Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 16

66. Mitford quotes Spenser, _F. Q._:

"But gnawing Jealousy out of their sight, Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bite."

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. _Oth.e.l.lo_, 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 pa.s.sage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, _aen._ vi. 275.

86. _That every labouring sinew strains_. An example of the "correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (_Essay on Criticism_, 371),

"The line too labours, and the words move slow."

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:

"Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite To cast the fas.h.i.+on of uncertain evils; For grant they be so, while they rest unknown What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?"

97. _Happiness too swiftly flies_. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 66:

"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit."

98. _Thought would destroy their paradise_. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, _Ajax_, 554: [Greek: En toi phronein gar meden hedistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

99. Cf. Prior, _Ep. to Montague_, st. 9:

"From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise."

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE END OF THE LONG WALK.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOMER ENTHRONED.]

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." The t.i.tle-page of the volume is as follows:

ODES BY MR. GRAY.

[Greek: PHoNANTA SUNETOISI]--PINDAR, Olymp, II.

PRINTED AT STRAWBERRY-HILL, for R. and J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall.

MDCCLVII.

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 n.o.body 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 t.i.tles 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, n.o.body 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 "aeolian lyre" meant the aeolian harp.

Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies ent.i.tled 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]

[Footnote 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 pa.s.sages of _The Bard_, he says that they "will give as much pleasure to those who relish this species of composition as anything that has. .h.i.therto appeared in our language, the odes of Dryden himself not excepted."]

[Footnote 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: strophe] (strophe), [Greek: antistrophe]

(antistrophe), and [Greek: epodos] (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: orchestra] (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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALCaeUS AND SAPPHO. FROM A PAINTING ON A VASE.]

1. _Awake, aeolian lyre_. The blunder of the Critical Reviewers who supposed the "harp of aeolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpe, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidon pnoai aulon], aeolian song, aeolian strings, the breath of the aeolian 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 l.u.s.tre 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 pa.s.sions."

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:

"Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong;"

and _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, 11:

"The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow;"

also Thomson, _Liberty_, ii. 257:

"In thy full language speaking mighty things, Like a clear torrent close, or else diffus'd A broad majestic stream, and rolling on Through all the winding harmony of sound."

9. Cf. Shenstone, _Inscr._: "Verdant vales and fountains bright;"