἐμοὶ ἄκλαυστος θάνατος μόλοι, ἀλλὰ φίλοισι καλλείποιμι θανών αλγεα και στοναχάς.” Strangely different was Sterne's wish about his last moments-a wish which accident gratified. 90. pious in the sense of the Lat. pins. See Ov. Trist. IV. iii. 41. Comp. debitâ lacrimâ in Hor. Od. II. vi. 23. 92. Chaucer's Reeve, saying that old men such as he do not forget the passions of their earlier days, adds, Cant. T. 3880: "Yet in oure aisshen old is fyr ireke [raked]." Gray himself quotes from Petrarch's 169th (170th in some editions) sonnet: "Ch' i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, thus translated by Nott: "These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, the "these" meaning his love and his songs concerning it. Gray translated this Sonnet into Latin Elegiacs. His last line is: Comp. The Bard, l. 122. Mitford quotes Ovid's Trist. III. iii. 83, and Propert. II. xiii. 41. No one, I think, has yet quoted Propertius' closely pertinent line (V. xi. 74): "Hæc cura et cineri spirat inusta meo," with which "Broukhusius" and after him Hertzberg (see Paley ad 1. c.) compare Cicero's "Cur hunc dolorem cineri ejus atque ossibus inussisti." Add the well-known lines from Tennyson's Maud, I. (xxii. 11): "She is coming, my own, iny sweet, Were it ever so airy a tread My heart would hear her and beat, My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead, 95. [What part of speech is chance virtually here ?] 98. at the peep of dawn. See Comus, 138-140: "Ere the blabbing eastern scout, 99. See Par. Lost, v. 429, Arcades, 50. 100. See Notes to L'Alleg. 92, and Hymn Nat. 85. "Him have we seen the greenwood side along, Comp. As you like it, II. 1. 103. His listless length. So: "if you will measure your lubber's length again," &c. King Lear, I. iv. 97. 104. babbles. Comp. Hor. Od. III. xiii. 15: "unde loquaces Lymphæ desiliunt tuæ." 82. 105. hard by. See note to L'Alleg. 81. [To what noun is now smiling as in scorn adjectival?] 107. [What part of the sentence is woeful here ?] 108. hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way. 114. church-way path. See Mids. N. Dream, V. i. 386 : "Now it is the time of night That the graves all gaping wide Every one lets forth his sprite = In the church-way paths to glide." The phrase may mean the path leading church-way or church-ward. Or church-way may be a corruption of church-hay church-yard. For hay, when it became obsolete, the popular mind, which is always etymologizing in its way (see note to Hymn. Nat. 60.), substituted a word it knew. "Chyrche-haye occurs in an early MS. quoted in Prompt. Parv. p. 221, and was in use in the seventeenth century, as appears from Lhuyd's MS. additions to Ray in Mus. Ashmol." (Halliwell's Archaic and Prov. Dict.). Hay is the Oldest Eng. haga, "1. a hedge, haw. 2. what is hedged in, a garden, field." (Bosworth). For this word in place-names, see Taylor's Words and Places. "In the Seven Dayes, 2625, the chirche-hawe is spoken of." (Way's Prompt. Parv. s. v. chyrche yarde). 115. for thou canst read. that it could be taken for granted. Reading was not such a very common accomplishment then the present age is far from having any right to vaunt itself over that of Gray. the lay. This is an odd use of the word lay. The men of the latter part of the 17th, and of the greater part of the 18th century, were very ignorant of the older forms, and the older vocabulary of the language; else, how could the Rowley Poems have been believed in for one second? 116. Here original copy contained this stanza: "There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found; 118. [What part of the sentence is a youth ?] 119. Certainly Gray is thinking of himself in these lines, to some extent at least. See the Memoir of him. 123. Mitford quotes from Lucretius, ii. 27: "Has lacrimas memori quas ictus amore Fundo, quod possum." THE PROGRESS OF POESY AND THE BARD. INTRODUCTION. The Progress of Poesy, as appears from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was finished all but a few lines at the end in 1755. It was published along with the Bard in 1757. Both Odes met with a very cold welcome. "Even my friends," writes Gray, in a letter to Hurd, "tell me that they do not succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on this head. In short I have heard of nobody but an actor [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton] that profess [Gray's grammar is often worse than dubious] 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 there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about." It says but little for the intelligence of the general reader of George II.'s time that the common charge against these poems was their utter obscurity. It would seem that such leading facts of English History as Gray deals with in the Bard were then by no means generally known. A writer in the Critical Review thought that the Æolian lyre meant the Æolian harp. Coleman (the elder) and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion. At a later time Gray was persuaded to add elucidatory notes. It can scarcely be said that these Odes have ever become popular, though they have certainly taken a permanent place in English Literature. Their artificiality is too manifest; there is felt but little of that Pindaric fervour by which they profess to be inspired. A poem should rise noiselessly, like Solomon's temple; "neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron" should be heard while it is "in building;" but in these poems one's ear cannot but catch those mechanical sounds, and they grate upon it. Still, these works have their beauties, or they would long since have perished. They are good in parts rather than as wholes. The language, if often somewhat stiff and frigid, is sometimes highly graceful and felicitous. The metre is here and there full of life and beauty. The various figures and groups are not unfrequently portrayed with great force and vigour. In fact one may be sensible everywhere of the hand of a master, though it may be doubted whether that hand is always wisely and congenially employed. The metre of these Odes is constructed on Greek models. It is not uniform, but symmetrical. Milton's great Ode or Hymn is written in stanzas, as are Horace's Odes; most of the Odes of Cowley, those of Dryden, Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood, Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, are written in an irregular metre, varying from time to time with the thought, grave or light according as the sense is the one or the other; these Odes of Gray's are written in a perfectly regular metre, not in uniform stanzas but in uniform groups of stanzas. The nine stanzas of each Ode form three uniform groups. A slight examination will show that the 1st, 4th, and 7th stanzas are exactly inter-correspondent; so the 2nd, 5th, and 8th, and so the remaining three. The technical Greek names for these three parts were στроon, ávτioтpоon, and enwdós- 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 opxnσTρά 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 sa 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. Does anyone really enjoy it in itself, apart from the pleasure he may receive from his admiration of Gray's skill in construction and imitation? Does his ear hear it, or only his eye perceive it? In other words, was not Gray's labour, as far as pure metrical pleasure is concerned, wasted? For similar historical sketches with that given in the Progress of Poesy see Collins' Ode to Simplicity, Cowper's Table Talk, Keats' Sleep and Poetry. It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the tradition on which The Bard is founded is wholly groundless. Edward I. never did massacre Welsh bards. Their name is legion in the beginning of the 14th century. Miss Williams, the latest historian of Wales, does not even mention the old story. THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 82. 1. Eolian lyre. Eolia or Eolis extended along the coast of Asia Minor from the Troad to the river Hermus. The people from whom this strip of coast derived its name, was one of the chief branches of the Hellenic race. They are said to have been originally settled in Thessaly and thence to have spread over various parts of Greece and across the Ægean to |