107. [What part of the sentence is woeful here ?]

108. hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way.
111. [To what noun does another refer?]

114. church-way path. See Mids. N. Dream, V. i. 386:

"Now it is the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide

Every one lets forth his sprite

In the church-way paths to glide."

The phrase may mean the path leading church-way or church-ward. Or church-way may be a corruption of church-hay church-yard. For hay, when it became obsolete, the popular mind, which is always etymologizing in its way (see note to Hymn. Nat. 60.), substituted a word it knew. "Chyrche-haye occurs in an early MS. quoted in Prompt. Parv. p. 221, and was in use in the seventeenth century, as appears from Lhuyd's MS. additions to Ray in Mus. Ashmol." (Halliwell's Archaic and Prov. Dict.). Hay is the Oldest Eng. haga, "1. a hedge, haw. 2. what is hedged in, a garden, field." (Bosworth). For this word in place-names, see Taylor's Words and Places. "In the Seven Dayes, 2625, the chirche-hawe is spoken of." (Way's Prompt. Parv. s. v. chyrche yarde).

115. for thou canst read. Reading was not such a very common accomplishment then that it could be taken for granted. When will it be so everywhere? All things considered, the present age is far from having any right to vaunt itself over that of Gray.

the lay. This is an odd use of the word lay. The men of the latter part of the 17th, and of the greater part of the 18th century, were very ignorant of the older forms, and the older vocabulary of the language; else, how could the Rowley Poems have been believed in for one second?

116. Here original copy contained this stanza:

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

118. [What part of the sentence is a youth ?]

119. Certainly Gray is thinking of himself in these lines, to some extent at least. See the Memoir of him.

123. Mitford quotes from Lucretius, ii. 27:

"Has lacrimas memori quas ictus amore

Fundo, quod possum.”

THE PROGRESS OF POESY AND THE BARD.

INTRODUCTION.

The Progress of Poesy, as appears from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was finished all but a few lines at the end in 1755. It was published along with the Bard in 1757.

Both Odes met with a very cold welcome. "Even my friends," writes Gray, in a letter to Hurd, "tell me that they do not succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on this head. In short I have heard of nobody but an actor [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton] that profess [Gray's grammar is often worse than dubious] 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 there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about." It says but little for the intelligence of the general reader of George II.'s time that the common charge against these poems was their utter obscurity. It would seem that

such leading facts of English History as Gray deals with in the Bard were then by no means generally known. A writer in the Critical Review thought that the Æolian lyre meant the Æolian harp. Coleman (the elder) and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion. At a later time Gray was persuaded to add elucidatory notes.

It can scarcely be said that these Odes have ever become popular, though they have certainly taken a permanent place in English Literature. Their artificiality is too manifest; there is felt but little of that Pindaric fervour by which they profess to be inspired. A poem should rise noiselessly, like Solomon's temple; "neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron" should be heard while it is "in building;" but in these poems one's ear cannot but catch those mechanical sounds, and they grate upon it. Still, these works have their beauties, or they would long since have perished. They are good in parts rather than as wholes. The language, if often somewhat stiff and frigid, is sometimes highly graceful and felicitous. The metre is here and there full of life and beauty. The various figures and groups are not unfrequently portrayed with great force and vigour. In fact one may be sensible everywhere of the hand of a master, though it may be doubted whether that hand is always wisely and congenially employed.

The metre of these Odes is constructed on Greek models. It is not uniform, but symmetrical. Milton's great Ode or Hymn is written in stanzas, as are Horace's Odes; most of the Odes of Cowley, those of Dryden, Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood, Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, are written in an irregular metre, varying from time to time with the thought, grave or light according as the sense is the one or the other; these Odes of Gray's are written in a perfectly regular metre, not in uniform stanzas but in uniform groups of stanzas. The nine stanzas of each Ode form three uniform groups. A slight examination will show that the 1st, 4th, and 7th stanzas are exactly inter-correspondent; so the 2nd, 5th, and 8th, and so the remaining three. The technical Greek names for these three parts were στρоon, άvτιστρоon, and enwdós- 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 opxnσTρá 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. Does anyone really enjoy it in itself, apart from the pleasure he may receive from his admiration. of Gray's skill in construction and imitation? Does his ear hear it, or only his eye perceive: it? In other words, was not Gray's labour, as far as pure metrical pleasure is concerned,, wasted?

For similar historical sketches with that given in the Progress of Poesy see Collins' Ode to Simplicity, Cowper's Table Talk, Keats' Sleep and Poetry.

It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the tradition on which The Bard is founded is wholly groundless. Edward I. never did massacre 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.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

82. 1. Eolian lyre. Eolia or Eolis extended along the coast of Asia Minor from the Troad to the river Hermus. The people from whom this strip of coast derived its name, was one of the chief branches of the Hellenic race. They are said to have been originally settled in Thessaly and thence to have spread over various parts of Greece and across the Ægean to

Lesbos and to the mainland.

