Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 11

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

63. Mitford quotes Tickell:

"To scatter blessings o'er the British land;"

and Mrs. Behn:

"Is scattering plenty over all the land."

66. _Their growing virtues_. That is, the growth of their virtues.

67. _To wade through slaughter_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Temp. of Fame_, 347:

"And swam to empire through the purple flood."

68. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. V._ iii. 3:

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up."

70. _To quench the blushes_, etc. Cf. Shakes. _W. T._ iv. 3:

"Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself."

73. _Far from the madding crowd's_, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:

"Far from the madding worldling's hoa.r.s.e discords."

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_:

"Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, Content with science in the vale of peace."

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 pa.s.sage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who ever died without wis.h.i.+ng 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 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 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:

"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd."

"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:

"Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken."

Gray himself quotes Petrarch, _Sonnet_ 169:

"Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, Fredda una lingua e due begli occhi chiusi, Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville,"

translated by Nott as follows:

"These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, Clos'd thy bright eye, and mute thy poet's tongue, E'en after death shall still with sparks be fraught,"

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

"Ardebitque urna multa favilla mea."

93. On a MS. variation of this stanza given by Mitford, see p. 80, footnote.

95. _Chance_ is virtually an adverb here = perchance.

98. _The peep of dawn_. Mitford quotes _Comus_, 138:

"Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn, on the Indian steep From her cabin'd loop-hole peep."

99. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ v. 428:

"though from off the boughs each morn We brush mellifluous dews;"

and _Arcades_, 50:

"And from the boughs brush off the evil dew."

Wakefield quotes Thomson, _Spring_, 103:

"Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops From the bent brush, as through the verdant maze Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk."

100. _Upland lawn_. Cf. Milton, _Lycidas_, 25:

"Ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn."

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. Ma.s.son, 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:

"Shewing her wreathed rootes and naked armes."

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: