Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 14

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 a.s.sociations 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 circ.u.m 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ETON COLLEGE.]

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 pa.s.ses 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sions 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 circ.u.mstantial, 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 c.u.mque dabit, lucro Appone.'

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

'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 woodc.o.c.ks haunt the watery glade."