Chapter D: V., Goldsmith's Deserted Village (2)

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"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. Masson, 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:

"Her goodly length stretcht on a lilly-bed."

104. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 644: "divided by a babbling brook;" and Horace, _Od._ iii. 13, 15:

"unde loquaces
Lymphae desiliunt tuae."

Wakefield quotes _As You Like It_, ii. 1:

"As he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this road."

105. _Smiling as in scorn_. Cf. Shakes. _Pass. Pilgrim_, 14:

"Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,
In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether."

and Skelton, _Prol. to B. of C._:

"Smylynge half in scorne
At our foly."

107. _Woeful-wan_. Mitford says: "_Woeful-wan_ is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the _handcuffs_ of the hyphen." The hyphen is not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in the Pembroke MS.

Wakefield quotes Spenser, _Shep. Kal._ Jan.:

"For pale and wanne he was (alas the while!)
May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke."

108. "_Hopeless_ is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way" (Hales).

109. _Custom'd_ is Gray's word, not _'custom'd_, as usually printed. See either Wb. or Worc. s. v. Cf. Milton, _Ep. Damonis_: "Simul assueta seditque sub ulmo."

114. _Churchway path_. Cf. Shakes. _M. N. D._ v. 2:

"Now it is the time of night,
That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the churchway paths to glide."

115. _For thou canst read_. The "hoary-headed swain" of course could _not_ read.

116. _Grav'd_. The old form of the participle is _graven_, but _graved_ is also in good use. The old preterite _grove_ is obsolete.

117. _The lap of earth_. Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ v. 7, 9:

"For other beds the Priests there used none,
But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie;"

and Milton, _P. L._ x. 777:

"How glad would lay me down,
As in my mother's lap!"

Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pathetic sentence of Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater, operit."

123. _He gave to misery all he had, a tear_. This is the pointing of the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, almost without exception) to,

"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear."

This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illustration of it:

"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live."

126. Mitford says that _Or_ in this line should be _Nor_. Yes, if "draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode."

127. _In trembling hope_. Gray quotes Petrarch, _Sonnet_ 104: "paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, _Pharsalia_, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;" Mallet, _Funeral Hymn_, 473:

"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;"

and Beaumont, _Psyche_, xv. 314:

"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear."

Hooker (_Eccl. Pol._ i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of things far removed."

ODE ON THE SPRING.

The original manuscript title of this ode was "Noontide." It was first printed in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of "Ode."

1. _The rosy-bosom'd Hours_. Cf. Milton, _Comus_, 984: "The Graces and the rosy-bosom'd Hours;" and Thomson, _Spring_, 1007:

"The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines."

The _Horæ_, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by "the dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially spring and autumn, or "Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first there were only two Horæ, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn); but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons.

2. _Fair Venus' train_. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks: "Venus is here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of creation and beauty."

3. _Long-expecting_. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes incorrectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, _Astræa Redux_, 132: "To flowers that in its womb expecting lie."

4. _The purple year_. Cf. the _Pervigilium Veneris_, 13: "Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus;" Pope, _Pastorals_, i. 28: "And lavish Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, _Zephyr_: "Gales that wake the purple year."

5. _The Attic warbler_. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (_P. R._ iv. 245):

"where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."

Cf. Ovid, _Hal._ 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;" and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."

_Pours her throat_ is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"

6, 7. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 577:

"From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of spring."

9, 10. Cf. Milton, _Comus_, 989:

"And west winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells."

12. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers;" Pope, _Eloisa_, 170: "And breathes a browner horror on the woods;" Thomson, _Castle of Indolence_, i. 38: "Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."

According to Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not acknowledge the existence of the colour of _brown_ at all," he goes on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know I have found that there is no _brown_ in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue," etc.

14. _O'ercanopies the glade_. Gray himself quotes Shakes. _M. N. D._ ii. 1: "A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine."[1] Cf. Fletcher, _Purple Island_, i. 5, 30: "The beech shall yield a cool, safe canopy;" and Milton, _Comus_, 543: "a bank, With ivy canopied."

[Footnote 1: The reading of the folio of 1623 is:

"I know a banke where the wilde time blowes,
Where Oxslips and the nodding Violet growes,
Quite ouer-cannoped with luscious woodbine."

Dyce and some other modern editors read,

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine."]

15. _Rushy brink_. Cf. _Comus_, 890: "By the rushy-fringed bank."

19, 20. These lines, as first printed, read:

"How low, how indigent the proud!
How little are the great!"

22. _The panting herds_. Cf. Pope, _Past._ ii. 87: "To closer shades the panting flocks remove."

23. _The peopled air_. Cf. Walton, _C. A._: "Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing;" Beaumont, _Psyche_: "Every tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats."

24. _The busy murmur_. Cf. Milton, _P. R._ iv. 248: "bees' industrious murmur."

25. _The insect youth_. Perhaps suggested by a line in Green's _Hermitage_, quoted in a letter of Gray to Walpole: "From maggot-youth through change of state," etc. See on 31 below.

26. _The honied spring_. Cf. Milton, _Il Pens._ 142: "the bee with honied thigh;" and _Lyc._ 140: "the honied showers."

"There has of late arisen," says Johnson in his Life of Gray, "a practice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of participles, such as the _cultured plain_, the _daisied bank_; but I am sorry to see in the lines of a scholar like Gray the _honied_ spring." But, as we have seen, _honied_ is found in Milton; and Shakespeare also uses it in _Hen. V._ i. 1: "honey'd sentences." _Mellitus_ is used by Cicero, Horace, and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our substances into verbs, participles, and participial adjectives is of the very essence of our tongue, derived from its Saxon origin, and a main source of its energy and richness."

27. _The liquid noon_. Gray quotes Virgil, _Geo._ iv. 59: "Nare per aestatem liquidam."

30. _Quick-glancing to the sun_. Gray quotes Milton, _P. L._ vii. 405:

"Sporting with quick glance,
Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold."

31. Gray here quotes Green, _Grotto_: "While insects from the threshold preach." In a letter to Walpole, he says: "I send you a bit of a thing for two reasons: first, because it is of one of your favourites, Mr. M. Green; and next, because I would do justice. The thought on which my second Ode turns [this Ode, afterwards placed first by Gray] is manifestly stole from hence; not that I knew it at the time, but having seen this many years before, to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, and, forgetting the Author, I took it for my own." Then comes the quotation from Green's _Grotto_. The passage referring to the insects is as follows:

"To the mind's ear, and inward sight,
There silence speaks, and shade gives light:
While insects from the threshold preach,
And minds dispos'd to musing teach;
Proud of strong limbs and painted hues,
They perish by the slightest bruise;
Or maladies begun within
Destroy more slow life's frail machine:
From maggot-youth, thro' change of state,
They feel like us the turns of fate:
Some born to creep have liv'd to fly,
And chang'd earth's cells for dwellings high:
And some that did their six wings keep,
Before they died, been forc'd to creep.
They politics, like ours, profess;
The greater prey upon the less.
Some strain on foot huge loads to bring,
Some toil incessant on the wing:
Nor from their vigorous schemes desist
Till death; and then they are never mist.
Some frolick, toil, marry, increase,
Are sick and well, have war and peace;
And broke with age in half a day,
Yield to successors, and away."

47. _Painted plumage_. Cf. Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 118: "His painted wings; and Milton, _P. L._ vii. 433:

"From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings."

See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 243, and _Æn._ iv. 525: "pictaeque volucres;" and Phædrus, _Fab._ iii. 18: "pictisque plumis."

ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT.

This ode first appeared in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the ode for an inscription.

In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the subject of the ode in the following jocose strain: "As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. I knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima?), or rather I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say which was which. 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,

Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris.

"... Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows: [the Ode follows, which we need not reprint here].

"There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph."

2. Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, _Town Eclogues_:

"Where the tall jar erects its stately pride,
With antic shapes in China's azure dyed."

