Select Poems of Thomas Gray, Thomas Gray [reading list TXT] 📗
- Author: Thomas Gray
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The last two lines of the 31st stanza (see note below) are pointed as follows:
"He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear,He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend."
Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following: "Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Huswife;" "Ile" (aisle); "wast" (waste); "village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;" "spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc.
Mitford, in his Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton" edition of his Poems (edited by Rev. John Moultrie, 1847), says: "I possess many curious variations from the printed text, taken from a copy of it in his own handwriting." He adds specimens of these variations, a few of which differ from both the Wrightson and Pembroke MSS. We give these in our notes below. See on 12, 24, and 93.
Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene of the Elegy, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, been in favor of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in 1742; and there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In that churchyard his mother was buried, and there, at his request, his own remains were afterwards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, in all respects in perfect keeping with the spirit of the poem.
According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parish about two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in the habit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of the poem; and the great bell of St. Mary's is the "curfew" of the first stanza. Another tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, some three miles and a half northwest of Cambridge. Both places have churchyards such as the Elegy describes; and this is about all that can be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parish called Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at least has suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason than that Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, and casually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot of which he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a whole morning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poet often visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fond and tender associations that gathered about Stoke.
1. The curfew. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to suppose that the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark of Norman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest, it only shows that the old English police was less well-regulated than that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior civilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of the timber-built towns of the Middle Ages: 'Solae pestes Londoniae sunt stultorum immodica potatio et frequens incendium' (Fitzstephen). The enforced extinction of domestic lights at an appointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them."
Warton wanted to have this line read
It is sufficient to say that Gray, as the manuscript shows, did not want it to read so, and that we much prefer his way to Warton's.
Mitford says that toll is "not the appropriate verb," as the curfew was rung, not tolled. We presume that depended, to some extent, on the fancy of the ringer. Milton (Il Pens. 76) speaks of the curfew as
Gray himself quotes here Dante, Purgat. 8:
Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore;"
and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation:
That seemeth to deplore the dying day."
Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, 22:
On parting=departing, cf. Shakes. Cor. v. 6: "When I parted hence;" Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid," etc.
2. The lowing herd wind, etc. Wind, and not winds, is the reading of the MS. (see fac-simile of this stanza above) and of all the early editions—that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's, Mathias's, etc.—but we find no note of the fact in Mitford's or any other of the more recent editions, which have substituted winds. Whether the change was made as an amendment or accidentally, we do not know;10 but the original reading seems to us by far the better one. The poet does not refer to the herd as an aggregate, but to the animals that compose it. He sees, not it, but "them on their winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the meaning and the melody of the line.
10 Very likely the latter, as we have seen that winds appears in the unauthorized version of the London Magazine (March, 1751), where it may be a misprint, like the others noted above. We may remark here that the edition of 1768—the editio princeps of the collected Poems—was issued under Gray's own supervision, and is printed with remarkable accuracy. We have detected only one indubitable error of the type in the entire volume. Certain peculiarities of spelling were probably intentional, as we find the like in the fac-similes of the poet's manuscripts. The many quotations from Greek, Latin, and Italian are correctly given (according to the received texts of the time), and the references to authorities, so far as we have verified them, are equally exact. The book throughout bears the marks of Gray's scholarly and critical habits, and we may be sure that the poems appear in precisely the form which he meant they should retain. In doubtful cases, therefore, we have generally followed this edition. Mason's (the second edition: York, 1778) is also carefully edited and printed, and its readings seldom vary from Gray's. All of Mitford's that we have examined swarm with errors, especially in the notes. Pickering's (1835), edited by Mitford, is perhaps the worst of all. The Boston ed. (Little, Brown, & Co., 1853) is a pretty careful reproduction of Pickering's, with all its inaccuracies.3. The critic of the N. A. Review points out that this line "is quite peculiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he adds, "twenty different versions preserving the rhythm, the general sentiment and the rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be, not inappropriately, substituted for the original reading."
Luke quotes Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7, 39: "And now she was uppon the weary way."
6. Air is of course the object, not the subject of the verb.
7. Save where the beetle, etc. Cf. Collins, Ode to Evening:
"Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed batWith short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum."
and Macbeth, iii. 2:
"Ere the bat hath flownHis cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night's yawning peal," etc.
10. The moping owl. Mitford quotes Ovid, Met. v. 550: "Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, Winter, 114:
"Assiduous in his bower the wailing owlPlies his sad song;"
and Mallet, Excursion:
Screams solitary to the mournful moon."
12. Her ancient solitary reign. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iii. 476: "desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."
13. "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tennyson (In Mem. x.) speaks of resting
'beneath the clover sodThat takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God.'
In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.) when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be 'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's White Devil). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral reasons gave no choice" (Hales).
17. Cf. Milton, Arcades, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" P. L. ix. 192:
"Now when as sacred light began to dawnIn Eden on the humid flowers that breath'd
Their morning incense," etc.
18. Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, Æn. viii. 455:
"Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma,Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus."
19. The cock's shrill clarion. Cf. Philips, Cyder, i. 753:
"When chanticleer with clarion shrill recallsThe tardy day;"
Milton, P. L. vii. 443:
"The crested cock, whose clarion soundsThe silent hours;"
Hamlet, i. 1:
Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia:
"I slept not till the early bugle-hornOf chaunticlere had summon'd in the morn;"
and Thomas Kyd, England's Parnassus:
"The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter,Wayting upon the rising of the sunne;
The wandering swallow with her broken song," etc.
20. Their lowly bed. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter."
21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894:
"Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxorOptima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent;"
and Horace, Epod. ii. 39:
"Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvetDomum atque dulces liberos
* * * * * * *
Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum
Lassi sub adventum viri," etc.
Mitford quotes Thomson, Winter, 311:
"In vain for him the officious wife preparesThe fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence."
Wakefield cites The Idler, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last."
22. Ply her evening care. Mitford says, "To ply a care is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme share." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the Elegy unintelligible. Compare his own
'And she I cherished turned her wheelBeside an English fire.'"
23. No children run, etc. Hales quotes Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night, 21:
"Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher throughTo meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee."
24. Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield compares Virgil, Geo. ii. 523:
and Mitford adds from Dryden,
"Whose little arms about
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