Gray has been severely censured by Johnson, for the expression, 66 "Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace." The BARD. 66 On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics we must still hear that the poet has no line so bad. ample room" is feeble, but would have passed unobserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. Verge enough" is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No one appears to have detected the source from whence, probably, the whole line was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the following passage in Dryden: "Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, Gray in his Elegy has "Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." This line is so obscure that it is difficult to apply it to what precedes it. Mason in his edition in vain attempts to derive it from a thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it; Wakefield expends an octavo page to para phrase this single verse! From the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of himself, and of old men, "For whan we may not don than wol we speken ; TYRWHIT'S CHAUCER, vol. 1. p. 153, v. 3879. Gray has a very expressive word, highly poetical, but I think not common; "For who to DUMB FORGETFULNESS a prey and Daniel has, as quoted in Cooper's Muses Library, "And in himself with sorrow does complain The misery of DARK FORGETFUlness.” A line of Pope's in his Dunciad, "High-born Howard," echoed in the ear of Gray, when he gave with all the artifice of alliteration, Johnson bitterly censures Gray for giving to adjectives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain; the daisied bank; but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the honied spring." I confess I was not sorry; had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. Honied is employed by Milton in more places than one, but one is sufficient for my purpose, "Hide me from day's garish eye While the bee with HONIED thigh-" Penseroso, v. 142. The celebrated stanza in Gray's Elegy seems partly to be borrowed. "Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Pope had said; "There kept by charms conceal'd from mortal eye, Like roses that in deserts bloom and die." Young says of nature ; Rape of the Lock. "In distant wilds by human eye unseen She rears her flowers and spreads her velvet green ; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race." And Shenstone has And like the deserts' lily bloom to fade !" Elegy IV. Gray was so fond of this pleasing imagery, that VOL. II. ΙΙ he repeats it in his Ode to the Installation; and Mason echoes it, in his Ode to Memory. Milton thus paints the evening sun: "If chance the EVENING SUN with FAREWELL SWEET Extends his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew," &c. Par. Lost, B. 11. v. 492. Can there be a doubt that he borrowed this beautiful farewell from an obscure poet, quoted by Poole, in his "English Parnassus," 1657? The date of Milton's great work, I find since, admits the conjecture; the first edition being that of 1669. The homely lines in Poole are these, "To Thetis' watry bowers the sun doth hie, Young, in his "Love of Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe, that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more exqui site wit. "Each WINDOW like the PILLORY appears, With HEADS thrust through; NAILED BY THE EARS!" "An Hudibras, part 11. c. 3. v. 391. opera, like a PILLORY, may be said To nail our ears down, and expose our HEAD.” YOUNG'S Satires. In the Duenna we find this thought differently illustrated; by no means imitative, though the satire is congenial. Don Jerome alluding to the serenaders says, "These amorous orgies that steal the senses in the hearing; as they say Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, extracting the brain through the ears." The wit is original, but the subject is the same in the three passages; the whole turning on the allusion to the head and to the ears. When Pope composed the following lines on Fame, "How vain that second life in other's breath, he seems to have had present in his mind a single idea of Butler, by which he has very richly amplified the entire imagery. Butler says, "Honour's a LEASE for LIVES TO COME, And cannot be extended from The LEGAL TENANT." Hud. part 1. c. 3. v. 1043. The same thought may be found in Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on preferring Solitude to public Employment," first published in 1665: Hudibras preceded it by two years. The thought is strongly expressed by the eloquent Mackenzie. |