Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 20

123. Cf. K. Philips: "Still shew'd how much the good outshone the great."

We append, as a curiosity of criticism, Dr. Johnson's comments on this ode, from his _Lives of the Poets_. The Life of Gray has been called "the worst in the series," and perhaps this is the worst part of it:[4]

"My process has now brought me to the _wonderful_ 'Wonder of Wonders,' the two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common-sense at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of 'The Progress of Poetry.'

"Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of spreading sound and running water. A 'stream of music' may be allowed; but where does 'music,' however 'smooth and strong,' after having visited the 'verdant vales, roll down the steep amain,' so as that 'rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar?' If this be said of music, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose.

"The second stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his commonplaces.

"To the third it may likewise be objected that it is drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily a.s.similated to real life. Idalia's 'velvet-green' has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature enn.o.bles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. 'Many-twinkling' was formerly censured as not a.n.a.logical; we may say 'many-spotted,' but scarcely 'many-spotting.' This stanza, however, has something pleasing.

"Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion; the second describes well enough the universal prevalence of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not arise from the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are not the residences of 'Glory and generous Shame.' But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing that I can forgive him who resolves to think it true.

"The third stanza sounds big with 'Delphi,' and 'aegean,' and 'Ilissus,' and 'Maeander,' and with 'hallowed fountains,' and 'solemn sound;' but in all Gray's odes there is a kind of c.u.mbrous splendour which we wish away. His position is at last false: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school of poetry, Italy was overrun by 'tyrant power' and 'coward vice;' nor was our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts.

"Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakespeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is not said happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the genuine.

"His account of Milton's blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in the formation of his poem, a supposition surely allowable, is poetically true and happily imagined. But the _car_ of Dryden, with his _two coursers_, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be placed."

[Footnote 4: Sir James Mackintosh well says of Johnson's criticisms: "Wherever understanding alone is sufficient for poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are generally right. But the beauties of poetry must be _felt_ before their causes are investigated. There is a poetical sensibility, which in the progress of the mind becomes as distinct a power as a musical ear or a picturesque eye. Without a considerable degree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a man of the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry as it is for a blind man to speak of colours. To adopt the warmest sentiments of poetry, to realize its boldest imagery, to yield to every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of fancy, to retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry, he was a sort of Free-thinker. He suspected the refined of affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort of criticism was accordingly the n.o.ble panegyric on Dryden."

W. H. Prescott, the historian, also remarks that Johnson, as a critic, "was certainly deficient in sensibility to the more delicate, the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He a.n.a.lyzes verse in the cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma which const.i.tuted its princ.i.p.al charm escapes in the decomposition. By this kind of process, some of the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of Collins, and of Milton too, are rendered sufficiently vapid."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PINDAR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARD I.]

THE BARD.

"This 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" (Gray).

The original argument of the ode, as Gray had set it down in his commonplace-book, was as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the n.o.ble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its feet."

Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of _The Bard_ is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the ma.s.sacre of the bards; to convince him that neither his power nor situation could save him from the natural and necessary consequences of his guilt; that not even the virtues which he possessed could atone for the vices with which they were accompanied:

'Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail, Nor e'en thy _virtues_, tyrant, shall avail.'

This is the real tendency of the poem; and well worthy it was of being adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images and beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral feeling increases as we approach the close; how the poem rises in dignity; and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject ascends. The Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his departed brethren and his desolate country. This despondence, however, has given way to emotions of a n.o.bler and more exalted nature. What can be more magnificent than the vision which opens before him to display the triumph of justice and the final glory of his cause? And it may be added, what can be more forcible or emphatic than the language in which it is conveyed?

'But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height, Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!

_Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!_'

The fine apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin completes the picture of exultation:

'Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear; They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.'

The triumph of justice, therefore, is now complete. The vanquished has risen superior to his conqueror, and the reader closes the poem with feelings of content and satisfaction. He has seen the Bard uplifted both by a divine energy and by the natural superiority of virtue; and the conqueror has shrunk into a creature of hatred and abhorrence:

'Be thine despair, and sceptred care; To triumph, and to die, are mine.'"