3. _The azure flowers that blow_. Johnson and Wakefield find fault with this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usage allows. In the _Progress of Poesy_, i. 1, we have again: "The laughing flowers that round them blow." Cf. _Comus_, 992:

"Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can shew."

4. _Tabby_. For the derivation of this word from the French _tabis_, a kind of silk, see Wb. In the first ed. the 5th line preceded the 4th.

6. _The lake_. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the whole poem.

11. _Jet_. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town in Lycia, where the mineral was first obtained.

14. _Two angel forms_. In the first ed. "two beauteous forms," which Mitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of _angel_ and _genii_ interfere with each other, and bring different associations to the mind."

16. _Tyrian hue_. Explained by the "purple" in next line; an allusion to the famous Tyrian dye of the ancients. Cf. Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 142: "with fins of Tyrian dye."

17. Cf. Virgil, _Geo._ iv. 274:

"_Aureus_ ipse; sed in foliis, quae plurima circum
Funduntur, violae _sublucet purpura_ nigrae."

See also Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 332: "His shining horns diffus'd a golden glow;" _Temple of Fame_, 253: "And lucid amber casts a golden gleam."

24. In the 1st ed. "What cat's a foe to fish?" and in the next line, "with eyes intent."

31. _Eight times_. Alluding to the proverbial "nine lives" of the cat.

34. _No dolphin came_. An allusion to the story of Arion, who when thrown overboard by the sailors for the sake of his wealth was borne safely to land by a dolphin.

_No Nereid stirr'd_. Cf. Milton, _Lycidas_, 50:

"Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?"

35, 36. The reading of 1st ed. is,

"Nor cruel Tom nor Harry heard.
What favourite has a friend?"

40. The 1st ed. has "Not all that strikes," etc.

42. _Nor all that glisters gold_. A favourite proverb with the old English poets. Cf. Chaucer, _C. T._ 16430:

"But all thing which that shineth as the gold
Ne is no gold, as I have herd it told;"

Spenser, _F. Q._ ii. 8, 14:

"Yet gold all is not, that doth golden seeme;"

Shakes. _M. of V._ ii. 7:

"All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told;"

Dryden, _Hind and Panther_:

"All, as they say, that glitters is not gold."

Other examples might be given. _Glisten_ is not found in Shakes. or Milton, but both use _glister_ several times. See _W. T._ iii. 2; _Rich. II._ iii. 3; _T. A._ ii. 1, etc.; _Lycidas_, 79; _Comus_, 219; _P. L._ iii. 550; iv. 645, 653, etc.

ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.

This, as Mason informs us, was the first English[1] production of Gray's that appeared in print. It was published, in folio, in 1747; and appeared again in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 267, without the name of the author.

[Footnote 1: A Latin poem by him, a "Hymeneal" on the Prince of Wales's Marriage, had appeared in the _Cambridge Collection_ in 1736.]

Hazlitt (_Lectures on English Poets_) says of this Ode: "It is more mechanical and commonplace [than the _Elegy_]; but it touches on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's 'stately heights,' or sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that we should think of him; for he thought of others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad music of humanity.'"

The writer in the _North American Review_ (vol. xcvi.), after referring to the publication of this Ode, which, "according to the custom of the time, was judiciously swathed in folio," adds:

"About this time Gray's portrait was painted, at Walpole's request; and on the paper which he is represented as holding, Walpole wrote the title of the Ode, with a line from Lucan:

'Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.'

The poem met with very little attention until it was republished in 1751, with a few other of his Odes. Gray, in speaking of it to Walpole, in connection with the Ode to Spring, merely says that to him 'the latter seems not worse than the former.' But the former has always been the greater favourite--perhaps more from the matter than the manner. It is the expression of the memories, the thoughts, and the feelings which arise unbidden in the mind of the man as he looks once more on the scenes of his boyhood. He feels a new youth in the presence of those old joys. But the old friends are not there. Generations have come and gone, and an unknown race now frolic in boyish glee. His sad, prophetic eye cannot help looking into the future, and comparing these careless joys with the inevitable ills of life. Already he sees the fury passions in wait for their little victims. They seem present to him, like very demons. Our language contains no finer, more graphic personifications than these almost tangible shapes. Spenser is more circumstantial, Collins more vehement, but neither is more real. Though but outlines in miniature, they are as distinct as Dutch art. Every epithet is a lifelike picture; not a word could be changed without destroying the tone of the whole. At last the musing poet asks himself, _Cui bono?_ Why thus borrow trouble from the future? Why summon so soon the coming locusts, to poison before their time the glad waters of youth?

'Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late.
And happiness too quickly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more;--where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.'

So feeling and the want of feeling come together for once in the moral. The gay Roman satirist--the apostle of indifferentism--reaches the same goal, though he has travelled a different road. To Thaliarchus he says:

'Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere: et
Quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro
Appone.'

The same easy-going philosophy of life forms the key-note of the Ode to Leuconoë:

'Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero;'

of that to Quinctius Hirpinus:

'Quid aeternis minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas?'

of that to Pompeius Grosphus:

'Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est,
Oderit curare.'

And so with many others. 'Take no thought of the morrow.'"

Wakefield translates the Greek motto, "Man is an abundant subject of calamity."

2. _That crown the watery glade_. Cf. Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 128: "And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade."

4. _Her Henry's holy shade_. Henry the Sixth, founder of the college. Cf. _The Bard_, ii. 3: "the meek usurper's holy head;" Shakes. _Rich. III._ v. 1: "Holy King Henry;" _Id._ iv. 4: "When holy Harry died." The king, though never canonized, was regarded as a saint.

5. _And ye_. Ye "towers;" that is, of Windsor Castle. Cf. Thomson, _Summer_, 1412:

"And now to where
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow."

8. _Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among_. "That is, the _turf_ of whose _lawn_, the _shade_ of whose _groves_, the _flowers_ of whose mead" (Wakefield). Cf. _Hamlet_, iii. 1: "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword."

In Anglo-Saxon and Early English prepositions were often placed after their objects. In the Elizabethan period the transposition of the weaker prepositions was not allowed, except in the compounds _whereto_, _herewith_, etc. (cf. the Latin _quocum_, _secum_), but the longer forms were still, though rarely, transposed (see _Shakes. Gr._ 203); and in more recent writers this latter license is extremely rare. Even the use of the preposition after the relative, which was very common in Shakespeare's day, is now avoided, except in colloquial style.

9. _The hoary Thames_. The river-god is pictured in the old classic fashion. Cf. Milton, _Lycidas_, 103: "Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow." See also quotation from Dryden in note on 21 below.

10. _His silver-winding way_. Cf. Thomson, _Summer_, 1425: "The matchless vale of Thames, Fair-winding up," etc.

12. _Ah, fields belov'd in vain!_ Mitford remarks that this expression has been considered obscure, and adds the following explanation: "The poem is written in the character of one who contemplates this life as a scene of misfortune and sorrow, from whose fatal power the brief sunshine of youth is supposed to be exempt. The fields are _beloved_ as the scene of youthful pleasures, and as affording the promise of happiness to come; but this promise never was fulfilled. Fate, which dooms man to misery, soon overclouded these opening prospects of delight. That is in vain beloved which does not realize the expectations it held out. No fruit but that of disappointment has followed the blossoms of a thoughtless hope."

13. _Where once my careless childhood stray'd_. Wakefield cites Thomson, _Winter_, 6:

"with frequent foot
Pleas'd have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs'd by careless Solitude I liv'd,
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas'd have I wander'd," etc.

15. _That from ye blow_. In Early English _ye_ is nominative, _you_ accusative (objective). This distinction, though observed in our version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan writers (Shakes. _Gr._ 236), as it has occasionally been by the poets even to our own day. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. VIII._ iii. 1: "The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye;" Milton, _Comus_, 216: "I see ye visibly," etc. Dryden, in a couplet quoted by Guest, uses both forms in the same line:

"What gain you by forbidding it to tease ye?
It now can neither trouble _you_ nor please ye."

