The Ode to Spring was written early in June at Stoke, whither he had gone to visit his mother, and sent to Mr.
Gray had heard of his death: His Ode on the Prospect of Eton College, as well as the Hymn to Adversity, were both written in the following August, and it is highly probable that the Elegy in the Country Church yard was begun also about this time. Having made a visit of some length at Stoke to his mother and aunt our poet returned to Cambridge, which from this period became his principal home. Gray to publish his own poems together with those of Mr. West; but this Mr. Walpole happening about this time to be drowned, Mr. I his brought Mr.
The poetical works: of Thomas Gray. With the life of the author.
This disgraceful mode of appearance subjected the Author to the necessity of exhibiting it under a less disadvantageous form; and Mr. Bentley soon after wishing to supply every ornament that his pencil could contribute, drew, not only for it but also for the rest of Mr. In the March of Mr. The lines in which Mr. Gray, as is evident by a letter to Dr. Wharton, had finished his Ode on the Progress of Poetry early in ; his Bard also was begun about this time, and in the year following the beautiful fragment on the Pleasures of Vicissitude.
From the loose hints in his commonplace-book he appears to have planned a fourth ode on the connexion between genius and grandeur, but it cannot now be ascertained if any part of it was actually written. Gray through the hands of Lord John Cavendish his brother; but the disgrace brought upon that office by the profligacy and inability of some who had filled it probably induced Mr. Gray to decline the appointment. It is obvious from the testimony of his letters that he was indefatigable in the former, and that he was always ready to perform kind offices in the latter.
Sir William Williams, an accomplished and gallant young officer, having been killed at Bellisle, his friend Mr. Gray to furnish the epitaph. His slight acquaintance with Sir William would have been a sufficient reason for declining the task, but the friendliness of Mr. Montagu's disposition, and the sincerity of affliction with which he was affected, wrought so powerfully upon Mr.
Gray that he could not refuse him, though he was by no means able to satisfy himself with the verses he wrote. Gray was spirited up by some of his friends to ask of Lord Bute the succession. During his stay in this country Dr. Beattie though not the first of philosophers yet a poet inferiour to none since the death of his friend, and whom he in many respects resembled found the means of engaging his notice and friendship.
In December Dr. Dodsley had before asked the like favour, and Mr. The death of Mr. Lord Bute however was not in office, and the Duke of Grafton, to preclude a request, within two days of the vacancy appointed Mr. His design of favouring the publick with the history of English poetry may be spoken of with more certainty, as in this he had not only engaged with Mr. Mason as a colleague, but actually paraphrased the Norse and Welsh poems inserted in his Works for specimens of the wild spirit which animated the bards of ancient days.
Warton, induced him to relinquish what he had thus successfully begun. Gray, and inserted by Mr. Bentham in his Hist. But of the various pursuits which employed his studies for the last ten years of his life none were so acceptable as those which explained the economy of Nature.
How considerable his improvements in it were those only can tell who have seen his additions to Hudson, and his notes on Linnaeus. From engagements of this kind Mr. Gray's attention was neither often nor long diverted. Vocal musick he chiefly preferred. As it was through the unsolicited favour of the Duke of Grafton that Mr. Beattie, that gratitude prompted him to offer his firstling: O Meliboee, Deus nobis haec otia fecit Nanque erit ille mihi semper Deus: Ille meas errare boves ut cernis, et ipsum Ludere quae vellem, calamo permisit agresti.
Accordingly on his Grace's being elected Chancellor of the University Mr. The ode in its structure is dramatick, and it contains nothing of the complimentary kind which is not entirely suited to the characters employed. In the fly-leaf of the first volume there is the following "extract from the Will of the late Richard Stonhewer, Esq. Mason done by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the picture of the late Thos.
Gray's to be kept under the immediate care of the Master of the College, and deposited in his Lodge. Of unpublished notes, etc. Also in the Cole MSS. Farmer, and some verses said by Cole to be by Gray,—all as yet unpublished. The latter are thus introduced: Walpole then laid sic dangerously ill of the gout at his house in Arlington Street.
I hope there is no danger of his dying, though he has been long complaining. I wrote this July 8, The verses were inserted in the 'James' Chronicle,' and seem to me to be wrote by our common friend Tho: Gray, of Pembroke Hall, Esq. By thee decoyed, with cautious fear We tread thy Castle's dreary round, Though horrid all we see and hear, Thy horrors charm while they confound.
Again his manners he may trace, Again his characters may see In soft Matild, Miranda's grace, And his own Prospero in thee. The present Aldine Edition is an entirely new work, the text being from the Edition of , the "Long Story" from that of , and the "Ode for Music" from the University edition of ; and the Posthumous Poems have been compared with the copies in Gray's handwriting in Pembroke College, and with Mitford's copies in the Mitford MSS. Some of the scraps of verse and occasional pieces should, I think, never have appeared; but they throw some light on the humour and comic vein of the Poet, and, having already been published, are here included in what may xxii claim to be the most complete as well as the most accurate edition of Gray's Poetical Works.
The Notes contain introductory remarks to each poem, giving its history or other particulars. Some of the Notes may appear unnecessary, but the work is designed to meet the requirements of students as well as others. My special thanks are due to Dr. I have also to express my thanks to Mr. Leslie Stephen for kind assistance, and to the Rev. Tovey for information on several points, which his scholarship and accuracy have enabled me to produce correctly for the first time; to the Rev.
Warre for particulars relating to Gray's connection with Eton; to the Rev. Mathews for a copy of the epitaph in Appleby Church parodied by Gray. Thomas Gray was the fifth child of Philip Gray , a scrivener or broker in London.
