Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around, No more, with reason and thyself at strife, But through the cool sequester'd vale of life And here the poem was originally intended to conclude, before the happy idea of the hoary-headed swain, &c. suggested itself to him. I cannot help hinting to the reader, that I think thethird of these rejected stanzas equal to any in the whole Elegy. 4. Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires. L. 92. IMITATION. Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville. 1 Petrarch. Son. 169. G. VARIATION. Awake and faithful to her wonted fires. Thus it stood in the first and some following editions, and I think rather better; for the authority of Petrarch does not destroy the appearance of quaintness in the other: the thought, however, is rather obscurely expressed in both readings. He means to say, in plain prose, that we wish to be remembered by our friends after our death in the same manner as when alive we wished to be remembered by them in our absence: this would be expressed clearer, if the metaphorical term fires was rejected, and the line run thus: Awake and faithful to her first desires. I do not put this alteration down for the idle vanity of aiming to amend the passage, but purely to explain it. 5. To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. L. 100. VARIATION. On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn. After which, in his first manuscript, followed this stanza; Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 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 noon-tide repose. 6. Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. L. 116. Between this line and the Epitaph, Mr. Gray originally inserted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some of the first editions, but afterward omitted; because he thought (and in my opinion very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines however are, in themselves, exquisitely fine, and demand preservation. There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found; IMITATION. -paventosa speme. Petrarch. Son. 114. G. NOT IN MR. MASON'S EDITION. VERSES ON THE MARRIAGE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS IGNARE nostrûm mentes, et inertia corda, Cujus in adventum jam nunc tria regua secundos THO. GRAY, Pett. Coll. SONG.* THYRSIS, when he left me, swore 'Twas the nightingale that sung! * This was written, at the request of Miss Speed, to an old air of Geminiani: the thought from the French. Idle notes! untimely green! THE INQUIRY.* WITH Beauty, with Pleasure surrounded, to languish- Words that steal from my tongue, by no meaning connected! TOPHET: AN EPIGRAM. [Mr. Etough,† of Cambridge University, was a person as remarkable for the eccentricities of his character, as for his personal appearance. A Mr. Tyson, of Bene't College, made an etching of his head, and presented it to Mr. Gray, who wrote under it the following lines.] THUS Tophet looked; so grinned the brawling fiend, IMPROMPTU, Suggested by a View, in 1766, of the Seat and Ruins of a deceased OLD, and abandon'd by each venal friend, To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend * These amatory lines having been found among the MSS. of Gray, but bearing no title, we have ventured, for the sake of uniformity in this volume, to prefix the above. The lines themselves will be found in a note in the second volume of Warton's Edition of Pope's Works. † Some information respecting this gentleman (who was Rector of Therfield, Herts, and of Colmworth, Bedfordshire) will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LVI. p. 25. 281. |