Chapter 7

Chapter 73,701 wordsPublic domain

83. _The painful family of death_. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 118: "Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, _State of Innocence_, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the whole passage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, _Æn._ vi. 275.

86. _That every labouring sinew strains_. An example of the "correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (_Essay on Criticism_, 371),

"The line too labours, and the words move slow."

90. _Slow-consuming Age_. Cf. Shenstone, _Love and Honour_: "His slow-consuming fires."

95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in _Comus_, 359:

"Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; For grant they be so, while they rest unknown What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?"

97. _Happiness too swiftly flies_. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 66:

"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit."

98. _Thought would destroy their paradise_. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, _Ajax_, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistos bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

99. Cf. Prior, _Ep. to Montague_, st. 9:

"From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise."

and Davenant, _Just Italian_: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it is not safe to know."

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

This Ode, as we learn from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was finished, with the exception of a few lines, in 1755. It was not published until 1757, when it appeared with _The Bard_ in a quarto volume, which was the first issue of Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In one of his letters Walpole writes: "I send you two copies of a very honourable opening of my press--two amazing odes of Mr. Gray. They are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime, consequently I fear a little obscure; the second particularly, by the confinement of the measure and the nature of prophetic vision, is mysterious. I could not persuade him to add more notes." In another letter Walpole says: "I found Gray in town last week; he had brought his two odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." The title-page of the volume is as follows:

ODES BY MR. GRAY. [Greek: PHÔNANTA SUNETOISI]--PINDAR, Olymp, II. PRINTED AT STRAWBERRY-HILL, for R. and J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall. MDCCLVII.

Both Odes were coldly received at first. "Even my friends," writes Gray, in a letter to Hurd, Aug. 25, 1757, "tell me they do not _succeed_, and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In short, I have heard of nobody but an Actor [Garrick] and a Doctor of Divinity [Warburton] that profess 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 that there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about."[1] In a letter to Dr. Wharton, dated Aug. 17, 1757, he says: "I hear we are not at all popular. The great objection is obscurity, nobody knows what we would be at. One man (a Peer) I have been told of, that thinks the last stanza of the 2d Ode relates to Charles the First and Oliver Cromwell; in short, the [Greek: Sunetoi] appear to be still fewer than even I expected." A writer in the _Critical Review_ thought that "Æolian lyre" meant the Æolian harp. Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion. Gray finally had to add explanatory notes, though he intimates that his readers ought not to have needed them.[2]

[Footnote 1: Forster remarks that Gray might have added to the admirers of the Odes "the poor monthly critic of _The Dunciad_"--Oliver Goldsmith, then beginning his London career as a bookseller's hack. In a review of the Odes in the _London Monthly Review_ for Sept., 1757, after citing certain passages of _The Bard_, he says that they "will give as much pleasure to those who relish this species of composition as anything that has hitherto appeared in our language, the odes of Dryden himself not excepted."]

[Footnote 2: In a foot-note he says: "When the author first published this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes; but had too much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty."

In a letter to Beattie, dated Feb. 1, 1768, referring to the new edition of his poems, he says: "As to the notes, I do it out of spite, because the public did not understand the two Odes (which I have called Pindaric), though the first was not very dark, and the second alluded to a few common facts to be found in any sixpenny history of England, by way of question and answer, for the use of children." And in a letter to Walpole, Feb. 25, 1768, he says he has added "certain little Notes, partly from justice (to acknowledge the debt where I had borrowed anything), partly from ill temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward I. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor."

Mr. Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, said that "if the Bard recited his Ode only _once_ to Edward, he was sure he could not understand it." When this was told to Gray, he said, "If he had recited it twenty times, Edward would not have been a bit wiser; but that was no reason why Mr. Fox should not."]

"The metre of these Odes is constructed on Greek models. It is not uniform but symmetrical. The nine stanzas of each ode form three groups. A slight examination will show that the 1st, 4th, and 7th stanzas are exactly inter-correspondent; so the 2d, 5th, and 8th; and so the remaining three. The technical Greek names for these three parts were [Greek: strophê] (strophe), [Greek: antistrophê] (antistrophe), and [Greek: epôdos] (epodos)--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 [Greek: orchêstra] (orchestra), 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" (Hales).