Thomas Gray
His mother was a Miss Dorothy Antrobus , who, at the time of her marriage, kept a milliner's shop in partnership with her sister Mary, in Cornhill; and here Thomas was born on the 26th December, He was one of twelve children, but all the others died in their infancy or childhood.
Further, the poetry of Gray and all we have of him we owe to his mother's side of the house. His first biographer, Mason, merely states he was "educated at Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, who was at that time, one of the Assistant Masters, and also a Fellow of St. Antrobus," some adding "Fellow of Pembroke College. He became Rector of Everdon in Northamptonshire, and died in It was for his uncle Robert, therefore, that Gray was in mourning when Bryant went to Eton, "at the latter end of the year Gosse in his "Gray" "English Men of Letters" speaks of Robert and Thomas Antrobus, and seems to have assumed that 'Thomas' was the Christian name, from the draft of an unfinished letter to Gray from his tutor at Cambridge, in which he says he would do any service for his "uncle Antrobus;" after this there is a word which looks like Tho s , but may be Tho' —the beginning of a new and unfinished sentence.
Gosse's quotation from the letter is otherwise incorrect, and even if the word were Tho s , it is merely a slip on the part of the tutor. Associated with the names of West xxvi and Walpole are several of Gray's poetical compositions and many of his most interesting letters. He particularly instructed him in the virtues of simples.
He had a great genius for music and poetry. Antrobus, who had been an Assistant Master at Eton, and after his resignation lived and died there. I remember he made an elegant little figure in his sable dress, for he had a very good complexion, and fine hair, and appeared to much advantage among the boys who were near him in the school, and who were more rough and rude. Gray and his friend were looked upon as too delicate, upon which account they had few associates, and never engaged in any exercise, nor partook of any boyish amusement.
Some, therefore, who were severe, treated them as feminine characters, on account of their too great delicacy, and sometimes a too fastidious behaviour. Walpole long afterwards used to say that Gray "was never a boy. Gray was so averse to rough exercise that I am confident he was never on horseback. He was superior to Gray in learning, and to everybody near him. He was, like his friend, quite faultless in respect to morals and behaviour, and, like many great geniuses, often very eccentric and absent.
The intimacy of the four friends, Gray, West, Walpole, and Ashton , continued at the Universities, and they formed what they called the "Quadruple Alliance. The latter was first published in Mathias' edition in ; the last lines are famous, but having been incorrectly printed by Mathias they have always been incorrectly quoted. Gray's life at Cambridge and the studies prescribed by the University were most distasteful to him; mathematics were not his forte, and his fellow-students were not congenial. Writing to West in December, , he tells him that he had endured lectures daily and hourly, supported by the hopes of being able to give himself up to his friends and classical companions.
The people I behold all around me, it seems, know all this and more, and yet I do not know one of them who inspires me with any ambition of being like him. Shortly after, Horace Walpole invited him to accompany him on a tour on the Continent, Walpole bearing the expenses of both. This being agreed to, the two friends started from Dover on the 29th March, Gray remained abroad for over xxx two years, and visited the chief places of interest in France and Italy; his having made this continental tour forming one of many points of resemblance between him and Milton, who, just a hundred years previously, had seen many of the spots and sights now visited by Gray.
Gray and Walpole spent two months at Paris, the summer at Rheims, and thence proceeded to Dijon and Lyons, and, travelling through Savoy, visited the Grande Chartreuse on their way to Geneva. In November they arrived at Turin, and after short halts at Genoa, Parma, and Bologna, they reached Florence , where they were the guests of Horace Mann , and this was their headquarters for the next fifteen months. In the end of April, , at Reggio, the friends had a difference which ended in their parting company. Gray went on to Venice, where he spent two months, and, returning home through the north of Italy, arrived in London from Lyons on the 1st September, In a letter to Mason , in March, , Horace Walpole takes to himself the blame for his quarrel with Gray: I was too young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by xxxi indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation as Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me.
I often disregarded his wishes of seeing places which I would not quit other amusements to visit. You will not wonder that with the dignity of his spirit and the obstinate carelessness of mine, the breach must have grown wider till we became incompatible. I xxxii once thought Swift's Letters the best that could be written, but I like Gray's better.
His humour, or his wit, or whatever it may be called, is never ill-natured or offensive, and yet I think equally poignant with the Dean's. Two months after Gray's return to England his father died, on the 6th November, The winter he spent in London , and the summer of at Stoke ; to this place his mother and aunt retired, joining their sister there on the death of Mr.
Rogers, in October ; and there they resided till their death, Gray frequently paying them long visits. In December, , Gray commenced his first original composition in English poetry— "Agrippina," a tragedy in blank verse; but of this he wrote only a single scene, consisting of a long speech by Agrippina; this he sent to West for his opinion in March, , and partly because he condemned the style as too antiquated, Gray put it aside and never resumed it.
His death, immediately following that of his uncle William Antrobus, greatly affected Gray; he lamented West in a sonnet—the first of any value that had been written since those of Milton, and in the "Ode on Eton," written in the same month, his recent losses caused him to take too gloomy a view of the 'fields' of his boyhood, now considered to have been 'beloved in vain,' and of the future of the 'sprightly race' in whom he sees only 'the little victims of Misfortune and Sorrow. He was led to consider the feuds and quarrels which were likely one day to ensue, when all that harmony and happiness was to cease and enmity and bitterness were to succeed.
It is a gloomy picture, but finely executed, and whoever reads the description with this clue, will find that it was formed from a scene before his eyes. The poet saw and experimentally felt what he so masterly describes. I lived at that time almost upon the very spot which gave birth to these noble xxxiv ideas, and in consequence of it saw the author very often. In the winter of Gray returned to Cambridge , and went into residence at Peterhouse.