19. Gray quotes Dryden, _Fable on Pythag. Syst._: "And bees their honey redolent of spring."

21. _Say, father Thames_, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's _Grotto_:

"Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace
Gives leave to view, what beauties grace
Your flowery banks, if you have seen."

Cf. Dryden, _Annus Mirabilis_, st. 232: "Old father Thames raised up his reverend head."

Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says: "His supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking, "Are we by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of _Rasselas_? 'As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before her: "Answer," said she, "great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."'"

23. _Margent green_. Cf. _Comus_, 232: "By slow Mæander's margent green."

24. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, iii. 233: "To Virtue, in the paths of Pleasure, trod."

26. _Thy glassy wave_. Cf. _Comus_, 861: "Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave."

27. _The captive linnet_. The adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before it can be called "captive."

28. In the MS. this line reads, "To chase the hoop's illusive speed," which seems to us better than the revised form in the text.

30. Cf. Pope, _Dunciad_, iv. 592: "The senator at cricket urge the ball."

37. Cf. Cowley, _Ode to Hobbes_, iv. 7: "Till unknown regions it descries."

40. _A fearful joy_. Wakefield quotes _Matt._ xxviii. 8 and _Psalms_ ii. 11. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 513:

"Obstupuit simul ipse simul perculsus Achates
Laetitiaque metuque."

See also _Lear_, v. 3: "'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief."

44. Cf. Pope, _Eloisa_, 209: "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind;" and _Essay on Man_, iv. 168: "The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy."

45. _Buxom_. Used here in its modern sense. It originally meant pliant, flexible, yielding (from A. S. _búgan_, to bow); then, gay, frolicsome, lively; and at last it became associated with the "cheerful comeliness" of vigorous health. Chaucer has "buxom to ther lawe," and Spenser (_State of Ireland_), "more tractable and buxome to his government." Cf. also _F. Q._ i. 11, 37: "the buxome aire;" an expression which Milton uses twice (_P. L._ ii. 842, v. 270). In _L'Allegro_, 24: "So buxom, blithe, and debonaire;" the only other instance in which he uses the word, it means sprightly or "free" (as in "Come thou goddess, fair and free," a few lines before). Cf. Shakes. _Pericles_, i. prologue:

"So buxom, blithe, and full of face,
As heaven had lent her all his grace."

The word occurs nowhere else in Shakes. except _Hen. V._ iii. 6: "Of buxom valour;" that is, lively valour.

Dr. Johnson appears to have had in mind the original meaning of _buxom_ in his comment on this passage: "His epithet _buxom health_ is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word."

47. _Lively cheer_. Cf. Spenser, _Shep. Kal._ Apr.: "In either cheeke depeincten lively chere;" Milton, _Ps._ lxxxiv. 27: "With joy and gladsome cheer."

49. Wakefield quotes Milton, _P. L._ v. 3:

"When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep
Was airy light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland."

51. _Regardless of their doom_. Collins, in the _first manuscript_ of his _Ode on the Death of Col. Ross_, has

"E'en now, regardful of his doom,
Applauding Honour haunts his tomb."[2]

[Footnote 2: Mitford gives the first line as "E'en now, _regardless_ of his doom;" and just below, on verse 61, he makes the line from Pope read, "The fury Passions from that _flood_ began." We have verified his quotations as far as possible, and have corrected scores of errors in them. Quite likely there are some errors in those we have not been able to verify.]

55. _Yet see_, etc. Mitford cites Broome, _Ode on Melancholy_:

"While round stern ministers of fate,
Pain and Disease and Sorrow, wait;"

and Otway, _Alcibiades_, v. 2: "Then enter, ye grim ministers of fate." See also _Progress of Poesy_, ii. 1: "Man's feeble race," etc.

59. _Murtherous_. The obsolete spelling of _murderous_, still used in Gray's time.

61. _The fury Passions_. The passions, fierce and cruel as the mythical Furies. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, iii. 167: "The fury Passions from that blood began."