1. _Awake, Æolian lyre_. The blunder of the Critical Reviewers who supposed the "harp of Æolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpê, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidôn pnoai aulôn], Æolian song, Æolian strings, the breath of the Æolian flute."

Cf. Cowley, _Ode of David_: "Awake, awake, my lyre!" Gray himself quotes _Ps._ lvii. 8. The first reading of the line in the MS. was, "Awake, my lyre: my glory, wake." Gray also adds the following note: "The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swollen and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions."

2. _And give to rapture_. The first reading of the MS. was "give to transport."

3. _Helicon's harmonious springs_. In the mountain range of Helicon, in Boeotia, there were two fountains sacred to the Muses, Aganippe and Hippocrene, of which the former was the more famous.

7. Cf. Pope, _Hor. Epist._ ii. 2, 171:

"Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong;"

and _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, 11:

"The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow;"

also Thomson, _Liberty_, ii. 257:

"In thy full language speaking mighty things, Like a clear torrent close, or else diffus'd A broad majestic stream, and rolling on Through all the winding harmony of sound."

9. Cf. Shenstone, _Inscr._: "Verdant vales and fountains bright;" also Virgil, _Geo._ i. 96: "Flava Ceres;" and Homer, _Il._ v. 499: [Greek: xanthê Dêmêtêr].

10. _Rolling_. Spelled "rowling" in the 1st and other early editions.

_Amain_. Cf. _Lycidas_, 111: "The golden opes, the iron shuts amain;" _P. L._ ii. 165: "when we fled amain," etc. Also Shakes. _Temp._ iv. 1: "Her peacocks fly amain," etc. The word means literally _with main_ (which we still use in "might and main"), that is, with force or strength. Cf. Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 8: "Immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore."

11. The first MS. reading was, "With torrent rapture see it pour."

12. Cf. Dryden, _Virgil's Geo._ i.: "And rocks the bellowing voice of boiling seas resound;" Pope, _Iliad_: "Rocks rebellow to the roar."

13. "Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar" (Gray).

14. _Solemn-breathing airs_. Cf. _Comus_, 555: "a soft and solemn-breathing sound."

15. _Enchanting shell_. That is, lyre; alluding to the myth of the origin of the instrument, which Mercury was said to have made from the shell of a tortoise. Cf. Collins, _Passions_, 3: "The Passions oft, to hear her shell," etc.

17. _On Thracia's hills_. Thrace was one of the chief seats of the worship of Mars. Cf. Ovid, _Ars Am._ ii. 588: "Mars Thracen occupat." See also Virgil, _Æn._ iii. 35, etc.

19. _His thirsty lance_. Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ i. 5, 15: "his thristy [thirsty] blade."

20. Gray says, "This is a weak imitation of some beautiful lines in the same ode;" that is, in "the first Pythian of Pindar," referred to in the note on 13. The passage is an address to the lyre, and is translated by Wakefield thus:

"On Jove's imperial rod the king of birds Drops down his flagging wings; thy thrilling sounds Soothe his fierce beak, and pour a sable cloud Of slumber on his eyelids: up he lifts His flexile back, shot by thy piercing darts. Mars smooths his rugged brow, and nerveless drops His lance, relenting at the choral song."

21. _The feather'd king_. Cf. Shakes. _Phoenix and Turtle_:

"Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather'd king."

23. _Dark clouds_. The first reading of MS. was "black clouds."

24. _The terror_. This is the reading of the first ed. and also of that of 1768. Most of the modern eds. have "terrors."

25. "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body" (Gray).

26. _Temper'd_. Modulated, "set." Cf. _Lycidas_, 33: "Tempered to the oaten flute;" Fletcher, _Purple Island_: "Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay," etc.

27. _O'er Idalia's velvet-green_. _Idalia_ appears to be used for _Idalium_, which was a town in Cyprus, and a favourite seat of Venus, who was sometimes called _Idalia_. Pope likewise uses _Idalia_ for the place, in his _First Pastoral_, 65: "Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's groves."