The next four or five years he devoted to reading, his chief study being the literature and history of ancient Greece. Laertius and his philosophers, as a prooemium to the series of their works, and those of all the poets and orators that lived before Philip of Macedon's death, and we have made a great Chronological Table with our own hands, the wonder and amazement of Mr. Brown; not so much for public events, but rather, in a literary way, to compare the times of all great men, their writings and transactions.
I am now in Pindar and Lysias, for I take verse and prose together like bread and cheese. The Chronology is growing daily. Mason and subsequent editors say Another interesting incident was an interview between Gray and Pope, which took place probably not long before the death of the latter May 30, In he made the acquaintance of one who for the rest of his life was one of his most intimate friends, and destined to be his executor and biographer— William Mason , then a young scholar of St. John's College, and already a minor poet. Gray himself was still unknown as a poet or an author; it was without his name that his three Odes were published in Dodsley's "Collection" in , and at this time he was over thirty years of age.
During the first half of his life at Cambridge Gray's most intimate friends besides Mason, appointed Rector of Aston in Yorkshire in , and Precentor of York in , were the Rev. His correspondence was mainly with these three; the two former he appointed his executors, and he frequently went on visits to Mason at York, and to Wharton in Durham. The death of his aunt Mary at Stoke in November, , seems to have led Gray to take up again the unfinished "Elegy" which he had commenced just seven years previously; he kept touching it up for some months longer, and when at last finished he sent a copy of it to Horace Walpole on the 12th June, Walpole having handed the verses about, it got into the hands of the editors of the "Magazine of Magazines," who wrote to Gray informing him of their intention to print it.
To anticipate them Gray requested Walpole to have it published at once, and thus this famous poem appeared, in a quarto pamphlet , on the 16th February, , entitled "An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church-Yard," price sixpence. The poem became popular at once, and the name of the author was soon known, he was the 'celebrated Mr. Gray,' and it, in Dr. Johnson's words, 'the far-famed Elegy.
To no other modern poem had such homage been paid and so abundantly. Nor should the story of the tribute paid to the "Elegy" on an historical occasion a few years later be omitted. On the 13th of September, , the night before the battle on the Plains of Abraham, General Wolfe was descending the St. Lawrence with a part of his troops. Of the soldiers on board, how eagerly must every heart have throbbed at the coming conflict! 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—'The paths of glory lead but to the grave,' 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. The year is remarkable in Gray's literary life for the publication of a handsome edition of his poems with illustrations by Richard Bentley.
The work was in reality planned by Horace Walpole , who persuaded Gray to allow the poems to be printed, paid Bentley for his drawings, and supervised the work generally. In Walpole's brief sketch of Gray he thus describes the work: Bentley for Six Poems by Mr. The inscription on the tombstone is the composition of Gray, and is a witness at once to his own faith and to his love for the mother to whom he owed so much. She died unmarried, Nov. 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, , aged In the autumn he was again at Stoke , tending on his aunt, who "had a stroke of the palsy," referring to which he writes: I shall wish to change the scene as soon as ever I can. To also belongs his unfinished "Ode on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude;" had he completed this it would have ranked with the greatest of his poems.
One verse will bear quoting again, the thoughts as well as some of the words are those of Wordsworth: Wharton an 'Ode in the Greek manner,' requesting him "by no means to suffer it to be copied, nor even to show it unless to very few. In July, , Gray paid a visit to Mr. Chute at the Vyne in Hampshire; after which he visited Portsmouth, where he saw the fleet, and from Portsdown had a "magnificent and xlii varied prospect of Hampshire, Berkshire, and the Isle of Wight.
He thus describes the incident in a letter to Mason: Parry has been here and scratched out such ravishing blind harmony, such tunes of a thousand years old, with names enough to choke you, as have set all this learned body a-dancing, and inspired them with due reverence for my old Bard, his countryman, whenever he xliii shall appear.
Parry, you must know, put my Ode in motion again, and has brought it at last to a conclusion. Gray," were printed at a private printing press that Horace Walpole had set up at Strawberry Hill , "being," as he tells us, "the first production of that printing-house. Wharton a couple of months after the publication of the Odes, Gray wrote: Warburton is come to town, and I am told likes them extremely; he says the world never passed so just an opinion upon anything as upon them; for that in other things they have affected to like or to dislike, whereas here they own they do not understand, which he looks on to be very true; but yet thinks they understand them as well as Milton or Shakespeare, whom they are obliged by fashion to admire.
Small as the amount of Gray's poetical work had been he was recognized as the greatest living poet, and in December, , on the death of Colley Cibber, he was offered the post of Poet-Laureate. This Gray declined, observing, in a letter to Mason, "I rather wish somebody may accept it that will retrieve the credit of the thing, if it be retrievable or ever xlv had any credit.
Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character, as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses. The office itself has always humbled the possessor hitherto even in an age when kings were somebody , if he were a poor writer by making him more conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with the little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough to envy even a poet-laureate.
He continued at this and similar work in the winter of - 61 , copying out Gawin Douglas' "Palace of Honour," and composing his "Observations on English Metre," and other notes for a History of English Poetry he was then planning, which he refers to in the advertisement to his "Fatal Sisters. On his return to Cambridge he found that the Professorship of Modern History was vacant, and, being "spirited up by some friends," Gray got his name suggested to Lord Bute; he also wrote to Mr. Turner, the Professor, was going to die, in a letter to Dr. His descriptions of the places he visits are as usual most charming reading, especially where he writes on the spot "after the finest walk in the finest day that ever shone to Netley Abbey.
Wharton , describing the castle and the surrounding country. Italy could hardly produce a nobler scene, and this so sweetly contrasted with that perfection of nastiness and total want of accommodation that Scotland only can supply. In the west part of it from every eminence the eye catches some long winding reach of the Thames or Medway, with all their navigation; in the east the sea breaks in upon you, and mixes its white transient sails [and] glittering blue expanse with the deeper and brighter greens of the woods and corn.