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. _Othello_, 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 passage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, _Æn._ 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 fashion 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 tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos 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."

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 snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." The title-page of the volume is as follows:

ODES
BY
MR. GRAY.
[Greek: PHÔNANTA 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 nobody 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 titles 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, nobody 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 "Æolian lyre" meant the Æolian harp. Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled 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 passages of _The Bard_, he says that they "will give as much pleasure to those who relish this species of composition as anything that has hitherto 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: strophê] (strophe), [Greek: antistrophê] (antistrophe), and [Greek: epôdos] (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: orchêstra] (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).

1. _Awake, Æolian lyre_. The blunder of the Critical Reviewers who supposed the "harp of Æolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpê, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidôn pnoai aulôn], Æolian song, Æolian strings, the breath of the Æolian 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 lustre 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 passions."

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;" also Virgil, _Geo._ i. 96: "Flava Ceres;" and Homer, _Il._ v. 499: [Greek: xanthê Dêmêtêr].

10. _Rolling_. Spelled "rowling" in the 1st and other early editions.

_Amain_. Cf. _Lycidas_, 111: "The golden opes, the iron shuts amain;" _P. L._ ii. 165: "when we fled amain," etc. Also Shakes. _Temp._ iv. 1: "Her peacocks fly amain," etc. The word means literally _with main_ (which we still use in "might and main"), that is, with force or strength. Cf. Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 8: "Immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore."

11. The first MS. reading was, "With torrent rapture see it pour."

12. Cf. Dryden, _Virgil's Geo._ i.: "And rocks the bellowing voice of boiling seas resound;" Pope, _Iliad_: "Rocks rebellow to the roar."

13. "Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar" (Gray).

14. _Solemn-breathing airs_. Cf. _Comus_, 555: "a soft and solemn-breathing sound."

15. _Enchanting shell_. That is, lyre; alluding to the myth of the origin of the instrument, which Mercury was said to have made from the shell of a tortoise. Cf. Collins, _Passions_, 3: "The Passions oft, to hear her shell," etc.

17. _On Thracia's hills_. Thrace was one of the chief seats of the worship of Mars. Cf. Ovid, _Ars Am._ ii. 588: "Mars Thracen occupat." See also Virgil, _Æn._ iii. 35, etc.

19. _His thirsty lance_. Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ i. 5, 15: "his thristy [thirsty] blade."

20. Gray says, "This is a weak imitation of some beautiful lines in the same ode;" that is, in "the first Pythian of Pindar," referred to in the note on 13. The passage is an address to the lyre, and is translated by Wakefield thus:

"On Jove's imperial rod the king of birds
Drops down his flagging wings; thy thrilling sounds
Soothe his fierce beak, and pour a sable cloud
Of slumber on his eyelids: up he lifts
His flexile back, shot by thy piercing darts.
Mars smooths his rugged brow, and nerveless drops
His lance, relenting at the choral song."

21. _The feather'd king_. Cf. Shakes. _Phoenix and Turtle_:

"Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king."

23. _Dark clouds_. The first reading of MS. was "black clouds."

24. _The terror_. This is the reading of the first ed. and also of that of 1768. Most of the modern eds. have "terrors."

25. "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body" (Gray).

26. _Temper'd_. Modulated, "set." Cf. _Lycidas_, 33: "Tempered to the oaten flute;" Fletcher, _Purple Island_: "Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay," etc.

27. _O'er Idalia's velvet-green_. _Idalia_ appears to be used for _Idalium_, which was a town in Cyprus, and a favourite seat of Venus, who was sometimes called _Idalia_. Pope likewise uses _Idalia_ for the place, in his _First Pastoral_, 65: "Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's groves."

Dr. Johnson finds fault with _velvet-green_, apparently supposing it to be a compound of Gray's own making. But Young had used it in his _Love of Fame_: "She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet-green." It is also among the expressions of Pope which are ridiculed in the _Alexandriad_.

29. _Cytherea_ was a name of Venus, derived from _Cythera_, an island in the Ægean Sea, one of the favourite residences of Aphrodite, or Venus. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 680: "super alta Cythera Aut super Idalium, sacrata sede," etc.