Dr. Johnson finds fault with _velvet-green_, apparently supposing it to be a compound of Gray's own making. But Young had used it in his _Love of Fame_: "She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet-green." It is also among the expressions of Pope which are ridiculed in the _Alexandriad_.

29. _Cytherea_ was a name of Venus, derived from _Cythera_, an island in the Ægean Sea, one of the favourite residences of Aphrodite, or Venus. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 680: "super alta Cythera Aut super Idalium, sacrata sede," etc.

30. _With antic Sports_. This is the reading of the 1st ed. and also of the ed. of 1768. Some eds. have "sport."

_Antic_ is the same word as _antique_. The association between what is old or old-fashioned and what is odd, fantastic, or grotesque is obvious enough. Cf. Milton, _Il Pens._ 158: "With antick pillars massy-proof." In _S. A._ 1325 he uses the word as a noun: "Jugglers and dancers, anticks, mummers, mimicks." Shakes. makes it a verb in _A. and C._ ii. 7: "the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd us all."

31. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 835: "In friskful glee Their frolics play."

32, 33. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ v. 580 foll.

35. Gray quotes Homer, _Od._ ix. 265: [Greek: marmarugas thêeito podôn thaumaze de thumôi]. Cf. Catullus's "fulgentem plantam." See also Thomson, _Spring_, 158: "the many-twinkling leaves Of aspin tall."

36. _Slow-melting strains_, etc. Cf. a poem by Barton Booth, published in 1733:

"Now to a slow and melting air she moves, So like in air, in shape, in mien, She passes for the Paphian queen; The Graces all around her play, The wondering gazers die away; Whether her easy body bend, Or her fair bosom heave with sighs; Whether her graceful arms extend, Or gently fall, or slowly rise; Or returning or advancing, Swimming round, or sidelong glancing, Strange force of motion that subdues the soul."

37. Cf. Dryden, _Flower and Leaf_, 191: "For wheresoe'er she turn'd her face, they bow'd."

39. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 405: "Incessu patuit dea." The gods were represented as gliding or sailing along without moving their feet.

41. _Purple light of love_. Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ i. 590: "lumenque juventae Purpureum." Gray quotes Phrynichus, _apud_ Athenæum:

[Greek: lampei d' epi porphureêisi pareiêisi phôs erôtos.]

See also Dryden, _Brit. Red._ 133: "and her own purple light."

42. "To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the day by its cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night" (Gray).

43 foll. See on _Eton Coll._ 83. Cf. Horace, _Od._ i. 3, 29-33.

46. _Fond complaint_. Foolish complaint. Cf. Shakes. _M. of V._ iii. 3:

"I do wonder, Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond To come abroad with him at his request;"

Milton, _S. A._ 812: "fond and reasonless," etc. This appears to be the original meaning of the word. In Wiclif's Bible. 1 _Cor._ i. 27, we have "the thingis that ben _fonnyd_ of the world." In _Twelfth Night_, ii. 2, the word is used as a verb=dote:

"And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, As she, mistaken, seems to dote on me."

49. Hurd quotes Cowley:

"Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright, And Sleep, the lazy owl of night; Asham'd and fearful to appear, They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere."

Wakefield cites Milton, _Hymn on Nativity_, 233 foll.: "The flocking shadows pale," etc. See also _P. R._ iv. 419-431.

50. _Birds of boding cry_. Cf. Green's _Grotto_: "news the boding night-birds tell."

52. Gray refers to Cowley, _Brutus_:

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow, Or seen her well-appointed star. Come marching up the eastern hill afar."

The following variations on 52 and 53 are found in the MS.:

Till fierce Hyperion from afar Pours on their scatter'd rear, | Hurls at " flying " | his glittering shafts of war. " o'er " scatter'd " | " " " shadowy " | Till " " " " from far Hyperion hurls around his, etc.

