personal sorrow. The author raises no questions and expresses no rebellion. His attitude is one of acceptance. He is even a little formal and dispassionate; so much so that Taine complains that his emotion is academical, his tears cold.1 But most readers experience no doubt as to the reality of the feeling and the breadth of the appeal. Dr. Johnson was not an admirer of Gray, and his life of the latter is the weakest of his Lives of the Poets; but speaking of the Elegy he concedes that "The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." Another factor in the remarkable vitality of the poem is its felicity in expression. Gray wrought the Elegy with exquisite care, as he did all his poems. He testifies that he aimed at a style with "extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical." The sound of the lines is as notable as the thought, and perhaps somewhat more original. At times, as was unavoidable for an eighteenth-century poet, he falls into a certain conventionality of phrasing, a fault to which Goldsmith, although writing later, was still more prone. In an age when the influence of Pope was so dominant, the wonder is, not that Gray lapsed occasionally into artificial phrasing, but that his work is so full as it is of phrasing which is fresh. In the main the language of the Elegy is almost perfect in its condensation and lucidity. The felicitous and rememberable quality of its diction and the sculpturesque perfection of its stately quatrains have helped to make phrases, lines, or even whole stanzas of the poem part of our daily speech. 1 History of English Literature, Book III, Chapter IX. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Biographies of Gray have been written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets (1779-1781); by Mitford, prefixed to his 1814 edition of Gray's poems; and by Edmund Gosse, in the English Men of Letters Series (1882). See also Gray's Life and Letters, edited by Mason (1774); Correspondence and Reminiscences of the Rev. Norton Nicholls, edited by Mitford (1843); Correspondence of Gray and Mason, edited by Mitford (1853); Souvenirs du Chevalier de Bonstetten (1832); and Correspondence of Horace Walpole. More recent books on Gray, his letters and his friends, are Gray and his Friends, by D. C. Tovey, and Letters of Thomas Gray, edited, with biographical notice, by H. M. Rideout. For essays on Gray, see those by Arnold in Essays in Criticism, second series; J. R. Lowell, in Latest Literary Essays; A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes; G. P. Lathrop, in the Warner Library of the World's Best Literature; and Leslie Stephen in Hours in a Library. A Concordance of the English Poems of Thomas Gray has been published by Professor A. S. Cook (1908). ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 5 ΙΟ 15 20 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 25 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault, If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or wak'd to extasy the living lyre. 30 335 40 45 |