These numbered only ten,— five of the six that were published in the edition of the "Long Story" being now omitted , his two Pindaric Odes and three Odes from the Norse. In this edition he supplied explanatory footnotes, for which he sarcastically apologizes in a prefatory note to the "Progress of Poesy" see p. In the advertisement to it the publishers state that "as an expression of their high esteem and gratitude, they have endeavoured to print it in the best manner;" and that it is "the first work in the Roman character which they have printed with so large a type.
In the same week, Gray attended the King's levee, and kissed hands on his appointment; in letters to his friends he says the King made him several gracious speeches, and told him that he owed his nomination to his "particular knowledge" of him. Burney was anxious to be the composer, but it was set to music by the Professor of Music, and performed at the Installation on the 1st July, This Ode is on a well-conceived plan, and contains several passages in Gray's best style, such as that beautiful stanza, in which, as Hallam says, "he has made the founders of Cambridge pass before our eyes like shadows over a magic glass.
He wrote a journal of this tour for the amusement of his friend, Dr. This graphic and picturesque narrative, with its wonderful descriptions of the scenery of Ulleswater and Borrowdale, and of the Lodore waterfall, should be read in Mr. Writing of a walk to Crow Park, Gray's note is: Through Nicholls Gray formed another friendship, which seemed serviceable to him in taking him out of himself; this was with a young Swiss gentleman named Bonstetten , who had come over to England to finish his education; Nicholls persuaded him to go to Cambridge , and gave him a letter of introduction to Gray.
For the first three months of Bonstetten spent almost every evening with Gray, reading with him Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and other English authors. On his way back to Switzerland, Bonstetten stopped in London , and was shown some of the sights by Gray, among others Dr. Johnson himself, whom Gray knew by sight, but disliked. Bonstetten told Sir Egerton Brydges, among other anecdotes of Gray, that, when he was walking one day with Gray in a crowded street of the city, "a large uncouth figure was rolling before them, upon seeing which Gray exclaimed with some liii bitterness, 'Look, look, Bonstetten, the great bear!
There goes Ursa Major. An extract from a letter from the poet Beattie to Sir W. Forbes, dated 4th May, , shows the opinion then held of Gray as a poet.
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Gray is most admired, and, I think, with justice. Yet there are, comparatively speaking, but a few who know anything of his but his 'Churchyard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works. God knows what will be the end of it. In his will Gray desired that his body might be "deposited in the vault, made by my late dear mother in the churchyard of Stoke-Poges , near Slough in Buckinghamshire, by her remains.
The only inscription on the tombstone is that which he had put to the memory of his aunt and his mother; but a stone was placed lv by Mr. Penn in the wall of the church, with this inscription: He was buried August 6th, He died July 30th, John Penn, the owner of Stoke Park, caused a large monumental cenotaph to be erected to Gray's memory in a field adjoining the churchyard at Stoke. Rolfe's American edition of Gray's "Poems," while he takes credit for correcting Howitt, he also, in his revised edition, gives the wrong verse from the "Elegy.
And to further mark the poet's connection with Eton, the present Head-Master, Rev. Hornby presents a copy of Gray's Poems to each boy in the fifth and sixth forms who leaves Eton with a 'bene discessit,' and a handsomely-bound large edition to such as may have specially distinguished themselves. Goodford's "leaving book" was a "Terence," Dr. Hawtrey's a "Juvenal"; and in Dr. Balston adopted "Gray" as the presentation book. Madox Brown, was presented by Mr. Hunt; and at Pembroke College a marble bust by Thornycroft was unveiled by Lord Houghton on the 26th May, , and speeches were delivered in honour of the poet by Sir Frederick Leighton and by Mr.
Russell Lowell, the American Minister and himself a poet. Gray's character is best painted by himself; writing to West from Florence , in April, , he says: You must add then, to your former idea, two years of age, a reasonable quantity of dulness, a great deal of silence, and something that rather resembles, than is, thinking; a confused notion of many strange and fine things that have swam before my eyes for some time, a want of love for general society, indeed an inability to it.
On the good side you may add a sensibility for what others feel, and indulgence for their faults and weaknesses, a love of truth and detestation of everything else. Then you are to deduct a little impertinence, a little laughter, a great deal of pride and some spirits. Study and travel were the two kinds of employment in which he found most happiness. In a letter to Wharton lix April, he writes "To find oneself business, I am persuaded, is the great art of life; and I am never so angry as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery, as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of others, than at one's own, and as if they could not go unless they were wound up.
Yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius more than common is required to teach a man how to employ himself. Whenever there was sorrow, or sickness, or death, among his friends, his tenderness was shown in language no less touching than beautiful; his letters of condolence to Mason on the death of his wife, and to Nicholls on the loss of his mother are well known. To him sorrow had not come for no purpose; "methinks," he writes, "I can readily pardon sickness, and age, and vexation for all the depredations they make within and without, when I think they make us better friends and better men, which I am persuaded is often the case.
I am very sure I have seen the best-tempered, generous, tenderest, young creatures lx in the world, that would have been very glad to be sorry for people they liked when under any pain, and could not, merely for the want of knowing rightly what it was themselves. Johnson's criticism of Gray's poetry, his estimate of his character is, for a contemporary, wonderfully true; "his mind," he says, "had a large grasp; his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all, but he was fastidious and hard to please; his contempt, however, is often employed, where I hope it will be approved, on scepticism and infidelity.
