Select Poems Of Thomas Gray Part 7

"Forgive, ye proud, th' involuntary fault, If memory to these no trophies raise."

In 12th stanza, "Hands that the _reins_ of empire," etc.

In 13th stanza, "Chill Penury _depress'd_," etc.

The 15th stanza reads thus:

"Some village Cato, who, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest, Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood."[4]

[Footnote 4: The _Sat.u.r.day Review_ for June 19, 1875, has a long article on the change made by Gray in this stanza, ent.i.tled, "A Lesson from Gray's Elegy," from which we cull the following paragraphs:

"Gray, having first of all put down the names of three Romans as ill.u.s.trations of his meaning, afterwards deliberately struck them out and put the names of three Englishmen instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the age, a change with which Gray himself had a good deal to do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, and Caesar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, seems to us so obviously a change for the better that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would have thought the matter equally clear. We suspect that to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring novelty to draw ill.u.s.trations from English history, especially from parts of English history which, it must be remembered, were then a great deal more recent than they are now. To be sure, in choosing English ill.u.s.trations, a poet of Gray's time was in rather a hard strait. If he chose ill.u.s.trations from the century or two before his own time, he could only choose names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent politics. If, in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had drawn ill.u.s.trations from earlier times of English history, he would have found but few people in his day likely to understand him....

"The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general improvement in taste. He wrote first according to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his own better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to the fact that they were Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. But there is another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who would have regretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Caesar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Caesar. The 'cla.s.sic' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Pardonable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when 'cla.s.sic' studies and objects had the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly fashion."]

In 18th stanza, "Or _crown_ the shrine," etc.

After this stanza, the MS. has the following four stanzas, now omitted:

"The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow, Exalt the brave, and idolize success; But more to innocence their safety owe Than Pow'r, or Genius, e'er conspir'd to bless.

"And thou who, mindful of the unhonour'd Dead, Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, By night and lonely contemplation led To wander in the gloomy walks of fate:

"Hark! how the sacred Calm, that breathes around, Bids every fierce tumultuous pa.s.sion cease; In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground A grateful earnest of eternal peace.

"No more, with reason and thyself at strife, Give anxious cares and endless wishes room; But through the cool sequester'd vale of life Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom."[5]

[Footnote 5: We follow Mason (ed. 1778) in the text of these stanzas.

The _North American Review_ has "Power _and_ Genius" in the first, and "_linger_ in the _lonely_ walks" in the second.]

The second of these stanzas has been remodelled and used as the 24th of the present version. Mason thought that there was a pathetic melancholy in all four which claimed preservation. The third he considered equal to any in the whole _Elegy_. The poem was originally intended to end here, the introduction of "the h.o.a.ry-headed swain"

being a happy after-thought.

In the 19th stanza, the MS. has "never _learn'd_ to stray."

In the 21st stanza, "fame and _epitaph_," etc.

In the 23d stanza, the last line reads,

"And buried ashes glow with social fires."

"Social" subsequently became "wonted," and other changes were made (see p. 74, foot-note) before the line took its present form.

The 24th stanza reads,

"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more, By sympathetic musings here delay'd, With vain, though kind inquiry shall explore Thy once-lov'd haunt, this long-deserted shade."[6]

[Footnote 6: Mitford (Eton ed.) gives "sympathizing" in the second line, and for the last,

"Thy ever loved haunt--this long deserted shade."

The latter is obviously wrong (Gray was incapable of such metre), and the former is probably wrong also.]

The last line of the 25th stanza reads,

"On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."

Then comes the following stanza, afterwards omitted:

"Him have we seen the greenwood side along, While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song, With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."[7]

Mason remarked: "I rather wonder that he rejected this stanza, as it not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which charms us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but also completes the account of his whole day; whereas, this evening scene being omitted, we have only his morning walk, and his noontide repose."

[Footnote 7: Here also we follow Mason; the _North American Review_ reads "our _labours_ done."]

The first line of the 27th stanza reads,

"With gestures quaint, now smiling as in scorn."

After the 29th stanza, and before the Epitaph, the MS. contains the following omitted stanza:

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are frequent violets found; The robin loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

This--with two or three verbal changes only[8]--was inserted in all the editions up to 1753, when it was dropped. The omission was not made from any objection to the stanza in itself, but simply because it was too long a parenthesis in this place; on the principle which he states in a letter to Dr. Beattie: "As to description, I have always thought that it made the most graceful ornament of poetry, but never ought to make the subject." The part was sacrificed for the good of the whole. Mason very justly remarked that "the lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation."

[Footnote 8: See next page. The writer in the _North American Review_ is our only authority for the stanza as given above. He appears to have had the photographic reproduction of the Wrightson MS., but we cannot vouch for the accuracy of his transcripts from it.]

The first line of the 31st stanza has "and his _heart_ sincere."

The 32d and last stanza is as follows:

"No farther seek his merits to disclose, Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode-- (His frailties there in trembling hope repose); The bosom of his Father and his G.o.d."[9]

[Footnote 9: The above are all the variations from the present text in the Wrightson MS. which are noted by the authorities on whom we have depended; but we suspect that the following readings, mentioned by Mitford as in the MS., belong to _that_ MS., as they are _not_ found in the other: in the 7th stanza, "sickles" for "sickle;" in 18th, "shrines" for "shrine." Two others (in stanzas 9th and 27th) are referred to in our account of the Pembroke MS. below.]

The Pembroke MS. has the following variations from the present version:

In the 1st stanza, "wind" for "winds."

2d stanza, "_Or_ drowsy," etc.

5th stanza, "_and_ the ecchoing horn."

6th stanza, "_Nor_ climb his knees."

9th stanza, "_Awaits_ alike." Probably this is also the reading of the Wrightson MS. Mitford gives it as noted by Mason, and it is retained by Gray in the ed. of 1768.

The 10th stanza begins,