The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring :
While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the Muse shall sit, and think

5

10

15

omnia." Also in the Pervigil. Vener. v. 13: " Ipsa gemmis purpurantem pingit annum floribus." Pope has the same expression in his Past. i. 28: "And lavish Nature paints the purple year.” Gales that wake the purple year." Mallet. Zephyr.

66

V. 5. Martial. Epig. i. 54: “Sic ubi multisona fervet sacer Atthide lucus." Also in the Epitaphium Athenaidos apud Fabrettum, p. 702: "Cum te, nate, fleo, planctus dabit Attica Aedon." And Attica volucris." Propert. II. xvi. 6. Ovid. Halieut. v. 110: "Attica avis vernâ sub tempestate queratus." Add Senecæ Herc. Et. v. 200. And Milton. Par. R. iv. 245: "The Attic bird trills her thick

66

warbled notes." The expression pours her throat" is from Pope. Essay on Man, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?" So Ovid. Trist. iii. 12. 8. " Indocilique loquax gutture vernat avis."

V.7.

V. 10.

-"The hollow Cuckoo sings

The symphony of Spring.".

Thoms. Spring. Luke.

-"Fresh gales and gentle airs Whisper'd it to the woods." Par. L. viii. 515. v. Comus. v. 989. and P. L. iv. 327. "Cool zephyr."

Luke.

V. 12. Milton. Par. L. iv. 246: "The unpierc'd shade

(At ease reclin❜d in rustic state) How vain the ardour of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:

Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air

Var. V. 19. "How low, how indigent the proud,
How little are the great!"

So these lines appeared in Dodsley. The variation, as Mason informs us, was subsequently made, to avoid the point "little and great."

imbrown'd the noontide bowers." "And breathes a browner horror o'er the woods," Pope. Eloisa, 170. W.-Thomson. Cast. of Ind. i. 38: " Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."

V. 13. "A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine." Mids. N. Dr. act ii. sc. 2. Gray.

"The beech shall yield a cool safe canopy." Fletcher. Purpl. Is. i. v. 30. And T. Warton's note on Milton's Comus, v. 543.

V. 15. "The rushy-fringed bank." Comus. Luke.

V. 22. "Patula pecus omne sub ulmo est," Pers. Sat. iii. 6. W.-But Gray seems to have imitated Pope. Past. ii. 86:

"The lowing herds to murmuring brooks retreat,
To closer shades the panting flocks remove:"

"Jam pastor umbras cum grege languido

Rivumque fessus quærit.' Hor. lib. III. Od. xxix. 21. V. 23. Thomson. Autumn, 836: "Warn'd of approaching winter, gather'd, play the swallow-people." And Walton. Complete Angler, p. 260: "Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing.' Add Beaumont. Psyche, st. lxxxviii. p. 46: "Every tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats." so Alciphr. Ep. p. 341. dýμov öλov öpvɛwv. and Max. Tyr. See Reiske's note, p. 82.

The busy murmur glows!
The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon :
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some shew their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of Man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,

Shall end where they began.

Alike the Busy and the Gay
But flutter thro' life's little day,

In Fortune's varying colours drest:

V. 24. Thus Milton. Par. R. iv. 248: "The sound of bees' industrious murmur." Wakefield quotes Thomson. Spr. 506: Thro' the soft air the busy nations fly." And, 649: "But restless hurry thro' the busy air." Compare also Pope. T. of Fame, 294.

V. 25. "Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold." Pope. Rape of the Lock, ii. 59. W. This expression may have been suggested by a line in Green's Hermitage, quoted in Gray's Letter to Walpole: (see note at ver. 31.)

"From maggot-youth thro' change of state
They feel, like us, the turns of fate."

V. 26. See Milton, as quoted by Wakefield: Il Pen. 142, Lycid. 140, Sams. Ag. 1066.

V. 27. "Nare per æstatem liquidam," Georg. iv. 59. Gray.-To which, add Georg. i. 404; and Æn. v. 525; x.

272.

980.

"There I suck the liquid air.” Milton. Comus, v.

V. 30. "Sporting with quick glance, shew to the sun their wav'd coats dropp'd with gold," Par. L. vii. 410. Gray.— See also Pope. Hom. Il. ii. 557; and Essay on Man, iii. 55.

V. 31. "While insects from the threshold preach," Green, in the Grotto. Dodsley. Misc. v. p. 161. Gray.—

Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance

They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear, in accents low,

The sportive kind reply :

Poor moralist! and what art thou?

A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,

No painted plumage to display :
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone-
We frolic while 'tis May.

40

45

50

Gray, in a letter to H. Walpole, says: (see Walpole's Works, vol. v. p. 395.) “ I send you a bit of a thing for two reasons; first, because it is one of your favorites, Mr. M. Green; and next, because I would do justice: the thought on which my second Ode turns, (The Ode to Spring, afterwards placed first, by Gray,) is manifestly stole from thence. Not that I knew it at the time, but having seen this many years before; to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, and forgetting the author, I took it for my own.' Then follows the quotation from Green's Grotto. Wakefield seems to have discovered the original of this stanza in some lines in Thomson. Summer, 342.

V. 37. "The varied colours run,'" ," Thoms. Spring. Luke. V. 47.

"From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solac'd the woods, and spread their painted wings." Par. L. vii. 438. W. And so Thomson. Spring, 582; Virg. Georg. iii. 243; Æn. iv. 525; Claudian, xv. 3. "Pictisque plumis." Phædri Fab. iii. v. 18.

V. 49. Πάνθ ̓ ἅλιον ἄμμι δεδύκειν. Theocrit. Idyll. i. 102. W. Alexis ap. Stobæum. lib. cxv.: “Hôn vào ô βίος ὁὐμὸς Ἑσπέραν ἄγει. Plato has the same metapho

II.* ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT,

DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES.

[On a favourite cat called Selima, that fell into a China Tub with gold fishes in it, and was drowned, MS. Wharton. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the China Vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the Ode for its inscription.]

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,

Where China's gayest art had dy'd

The azure flowers, that blow;

Demurest of the tabby kind,

Var. V. 4. In the first edition the order of these lines was reversed:

"The pensive Selima reclin'd,

Demurest of the tabby kind."

rical expression : ἡμεῖς δ ̓ ἐν δυσμαῖς τοῦ βίου, de Legib. tom. ii. p. 770, ed. Serrani; and Aristotelis Poetica, cap. 35: καὶ τὸ γῆρας Εσπέραν βίου. Add Catull. ad Lesb. c. 5. v. 5. "Nobis, cum semel occidet brevis lux." Twining, in his translation of the Poetics, together with this line from Gray, has quoted Com. of Err. (last scene): " Yet hath my night of life some memory," see p. 108. It is a phrase very common among the old English poets.-Herrick has,

"Sunk is my sight, set is my sun, And all the loom of life undone." and "My sun begins to set," Rowley's All's lost by Lust, p. 63, 4to. with many others.

*This Ode first appeared in Dodsley. Col. vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations; only one of which is given by Mason. They are all noticed in this edition, as they

occur.

V. 3. This expression has been accused of redundance