30. _With antic Sports_. This is the reading of the 1st ed. and also of the ed. of 1768. Some eds. have "sport."

_Antic_ is the same word as _antique_. The association between what is old or old-fashioned and what is odd, fantastic, or grotesque is obvious enough. Cf. Milton, _Il Pens._ 158: "With antick pillars massy-proof." In _S. A._ 1325 he uses the word as a noun: "Jugglers and dancers, anticks, mummers, mimicks." Shakes. makes it a verb in _A. and C._ ii. 7: "the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd us all."

31. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 835: "In friskful glee Their frolics play."

32, 33. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ v. 580 foll.

35. Gray quotes Homer, _Od._ ix. 265: [Greek: marmarugas thêeito podôn thaumaze de thumôi]. Cf. Catullus's "fulgentem plantam." See also Thomson, _Spring_, 158: "the many-twinkling leaves Of aspin tall."

36. _Slow-melting strains_, etc. Cf. a poem by Barton Booth, published in 1733:

"Now to a slow and melting air she moves,
So like in air, in shape, in mien,
She passes for the Paphian queen;
The Graces all around her play,
The wondering gazers die away;
Whether her easy body bend,
Or her fair bosom heave with sighs;
Whether her graceful arms extend,
Or gently fall, or slowly rise;
Or returning or advancing,
Swimming round, or sidelong glancing,
Strange force of motion that subdues the soul."

37. Cf. Dryden, _Flower and Leaf_, 191: "For wheresoe'er she turn'd her face, they bow'd."

39. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 405: "Incessu patuit dea." The gods were represented as gliding or sailing along without moving their feet.

41. _Purple light of love_. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 590: "lumenque juventae Purpureum." Gray quotes Phrynichus, _apud_ Athenæum:

[Greek: lampei d' epi porphureêisi
pareiêisi phôs erôtos.]

See also Dryden, _Brit. Red._ 133: "and her own purple light."

42. "To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the day by its cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night" (Gray).

43 foll. See on _Eton Coll._ 83. Cf. Horace, _Od._ i. 3, 29-33.

46. _Fond complaint_. Foolish complaint. Cf. Shakes. _M. of V._ iii. 3:

"I do wonder,
Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond
To come abroad with him at his request;"

Milton, _S. A._ 812: "fond and reasonless," etc. This appears to be the original meaning of the word. In Wiclif's Bible. 1 _Cor._ i. 27, we have "the thingis that ben _fonnyd_ of the world." In _Twelfth Night_, ii. 2, the word is used as a verb=dote:

"And I, poor monster, fond as much on him,
As she, mistaken, seems to dote on me."

49. Hurd quotes Cowley:

"Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Asham'd and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere."

Wakefield cites Milton, _Hymn on Nativity_, 233 foll.: "The flocking shadows pale," etc. See also _P. R._ iv. 419-431.

50. _Birds of boding cry_. Cf. Green's _Grotto_: "news the boding night-birds tell."

52. Gray refers to Cowley, _Brutus_:

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow,
Or seen her well-appointed star.
Come marching up the eastern hill afar."

The following variations on 52 and 53 are found in the MS.:

Till fierce Hyperion from afar
Pours on their scatter'd rear, |
Hurls at " flying " | his glittering shafts of war.
" o'er " scatter'd " |
" " " shadowy " |
Till " " " " from far
Hyperion hurls around his, etc.

The accent of _Hyperion_ is properly on the penult, which is long in quantity, but the English poets, with rare exceptions, have thrown it back upon the antepenult. It is thus in the six instances in which Shakes. uses the word: e.g. _Hamlet_, iii. 4: "Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself." The word does not occur in Milton. It is correctly accented by Drummond (of Hawthornden), _Wand. Muses_:

"That Hyperion far beyond his bed
Doth see our lions ramp, our roses spread;"

by West, _Pindar's Ol._ viii. 22:

"Then Hyperion's son, pure fount of day,
Did to his children the strange tale reveal;"

also by Akenside, and by the author of the old play _Fuimus Troes_ (A.D. 1633):

"Blow, gentle Africus,
Play on our poops when Hyperion's son
Shall couch in west."