Tovey, "that he has left much that is incomplete, but nothing that is unfinished. His handwriting represents his mind; I have seen and transcribed many and many a page of it, but I do not recollect a single carelessly written word, or even letter. The mere sight of it suggests refinement, order, and infinite pains. A mind searching in so many directions, sensitive to so many influences, yet seeking in the first place its own satisfaction in a manner uniformly careful and artistic, is almost foredoomed to give very little to the world.
But what he has given is a little gold instead of much silver. In all that he has left, there is independence, sincerity, thoroughness; lxi the highest exemplar of the critical spirit, a type of how good work of any kind should be done. He studied Greek when few studied it.
His notes designed for his own use, have been frequently quoted by the late Master of Trinity. To History he brought the modern spirit of research. His critical opinions are safe, because they are not controversial nor addressed to a public, but the outcome of impressions gathered at leisure by a mind at once comprehensive and exact. We are no losers by the circumstance that they were communicated only to his friends, for next in sincerity to the good criticism which may be found in some poetry is that which we can extract from private letters.
In relation to landscape Gray was a prophet and a precursor of all that we love and admire. Speaking as an artist Sir F. Her beauty revealed to him new and richer meanings, a fuller charm breathed for him out of the meadow, and out of the mere, and the mountains lost their antique gloom and let in a new day, their gloom was turned before his eyes to glory.
But Gray wrote only for himself or his friends, and it was merely when pressed by them or by the booksellers that he published anything; the "Elegy" was being circulated in manuscript for months, and it was only when it was about to be printed in an unauthorized manner that he caused it to be published, and even then without his name. What he says of his verses was true of himself— "To censure cold and negligent of fame. This," says Gray, "I have always aimed at and never could attain. The necessity of rhyming is one great obstacle to it.
Here is his grand superiority to Collins, whose diction in his best poem—the "Ode to Evening"—is purer than Gray's; but then the "Ode to Evening" is like a river which loses itself in the sand, whereas Gray's best poems have an evolution sure and satisfying. He placed Shakespeare high above all poets of all countries and all ages. He thought Goldsmith a genuine poet. I was with him at Malvern when he received the "Deserted Village," which he desired me to read to him; and he listened with fixed attention, and soon exclaimed, 'This man is a poet.
Another to which I have referred in the note on line 63 of the "Elegy" is his reproducing in his printed poems words and thoughts from the verses that he set aside and never intended for publication. She bids each slumb'ring energy awake, Another touch, another temper take, Suspends th' inferior laws that rule our clay; The stubborn elements confess her sway, Their little wants, their low desires refine, And raise the mortal to a height divine.
Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero. The following Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death. This Ode was written at Stoke in June, , and sent by Gray to his school friend, West , at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, but was returned as West had died on the first of the month. It was first published in in the second volume of Dodsley's "Collection of Poems by Several Hands," under the title of "Ode," and without the author's name; it next appeared as the first poem in the "Designs by Mr.
Gray," published in , still called merely "Ode. The Attic warbler , the nightingale. The neighbourhood of Athens abounded with nightingales, reference to which is made by Sophocles, and connected with this fact is the fable that Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, king of Attica, was turned into a nightingale. Gray had in mind the well-known description of Athens in "Paradise Regained": Throat is used by metonymy for "song from her throat. Keats in his "Ode to a Nightingale" speaks of it as singing "in full-throated ease," "pouring forth her soul"; and Shelley: Gray's expression is taken from Pope's "Essay on Man": In the same passage referred to in note on line 5, Milton has: The passage is as follows: Green; and next, because I would do justice.
The subject was the "Queen's Hermitage. Writing to Gray, January 8, , Mason says: But marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, gathers sweetness from every flower, labours and unites into societies and republics, etc. But the plagiarism had been too glaring, had you taken the heart of the apple, in which, however, the great beauty of the thought consists. After all, why will you not read Jeremy Taylor? Take my word and more for it, he is the Shakespeare of divines.
Thy sun is set. The sunshine is the period in which the insects flourish, but that part of his life is over. Compare the following lines from Blackstone's "Farewell to his Muse," also published in Dodsley's "Collection" in This Ode was sent in a letter to Horace Walpole , dated March 1, , on the occasion of the death of one of his cats; at the same time, Gray sent a copy of it to Thomas Wharton , describing it, in mock-heroic style, as the "most noble of my performances latterly. The letter to Walpole is as follows: I knew Zara and Selima Selima, was it?
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: I feel as you to be sure have done long since that I have very little to say, at least in prose. The drowning of the cat took place in Arlington Street; and, after the death of Gray, Walpole placed the vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill , with a label containing the first stanza of the poem.
The exordium of this mock-heroic is in imitation of the opening lines of Dryden's "Alexander's Feast": Exception was taken by Dr. The same expression occurs in the "Progress of Poesy," line 5 , where also it is not redundant. When first published, the last three lines of this stanza stood: Stephen Jones was the first to correct the punctuation by putting a comma after Selima also. Walpole had two cats, and seems to have written to Gray that "his handsome cat was dead. Tabby is from Fr.
From line 10 Mr. Gosse argues "she cannot have been a tabby," but a tortoise-shell cat; and is followed by other annotators. Storr, in his note on line 4 , says, "Prove that she was not a tabby. Walpole's other cat may have been a tortoise-shell, and therefore Gray would describe this—the handsome one— as vying with her in beauty, and purring with pleasure at the sight of it.
Or it may be he wrote so as to be right whichever cat it was; if we take "tabby kind" as equivalent to "cat-kind," the Ode will be applicable to a tortoise-shell cat. See the Explanation of the Designs in the edition of , quoted after the Notes, infra. Nor all, that glisters, gold. Like many another phrase or saying adopted by Gray, this has been given greater currency from being in his oft-read poems. It occurs in several old poets before Gray: It also occurs in Shakespeare and Dryden: In the "Collection" of , A foe to fish.