The accent of _Hyperion_ is properly on the penult, which is long in quantity, but the English poets, with rare exceptions, have thrown it back upon the antepenult. It is thus in the six instances in which Shakes. uses the word: e.g. _Hamlet_, iii. 4: "Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself." The word does not occur in Milton. It is correctly accented by Drummond (of Hawthornden), _Wand. Muses_:

"That Hyperion far beyond his bed Doth see our lions ramp, our roses spread;"

by West, _Pindar's Ol._ viii. 22:

"Then Hyperion's son, pure fount of day, Did to his children the strange tale reveal;"

also by Akenside, and by the author of the old play _Fuimus Troes_ (A.D. 1633):

"Blow, gentle Africus, Play on our poops when Hyperion's son Shall couch in west."

Hyperion was a Titan, the father of Helios (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), and Eos (the Dawn). He was represented with the attributes of beauty and splendor afterwards ascribed to Apollo. His "glittering shafts" are of course the sunbeams, the "lucida tela diei" of Lucretius. Cf. a very beautiful description of the dawn in Lowell's _Above and Below_:

"'Tis from these heights alone your eyes The advancing spears of day can see, Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, To break your long captivity."

We may quote also his _Vision of Sir Launfal_:

"It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long," etc.

54. Gray's note here is as follows: "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connection with liberty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh fragments; the Lapland and American songs.]" He also quotes Virgil, _Æn._ vi. 796: "Extra anni solisque vias," and Petrarch, _Canz._ 2: "Tutta lontana dal camin del sole." Cf. also Dryden, _Thren. August._ 353: "Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway;" _Ann. Mirab._ st. 160: "Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's highway;" _Brit. Red._: "Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;" also Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 102: "Far as the solar walk and milky way."

56. _Twilight gloom_. Wakefield quotes Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 188: "The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

57. Wakefield says, "It almost chills one to read this verse." The MS. variations are "buried native's" and "chill abode."

60. _Repeat_ [_their chiefs_, etc.]. Sing of them again and again.

61. _In loose numbers_, etc. Cf. Milton, _L'All._ 133:

"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild;"

and Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 11:

"numerisque fertur Lege solutis."

62. _Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs_. Cf. _P. L._ ix. 1115:

"Such of late Columbus found the American, so girt With feather'd cincture."

64. _Glory pursue_. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton compares Homer, _Il._ v. 774:

[Greek: hêchi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton êde Skamandros.]

Dugald Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) says: "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression."

65. _Freedom's holy flame_. Cf. Akenside, _Pleas. of Imag._ i. 468: "Love's holy flame."

66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. 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: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).

_Delphi's steep_. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 178: "the steep of Delphos;" _P. L._ i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. and Milton prefer the mediæval form _Delphos_ to the more usual _Delphi_. Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end "in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun" (Smith's _Anc. Geog._).

67. _Isles_, etc. Cf. Byron:

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung," etc.

68. _Ilissus_. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, flows through the east side of Athens.

69. _Mæander's amber waves_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iii. 359: "Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" _P. R._ iii. 288: "There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 520: "Purior electro campum petit amnis." Callimachus (_Cer._ 29) has [Greek: alektrinon hudôr].

70. Ovid, _Met._ viii. 162, describes the Mæander thus:

"Non secus ac liquidis Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis Ludit, et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque."

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius (_Geo._ iii. 15):

--"tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius."

"The first great metropolis of Hellenic intellectual life was Miletus on the Mæander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, Cadmus, Hecatæus, etc., were all Milesians" (Hales).

71 foll. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 181:

"The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent:" etc.

75. _Hallowed fountain_. Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ i. 53: "fontes sacros."

76. The MS. has "Murmur'd a celestial sound."

80. _Vice that revels in her chains_. In his _Ode for Music_, 6, Gray has "Servitude that hugs her chain."

81. Hales quotes 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."

84. _Nature's darling_. "Shakespeare" (Gray). Cf. Cleveland, _Poems_:

"Here lies within this stony shade Nature's darling; whom she made Her fairest model, her brief story, In him heaping all her glory."

On _green lap_, cf. Milton, _Song on May Morning_:

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

85. _Lucid Avon_. Cf. Seneca, _Thyest._ 129: "gelido flumine lucidus Alpheos."

86. _The mighty mother_. That is, Nature. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, i. 1, uses the same expression in a satirical way:

"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kings, I sing."