Hyperion was a Titan, the father of Helios (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), and Eos (the Dawn). He was represented with the attributes of beauty and splendor afterwards ascribed to Apollo. His "glittering shafts" are of course the sunbeams, the "lucida tela diei" of Lucretius. Cf. a very beautiful description of the dawn in Lowell's _Above and Below_:

"'Tis from these heights alone your eyes
The advancing spears of day can see,
Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,
To break your long captivity."

We may quote also his _Vision of Sir Launfal_:

"It seemed the dark castle had gathered all
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall
In his siege of three hundred summers long," etc.

54. Gray's note here is as follows: "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connection with liberty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh fragments; the Lapland and American songs.]" He also quotes Virgil, _Æn._ vi. 796: "Extra anni solisque vias," and Petrarch, _Canz._ 2: "Tutta lontana dal camin del sole." Cf. also Dryden, _Thren. August._ 353: "Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway;" _Ann. Mirab._ st. 160: "Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's highway;" _Brit. Red._: "Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;" also Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 102: "Far as the solar walk and milky way."

56. _Twilight gloom_. Wakefield quotes Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 188: "The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

57. Wakefield says, "It almost chills one to read this verse." The MS. variations are "buried native's" and "chill abode."

60. _Repeat_ [_their chiefs_, etc.]. Sing of them again and again.

61. _In loose numbers_, etc. Cf. Milton, _L'All._ 133:

"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild;"

and Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 11:

"numerisque fertur
Lege solutis."

62. _Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs_. Cf. _P. L._ ix. 1115:

"Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feather'd cincture."

64. _Glory pursue_. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton compares Homer, _Il._ v. 774:

[Greek: hêchi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton êde Skamandros.]

Dugald Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) says: "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression."

65. _Freedom's holy flame_. Cf. Akenside, _Pleas. of Imag._ i. 468: "Love's holy flame."

66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).

_Delphi's steep_. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 178: "the steep of Delphos;" _P. L._ i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and Milton prefer the mediæval form _Delphos_ to the more usual _Delphi_. Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end "in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun" (Smith's _Anc. Geog._).

67. _Isles_, etc. Cf. Byron:

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung," etc.

68. _Ilissus_. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens.

69. _Mæander's amber waves_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iii. 359: "Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" _P. R._ iii. 288: "There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 520: "Purior electro campum petit amnis." Callimachus (_Cer._ 29) has [Greek: alektrinon hudôr].

70. Ovid, _Met._ viii. 162, describes the Mæander thus:

"Non secus ac liquidis Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis
Ludit, et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque."

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius (_Geo._ iii. 15):

--"tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat
Mincius."

"The first great metropolis of Hellenic intellectual life was Miletus on the Mæander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, Cadmus, Hecatæus, etc., were all Milesians" (Hales).

71 foll. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 181:

"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent:" etc.

75. _Hallowed fountain_. Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ i. 53: "fontes sacros."

76. The MS. has "Murmur'd a celestial sound."

80. _Vice that revels in her chains_. In his _Ode for Music_, 6, Gray has "Servitude that hugs her chain."

81. Hales quotes Collins, _Ode to Simplicity_:

"While Rome could none esteem
But Virtue's patriot theme,
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band;
But staid to sing alone
To one distinguish'd throne,
And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land."

84. _Nature's darling_. "Shakespeare" (Gray). Cf. Cleveland, _Poems_:

"Here lies within this stony shade
Nature's darling; whom she made
Her fairest model, her brief story,
In him heaping all her glory."

On _green lap_, cf. Milton, _Song on May Morning_:

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

85. _Lucid Avon_. Cf. Seneca, _Thyest._ 129: "gelido flumine lucidus Alpheos."

86. _The mighty mother_. That is, Nature. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, i. 1, uses the same expression in a satirical way:

"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kings,
I sing."

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