Looks— in the Wharton MS. In the Walpole MS. Pembroke and Wharton MSS. Cooper at the Globe in Pater-noster Row, In the Pembroke MS. Antique, Ancient; "antique" is now applied to old-fashioned things, and would not be used of a building. Milton spells it antic, and probably Gray took the epithet from the line in "Il Penseroso": Because they do not still afford him the sensations he had as a "careless" boy; there is also a reference to the recent death of his school friend, West.
With the apostrophe to Father Thames and what follows compare the following lines from Green's "Grotto," the poem Gray said he had in mind when writing the "Ode on the Spring": Completely; an adverb, 'em. This abbreviation of them, or perhaps a survival of the O.
Murder was formerly also spelt murther , d and th being in many words interchangeable, e. Murtherous is a very expressive form, and suits the rhythm of the line better; he uses it again in the "Ode for Music," Wotton, Provost of Eton, the summer before his death visited Winchester College where he had been educated, and when he was returning to Eton, he made the following reflections, as given in his Life by Isaac Walton: But age and experience have taught me that these were but empty hopes; for I now always found it true, as my Saviour did foretell, 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Thus one generation succeeds another in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death. Gray adds a second printed only in Lackington's edition, It profits to learn discretion through suffering. In three places in this stanza Gray borrows from "Paradise Lost": Almost all editors have a comma after maid, but there is none in any of the editions of this Ode printed in Gray's lifetime.
In the margin of the Pembroke MS. Gray has written opposite this line, "[Greek line omitted ]. Mitford, Palgrave, Gosse, Ward, Rolfe and others wrongly read "Not" for "Nor," and have a full stop at end of line Your followers who are of a "philosophic mind," and have learned that "sweet are the uses of adversity. There is probably an allusion here to Walpole's disagreement with Gray, on their travels a year previously, and Gray's regret for it. Wharton , observing "If this be as tedious to you as it is grown to me, I shall be sorry that I sent it to you. The little quarto volume of twenty-one pages was published on the 8th of August—the first issue of Horace Walpole's printing press—with an engraving of Strawberry Hill , and the following title: Printed at Strawberry Hill, for R.
Gray quotes incorrectly from the Prayer Book version of Psalm lvii. This is equivalent to "lyre of Pindar. Milton's "Vacation Exercise," This compound is taken from Milton; the whole passage in which the following lines occur should be read: This expression occurs in verses attributed to Shakespeare: Horace Walpole , in describing the famous Boccapadugli eagle, of Greek sculpture, says "Mr. Gray has drawn the flagging wing. Idalium, in Cyprus, where there was a temple sacred to the worship of Venus.
She was also called Cytherea, from Cythera, an island off the coast of Laconia, where she was said to have landed when she rose from the foam of the sea. Gray prints velvet-green, and has several similar compounds, e. Johnson objected to the use of velvet, on the ground that Nature should not borrow from Art; but Gray follows Shakespeare and other poets: An incorrectly formed compound; but it occurs in Thomson's "Spring" The phrase is in "Paradise Lost," ii. He permits; a Latinism.
See "Ode for Music," Mitford noted that "the couplet from Cowley was wrongly quoted by Gray, and so continued by his different editors;" but he himself did not give the lines correctly. Gray was fond of reproducing a word or phrase that pleased him; in his Journal of his Tour in the Lake District he writes under Oct. See, espy; without the idea of secrecy now always attaching to it; see "Paradise Lost," iv.
Equivalent to "of armed men in battle array;" the rays of the sun being compared to the spears and other shining weapons of an army. Rolfe quotes from Lowell: In "Agrippina" Gray has "the glittering front of war.
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The Maeander, proverbial for its wandering course, flowed through Phrygia, into the Icarian Sea. Miletus, on the Maeander, was the birth-place of Thales and other Greek philosophers; but the reference is probably suggested by Milton's lines: With lines , compare Byron's: Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their Sun, is set.
Each old poetic Mountain. Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays. Far from the sun , etc. In the more northern clime of England—far from sunny Italy. Mitford quotes from Cleveland: Knowledge of Greek and Latin being the recognized learning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Shakespeare having little of it, he is often spoken of as deriving his knowledge from Nature; see in particular Ben Jonson's lines "To the Memory of Shakespeare: Nature herself was proud of his designs. And in Milton "l'Allegro," Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood notes wild.
Paint-brush; an old use of the word, from Lat. The Child stretched forth , etc. Mitford quotes from Sandys' Ovid, "Metam. Coursers , horses; literally, runners. There is an allusion to the fabulous winged horse Pegasus, associated with poetic inspiration. Yet shall he mount. In the last three lines, Gray expresses his own feelings and character, his pride, and, at the same time, his retiring disposition, vulgar , ordinary, common.
Awake, my lyre; my glory, wake. With torrent rapture, see it pour. Hurls at their flying rear his glitt'ring shafts of war. Hurls o'er their scatter'd rear his glitt'ring shafts of war. Hurls o'er their shadowy rear his glitt'ring shafts of war. Buried—in the margin of the MS. Dull in the margin of the Pembroke MS. Murmured a celestial sound. Terror in the margin of the Pembroke MS. Yet never can he fear a vulgar fate. In a letter, dated August 6, , Gray sent Dr. Wharton the first part of "The Bard," and on the 21st August a bit more of the "Prophecy" from line 57 to the end, but unfinished in places.
In May, , in a letter to Mason, he states that Parry, the Welsh harper, had been at Cambridge, and his "ravishing blind harmony" and "tunes of a thousand years old" had put the "Odikle" in motion again, and that he had then completed it, and he concluded his letter with the last two stanzas. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot.
