Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 11

The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lords.h.i.+p.

_Timon_. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such _summer birds_ are men.--Act iii.

Again in the same,

----one cloud of winter showers These flies are couch'd.--Act ii.

Gray, in his "Progress of Poetry," has

In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.

Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:--

Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;

which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the _high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus:--

Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK.

Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,

Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.

Gray has in his "Bard,"

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his _Venice Preserved_, makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is

Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee.

Gray tells us that the image of his "Bard,"

Loose his beard and h.o.a.ry hair Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air,

was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the _beard_ of Hudibras is also compared to a _meteor_: and the accompanying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode--since his _Bard_ precisely performs what the _beard_ of Hudibras _denounced_. These are the verses:--

This HAIRY METEOR did denounce _The fall of sceptres and of crowns_.

_Hudibras_, c. 1.

I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that "the _meteor beard_" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "_Bard_" of Gray? I reply, that the _burlesque_ and the _sublime_ are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque! A very vulgar, but acute genius, Thomas Paine, whom we may suppose dest.i.tute of all delicacy and refinement, has conveyed to us a notion of the _sublime_, as it is probably experienced by ordinary and uncultivated minds; and even by acute and judicious ones, who are dest.i.tute of imagination. He tells us that "the _sublime_ and the _ridiculous_ are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to cla.s.s them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." May I venture to ill.u.s.trate this opinion?

Would it not appear the ridiculous or burlesque to describe the sublime revolution of the _Earth_ on her axle, round the _Sun_, by comparing it with the action of a _top_ flogged by a boy? And yet some of the most exquisite lines in Milton do this; the poet only alluding in his mind to the _top_. The earth he describes, whether

----She from west her _silent course_ advance With _inoffensive pace_ that _spinning sleeps_ On her _soft axle_, while she _paces even_.

Be this as it may! it has never I believe been remarked (to return to Gray) that when he conceived the idea of the beard of his _Bard_, he had in his mind the _language_ of Milton, who describes Azazel sublimely unfurling

The imperial ensign, which full high advanced, _Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind_.

_Par. Lost_, B. i. v. 535.

Very similar to Gray's

_Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air!_

Gray has been severely censured by Johnson for the expression,

Give _ample room and verge enough_, The characters of h.e.l.l to trace.--_The Bard_.

On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics, we must still hear that the poet _has no line so bad_.--"_ample room_" is feeble, but would have pa.s.sed un.o.bserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. "_Verge enough_"

is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No one appears to have detected the source from whence, probably, the _whole line_ was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the following pa.s.sage in Dryden:

Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an AMPLE s.h.i.+ELD, Can take in all, and VERGE ENOUGH for more!

Dryden's _Don Sebastian._

Gray in his Elegy has

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

This line is so obscure that it is difficult to apply it to what precedes it. Mason in his edition in vain attempts to derive it from a thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it; Wakefield expends an octavo page to paraphrase this single verse. From the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of himself, and of old men,

For whan we may not don than wol we speken; Yet in our ASHEN cold is FIRE yreken.

TYRWHIT'S _Chaucer_, vol. i. p. 153, v. 3879.

Gray has a very expressive _word_, highly poetical, but I think not common:

FOR WHO TO DUMB FORGETFULNESS a prey--

Daniel has, as quoted in Cooper's Muses' Library,

And _in himself with sorrow_, does complain The misery of DARK FORGETFULNESS.

A line of Pope's, in his Dunciad, "High-born Howard," echoed in the ear of Gray, when he gave, with all the artifice of alliteration,

High-born Hoel's harp.

Johnson bitterly censures Gray for giving to adjectives the termination of participles, such as the _cultured_ plain; the _daisied_ bank: but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the _honied_ spring." Had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. _Honied_ is employed by Milton in more places than one.

Hide me from day's garish eye While the bee with HONIED thigh _Penseroso_, v. 142.

The celebrated stanza in Gray's Elegy seems partly to be borrowed.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd eaves of ocean bear: Full many a _flower_ is torn to blush _unseen,_ And _waste its sweetness in the desert air_.

Pope had said:

There kept by charms conceal'd from mortal eye, Like _roses_ that in _deserts bloom_ and _die_.

_Rape of the Lock._