It would seem that it was amongst their Asiatic colonies that Hellenic genius first found artistic expression. Smyrna, one of the places, which severally claimed to be the birthplace of Homer, was originally an Æolian town, though subsequently possessed by Ionians. Alcæus and Sappho were natives of Lesbos. Hence one of the chief Greek rhythms, or harmonies, was called Æolian. See Pindar's Aioλnïdı poλmą (Ol. i. 102), ev Aioxideooi xopdaîs (Pyth. ii. 69, ed. Donaldson). It is with reference to these Pindaric. phrases that Gray uses the word; see his own note. He calls this ode a Pindaric Ode. So Æolian lyre lyre of Pindar, or lyre such as Pindar struck. [Perhaps the young reader should be cautioned against confounding the Eolian lyre here with the Eolian harp often heard of elsewhere, a blunder made by one of the first "reviewers" of this poem. The Æolian of the latter phrase is derived from Æolus the mythical wind-god, and wind-blown, wind-played. "The invention of this instrument is ascribed to Kircher, 1653; but it was known at an earlier period," (Haydn). See Thomson's Castle of Indolence; Collins' Ode on the Death of Mr Thompson, and Cowper's Expostulation.]

Comp. the beginning of one of Cowley's pieces (in the Golden Treasury):

66 'Awake, awake, my lyre!

And tell thy silent master's humble tale," &c.

3. Helicon. See note to Lycid. 15.

9. Ceres' golden reign. Comp. Virgil's Flava Ceres (Georg. i. 96), Hōmer's έave Anuntne, Iliad, v. 499:

"

σε ὡς δ ̓ ἄνεμος ἄχνας φορέει ἱερὰς κατ ̓ ἀλωὰς

ἀνδρῶν λικμώντων, ὅτε τε ξανθὴ Δημήτηρ

κρίνῃ ἐπειγομένων ἀνέμων καρπόν τε καὶ ἄχνας” κ.τ.λ.

[What is the meaning of reign here?]

10. amain. See Lycid. 111.

See Hor. Od. IV. ii. 8.

83. 12. [What is the force of to here?]

13.

"The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar," (Gray). 14. [Explain solemn breathing.] See Comus, 555.

15. [What is the power of the here?]

sullen is radically connected with sole, solitary, &c.

17. Ares was believed to have his abiding-place in Thrace. [Where exactly was Thrace?] In that country and in Scythia were the chief seats of his worship. Horace speaks of "bello furiosa Thrace," (Od. II. xvi. 5). See also Æn. iii. 35.

18. curb is closely connected with curve. [Can you connect the two words in meaning ?}. 20. [To what subst, does perching refer?]

See Pind. Pyth. i. 9-18:

“ εὕδει δ ̓ ἀνὰ σκάπτῳ Διὸς αἰετός ὠκεῖαν πτέρυγ ̓ ἀμφοτέρωθεν χαλάξαις

ἀρχὸς οἰωνῶν, κελαινώπιν δ' ἐπὶ οἱ νεφέλαν

αγκύλῳ κρατί, γλεφάρων αδὺ κλαΐστρον, κατέχευας· ὁ δὲ κνώσσων

ὑγρὸν νῶτον αἰωρεῖ, τεαῖς

ῥιπαῖσι κατασχόμενος.”

22. [What part of the sentence is with ruffled plumes?]

26. [Explain tempered.] See Lycid. 32.

27. Gray seems to use Idalia here for Idalium, for that was the name of the town in Cyprus. Idalia was a title given to Aphrodite because of her worship in that town. Comp. her titles of Erycina, Cytheræa, and Cythereis.

velvet-green occurs in Pope. Johnson censures the phrase, apparently believing it of Gray's invention.

30. antic. See Sams. Agon. 1325, when the word is used as a personal substantive. In Faerie Queene, II. iii. 27, it is used to denote "odd imagery and devices," (Nares). Shak

spere uses it as a verb in Ant. and Cleop. II. vii. 132. For the meaning, what is old and old fashioned is liable to be thought odd, grotesque, fantastic. Milton has the word in its primitive sense in Il Pens. 158.

31. Frisk, brisk, fresco, fresh, are all closely connected.

frolic. See note to L'Alleg. 18.

35. Gray quotes Hom. Od. ix. 265:

66 μαρμαρυγὰς θηεῖτο ποδῶν· θαύμαζε δὲ θυμῷ.”

Comp. Catullus' "fulgentem. . . plantam” (lxviii. 70). 38. [What is meant by sublime here?]