Rough and uneven-looking, owing to being covered with trees. Milton applies the epithet to hills: Hoel is called high-born, being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales. He was one of his father's generals in his wars against the English, Flemings, and Normans, in South Wales; and was a famous bard, as his poems that are extant testify. Llewellyn was a French Prince who was killed in the wars with Edward I.
He was also a poet. In contemporary poets he is described as the "tender-hearted" and "mild" Llewellyn; so soft should be taken with Llewellyn and not with lay. Cadwallo and Urien are Welsh bards, but none of their poems are now extant. See Southey's "Madoc in Wales. Plinlimmon , a mountain on the borders of Cardigan and Glamorgan. The lines mean that even the lofty mountain bent to listen to his song. Caernarvon, Caer in Arvon, the camp in Arvon. From this line down to the end of line , the "lost companions" of the bard "join in harmony" with him, and then disappear, and he continues the prophecy alone.
This is clearly indicated in all the editions published in Gray's lifetime; in these each line spoken by the bard alone— 1 to 8 and 23 to 48 —begins with a single inverted comma, and there is one at the end of line Then from line 49 to there are two inverted commas at the beginning of each line, and two at the end of line ; and, again, one inverted comma at each line from to , which also ends with one.
In Wakefield's edition and Lackington's , the marks are correct. Mason is also correct, and all reprints I have seen of his editions, except that the two inverted commas at the end of line are placed within the bracket. But in Mitford's edition , the commas at the end of line are omitted, and in other respects the portion of the poem from line 23 to is printed as if an uninterrupted speech by the bard alone.
Mitford incorrectly reads "Berkeley's roof. For the events of Edward the Second's reign, the faithlessness of his wife, Isabella of France, the treason of Mortimer, and the cruel death of the king, read the "Student's Hume," chap, ix. The expression seems to have been taken from Hume's description: Suffering agony; more commonly used as a transitive verb: There is a note of interrogation at this line, and the question may be supplied thus: He has the same metaphors in "Agrippina": Fair laughs the Morn, etc.
These lines may be paraphrased thus: No thought is there of the whirlwind that lies silently in wait to sweep away the prey which at sunset must be his. In his "Biographia Literaria" p. How like a prodigal doth she return, With over-weathered ribs, and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet wind!
I mention this because in referring various lines in Gray to their original in Shakespeare and Milton—and in the clear perception how completely all the propriety was lost in the transfer—I was, at that early period, led to a conjecture which, many years afterwards, was recalled to me from the same thought having been started in conversation, but far more ably and developed more fully, by Mr. Wordsworth, namely, that this style of poetry, which I have characterized above as translations of prose thoughts into poetic language, had been kept up, if it did not wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses, and the great importance attached to these exercises in our public schools.
Above and below in the loom we intertwine the roses, to be united by the marriage of Henry VII. He is represented as guilty of their murder, and is under the shade of the united roses, having been slain at the battle of Bosworth. Half of thy heart. Horace's "animae dimidium meae," "Ode" I. Tennyson alludes to the story of Eleanor's devotion to her husband in his "Dream of Fair Women": A skirt is the edge or lower part of a garment; cf. Webster, the American orator, introduced this passage thus, "Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul! All hail, ye genuine Kings.
None of the annotators have noted the point in this couplet and in the remainder of the bard's song, though Gray hints at it in his note on line Hitherto the bard has been denouncing the woes that were to befall the Plantagenet line, but on the extinction of the House of York he foresees visions of glory for his native land—not only was England to become a Welsh dependency, ruled by Welsh monarchs, but the race of the bards, that had been cut off by the ruthless Edward, is restored in Spencer and Shakespeare—a new era of bards under a sovereign of Welsh descent!
Britannia's issue and of the Briton-Line, are equivalent to "Welsh" the Kelts, original Britons, having been driven into Wales. He has it in the same sense in "Agrippina": Of the Briton-Line, i. Mitford refers to Congreve's "Ode to Lord Godolphin": Warble is a favourite word of Gray's for song or verse—whether of birds or poets. He seems to have taken it like many another word or phrase from Milton; in "l'Allegro" Shakespeare is said to " Warble his native wood-notes wild. This seems borrowed from Milton: The bright beams of light. The Bard is still addressing Edward, and says he rejoices at the different doom that awaits the king and himself—the evil that is to fall on the house of the monarch and his descendants, and the triumph of his own poetical descendants in the persons of the Elizabethan poets.
Hovered in the noontide ray. Mirrors of Saxon truth and loyalty Your helpless, old, expiring master view! Yet thou, proud boy, from Pomfret's walls shall send A sigh, and envy oft thy happy grandsire's end. A smile of horror. Me unblessed, unpitied, here. No more our long lost, etc. Youthful knights, and barons bold With dazzling helm, and horrent spear. This Ode was written in , and first published as the seventh in the Poems of In a letter to Beattie , 1st February, , Gray states that his "sole reason" for publishing this and the following odes is "to make up for the omission of the Long Story," which he did not include in his poems in The Ode is a translation or paraphrase from the Norwegian, the original being an Icelandic court poem written about , entitled "Darradar Liod, or the Lay of Darts.
There is also a Latin version, referred to by Gray. The friend referred to in the advertisement was Mason, and the "design was dropped" on his hearing that Thomas Warton was engaged on a History of English Poetry. The title in the Pembroke MS. With the weaving here and in the "Bard" compare the paraphrase of the gipsy's song in "Guy Mannering": Now they wax and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle," etc.