With regard to the _obscurity_ of the poem, the same writer remarks that "it is such only as of necessity arises from the plan and conduct of a prophecy." "In the prophetic poem," he adds, "one point of history alone is told, and the rest is to be acquired previously by the reader; as in the contemplation of an historical picture, which commands only one moment of time, our memory must supply us with the necessary links of knowledge; and that point of time selected by the painter must be ill.u.s.trated by the spectator's knowledge of the past or future, of the cause or the consequences."

He refers, for corroboration of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says: "I know no style to which darkness of a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical: many reasons might be a.s.signed which render it improper that prophecy should be perfectly understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we are certain that a prediction may be very dark before the accomplishment, and yet so plain afterwards as scarcely to admit a doubt in regard to the events suggested. It does not belong to critics to give laws to prophets, nor does it fall within the confines of any human art to lay down rules for a species of composition so far above art. Thus far, however, we may warrantably observe, that when the prophetic style is imitated in poetry, the piece ought, as much as possible, to possess the character above mentioned. This character, in my opinion, is possessed in a very eminent degree by Mr. Gray's ode called _The Bard_. It is all darkness to one who knows nothing of the English history posterior to the reign of Edward the First, and all light to one who is acquainted with that history. But this is a kind of writing whose peculiarities can scarcely be considered as exceptions from ordinary rules."

Farther on in the same essay, Mitford remarks: "The skill of Gray is, I think, eminently shown in the superior distinctness with which he has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be accomplished; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper shadowings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of Edward the Second. In that the Bard has pointed out the very night in which he is to be destroyed; has named the river that flowed around his prison, and the castle that was the scene of his sufferings:

'Mark the _year_, and mark the _night_, When _Severn_ shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king.'

How different is the imagery when Richard the Second is described; and how indistinctly is the luxurious monarch marked out in the form of the morning, and his country in the figure of the vessel!

'The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born?

Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn,' etc.

The last prophecy is that of the civil wars, and of the death of the two young princes. No place, no name is now noted: and all is seen through the dimness of figurative expression:

'Above, below, the rose of snow, Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant gore Wallows beneath the th.o.r.n.y shade.'"

Hales remarks: "It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the tradition on which _The Bard_ is founded is wholly groundless. Edward I. never did ma.s.sacre Welsh bards. Their name is legion in the beginning of the 14th century. Miss Williams, the latest historian of Wales, does not even mention the old story."[1]

[Footnote 1: The _Sat.u.r.day Review_, for June 19, 1875, in the article from which we have elsewhere quoted (p. 79, foot-note), refers to this point as follows:

"Gray was one of the first writers to show that earlier parts of English history were not only worth attending to, but were capable of poetic treatment. We can almost forgive him for dressing up in his splendid verse a foul and baseless calumny against Edward the First, when we remember that to most of Gray's contemporaries Edward the First must have seemed a person almost mythical, a benighted Popish savage, of whom there was very little to know, and that little hardly worth knowing. Our feeling towards Gray in this matter is much the same as our feeling towards Mitford in the matter of Greek history.

We are angry with Mitford for misrepresenting Demosthenes and a crowd of other Athenian worthies, but we do not forget that he was the first to deal with Demosthenes and his fellows, neither as mere names nor as demi-G.o.ds, but as real living men like ourselves. It was a pity to misrepresent Demosthenes, but even the misrepresentation was something; it showed that Demosthenes could be made the subject of human feeling one way or another. It is unpleasant to hear the King whose praise it was that

'Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus,'

spoken of as 'ruthless,' and the rest of it. But Gray at least felt that Edward was a real man, while to most of his contemporaries he could have been little more than 'the figure of an old Gothic king,'

such as Sir Roger de Coverley looked when he sat in Edward's own chair."]

1. A good example of alliteration.

2. Cf. Shakes. _K. John_, iv. 2: "and vast confusion waits."

4. Gray quotes _K. John_, v. 1: "Mocking the air with colours idly spread."

5. "The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion" (Gray).

Cf. Robert of Gloucester: "With helm and hauberk;" and Dryden, _Pal.

and Arc._ iii. 603: "Hauberks and helms are hewed with many a wound."