41. the purple light of love. See Æn. i. 594:

Gray quotes from Phrynichus, the Tragedian, apud Athenæum :

birds of boding cry what the Latin augurs called oscines. See Hor. Od. III. xxvii. 11. Cic. ad Fam. VI. vi. 7: "Non igitur ex alitis involatu, nec e cantu sinistro oscinis, ut in nostra disciplina est, nec ex tripudiis sollistimis aut soniviis tibi auguror; sed habeo alia signa quæ observem."

52. Gray refers to Cowley, Brutus, an Ode:

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow,

Or seen her well-appointed star

Come marching up the eastern hill afar."

53. Hyperion. Properly the strong accent of this word is upon the penult (see the Latin and the Greek poets, passim); but the English poets, almost universally, throw it back to the ante-penult, as does Gray here (see Hamlet, I. ii. 140, &c.). Classical names were much mis-shapen and mis-pronounced before the Revival of Learning, as it is called; and some of these Romantic irregularities still prevailed even when Classical usages were better known. See the scarcely recognizable Classical names in Chaucer's House of Fame, &c. &c. See note on Delphos in Hymn Nat. 178; add Shakspere's Postúmus, Andrónicus.

glitt ring shafts of war. Comp. Lucretius' tela diei, i. 148, &c.

60. [What is meant by repeating a chief?]

62. feather-cinctur'd="girt with feather'd cincture" (Par. Lost, ix. 1116).

[Has loves an abstract or a concrete signification here? Comp. sable loves, Pope's W. For. 410.]

64. pursue. Observe this use of the plural with the first of a series of subjects. Warton compares Hom. I. v. 774:

44

" ήχι ροάς Σιμόεις συμβάλλετον ἠδὲ Σκάμανδρος.”

66. See Collins' Ode to Simplicity (by which he seems to mean Poetic Truth and Purity):

66

'By old Cephisus deep

Who spread his wavy sweep

In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat,

On whose enamel'd side

When holy Freedom died

No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet."

66. Delphi's steep. See Hymn Nat. 178 and note.

67. See Byron's The Isles of Greece, &c.

68. The Ilissus, rising on the north slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens. See Atlas and Class. Dict. Socrates and Phædrus are represented in the dialogue called after the latter as strolling up its channel, then as now often quite dry. “ Δεῦρ' έκτραπόμενοι,” says Socrates, “κατὰ τὸν Ιλισσὸν ἴωμεν, εἶτα ὅπου ἂν δόξῃ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καθιζησόμεθα.” (Phædr. Chap. iii.)

69. The first great metropolis of Hellenic intellectual life was Miletus on the Mæander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Cadmus, Hecatæus, &c., were all by birth Milesians. See note to l. 1.

70. The lower course of the Meander lies through a wide plain, where it wanders at will in that remarkable manner which has made it a type of all curving and winding things. See Selden's Illustr. No. 2 of Drayton's Polyolbion: "Intricate turnings, by a transumptive and metonymical kind of speech, are called meanders; for this river did so strangely path itself that the foot seemed to touch the head." Fuller's Worthies, Bedfordshire, apud Richardson: "But this proverb may better be veryfied of Ouse it self in this shire, more mæandrous than Maander, which runneth above eighty miles in eighteen by land."

73. See Hymn Nat. 181-8.

75. hallow'd fountain. See Virg. Ecl. i. 53.

81. See 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."

The vast interval between the Augustan age and the great Florentine period is here quite unrecognized. Virgil died B.C. 19, Dante was born A.D. 1265. For some thousand years of that interval there had prevailed a deep silence of poetry in Italy; in France and certain neighbouring countries the Troubadours and the Trouvères had sung their songs. But that in his note quoted to 1. 82, Gray mentions Dante, it might have been supposed that like Selvaggi in his memorable distich which Dryden imitated ("Three poets in three distant ages born," &c.), he recognised no great genius between the Augustan and the Elizabethan age; comp. Cowper's Table Talk, 556-9. But Gray was a diligent and admiring student of the Tuscan poets.

82. "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." (Gray).

[Of what great countries of Europe is nothing said in this survey? Why is Germany not mentioned?]

85. 83. That is, far from the Sunny South.

84. Nature's darling. See L'Alleg. 133, and note.

85. [Who is the mighty Mother?]

87. the dauntless child. Comp. Horace's

66 non sine dis animosus infans." (Od. III. iv. 20.)

88. Mitford points out that this identical line occurs in Sandys' translation of Ov. Met.

iv. 515. 89. Pencil is used here in its proper sense. "Caudam antiqui penem vocabant," says Cicero writing to Paetus, ex quo est propter similitudinem penicillus." (Ad Fam. ix. 22.) 92-94. [What various plays by Shakspere may Gray have in his mind here?]

95. All Gray's poems show a profound admiration for, and a thorough knowledge of