The names of the sisters in the original are Hilda, Hiorthrimula, Sangrida, and Swipula. Gray prints and spells thus—desart-beach. The meaning of this verse is that the tribe which has hitherto been confined to the sea-coast shall rule over rich provinces in the interior of Ireland. These lines are not in the original. The reference to Scotland is explained in the Preface. Triumph is struck out and 'conquer' in the margin, Pembroke MS. Hurry, hurry to the field. This Ode, as well as the preceding and the following one, was first published in the edition of Mitford follows the original title in the Wharton MS.
The first five stanzas of this Ode are omitted; in which Balder, one of the sons of Odin, was informed that he should soon die. Upon his communication of his dream, the other gods, finding it true, by consulting the oracles, agreed to ward off the approaching danger, and sent Frigga to exact an oath from every thing not to injure Balder. She, however, overlooked the mistletoe, with a branch of which he was afterwards slain by Hoder, at the instigation of Lok. After the execution of this commission, Odin, still alarmed for the life of his son, called another council; and hearing nothing but divided opinions among the gods, to consult the Prophetess "he up-rose with speed.
The first five stanzas are given in S. Jones' edition of Gray. Hela, in the Edda, is described with a dreadful countenance, and her body half flesh-colour, and half blue. The Edda gives this dog the name of Managarmar. He fed upon the lives of those that were to die. In a little poem called the "Magic of Odin" Bartholinus, p.
When I see magicians travelling through the air, I disconcert them with a single look, and force them to abandon their enterprise. The original word is Valgalldr; from Valr , mortuus, and Galldr, incantatio. Odin we find both from this Ode and the Edda was solicitous about the fate of his son, Balder, who had dreamed he was soon to die. Women were looked upon by the Gothic nations as having a peculiar insight into futurity; and some there were that made profession of magic arts and divination.
These travelled round the country, and were received in every house with great respect and honour. Such a woman bore the name of Volva, Seidkona, or Spakona. The dress of Thorbiorga, one of these prophetesses, is described at large in Eirik's "Rauda Sogu" apud Bartholin, lib. She had on a blue vest spangled all over with stones, a necklace of glass beads, and a cap made of the skin of a black lamb lined with white cat-skin. She leaned on a staff adorned with brass, with a round head set with stones; and was girt with an Hunlandish belt, at which hung her pouch full of magical instruments.
Her buskins were of rough calf-skin, bound on with thongs studded with knobs of brass, and her gloves of white cat-skin, the fur turned inwards, etc. They were also called Fiolkyngi, or Fiolkunnug, i. See Matthew Arnold's "Balder Dead," These were the Norns or Fates, invisible to mortals; so by recognizing them Odin revealed his divinity.
Various Readings in the Wharton MS. Prophetess, my call obey, Once again arise and say. Once again my call obey, Prophetess, arise and say. Who th' Avenger, etc. These verses are transposed in the Wharton MS. The mightiest of the mighty line. The original Welsh of the above poem was the composition of Gwalchmai, the son of Melir, immediately after Prince Owen Gwynedd had defeated the combined fleets of Iceland, Denmark, and Norway, which had invaded his territory on the coast of Anglesea.
There is likewise another poem which describes this famous battle, written by Prince Howel, the son of Owen Gwynedd. The Danish fleet sails on the shadow it makes in the water. Canning, in his celebrated simile, speaks of "those tremendous fabrics now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness. Her stands for Lochlin, an army or fleet being often described by the name of the country itself, long and gay agree with Lochlin. See Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," vi. A red dragon was the device Owen wore.
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Moelfre, a small bay on the north-east coast of Anglesea. After line 26 there are the four following lines in the MS. Checked by the torrent-tide of blood, Backward Meinai rolls his flood; While, heaped his master's feet around, Prostrate warriors gnaw the ground. From this line to the end is Gray's amplification rather than a translation, very little of it being in the original, which closes as follows: Marking with indignant looks those who were afraid to stop, or ashamed to fly.
This is a peculiar use of the abstract for the concrete. Marking agrees with he. In the winter of , after the death of his aunt, Mary Antrobus, Gray resumed it at Cambridge , and finished it at Stoke early in June, ; and on the 12th of that month he sent a copy of it in MS. On the 10th of February, , Gray received a letter from the editors of the "Magazine of Magazines," asking permission to publish it. He thereupon wrote next day to Walpole, as follows: Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen as their bookseller expresses it , who have taken the 'Magazine of Magazines' into their hands.
They tell me that an ingenious Poem, called 'Reflections in a Country Church-yard,' has been communicated to them, which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the excellent author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his indulgence, but the honour of his correspondence, etc. As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent as they desire, 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, 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 Church-yard.
If you behold the 'Magazine of Magazines' in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone. Dodsley in Pall-Mall; and sold by M. Cooper in Pater-Noster Row. It was anonymous, and contained these prefatory remarks by Walpole: It is this Approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make any Apology but to the Author: As he cannot but feel some Satisfaction in having pleas'd so many Readers already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that Pleasure to many more.
The poem was at once reproduced in the magazines; it appeared in the "Magazine of Magazines" on the 28th of February, in the "London Magazine" and in the "Scots' Magazine," on the 31st of March, and in the "Grand Magazine of Magazines" on the 30th of April. Gray has entered the following note in the margin of the Pembroke MS.: Bentley's Designs, of wch.
Mason says that Gray "originally gave it only the simple title of 'Stanzas written in a Country Church-yard,'" but that he "persuaded him first to call it an Elegy, because the subject authorized him so to do, and the alternate measure seemed particularly fit for that species of composition; also so capital a poem written in this measure, would as it were appropriate it in future to writings of this sort.
Peter's College, Cambridge, and a friend of Gray's , who, at his death in , left the greater portion to Pembroke College, and the remainder to his friend Mr. Bright,—each set containing a copy of the "Elegy. The collection left to Mr. Bright was sold by auction in ; the MS. Rolfe calls this the "Fraser MS.