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APPENDIX E.

(See page xxix. n.)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.'

Dr. Warton would read "The curfew tolls!-the knell of parting day." The curfew-bell is the general expression of the old poets; the word 'toll' is not the appropriate verb; it was not a slow bell tolling for the dead; hence,

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'Curfew was ronge-lyghts were set up in haste.'

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And Shakespeare, None since the curfew rung,' and 'the curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock.' But there is another error; a confusion of time. The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and the glimmering landscape' has long ceased to fade before the curfew. The parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the word curfew' is taken simply for the evening-bell,' then also is the time incorrect; and a knell is not tolled for the parting, but for the parted.

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And leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight. Here the incidents, instead of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and inharmonious; especially, as it appears soon after, that it was not dark; for 'The moping owl does* to the moon complain.'

*The expletives' does,' and do,' and' did,' were, we considered, discarded from English poetry, by Pope's taste and skill; who proved that he could construct his musical lines without them. They have lately come to life again (or rather, appear only to have been banished, and not destroyed,) in our modern tragedies, of which Mr. Maturin's Bertram affords a good specimen, as pointed out by Mr. Coleridge.

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The Lord and his small train do stand appall'd.
With torch and bell from their high battlements,
The monks do summon, &c.

'Molest her ancient solitary reign.'

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This line would have been better without ancient; but Gray had the antiqua regna' of the Latin poets in his mind, and the deserta regna.' Besides, to molest a reign,' is a very ungraceful and most unusual expression; and only endured for the rhyme's sake.

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.' This is redundant.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn.'

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If the hearth blazes, of course it must burn; but blazing hearth' Gray had from Thomson, and 'burn' was added for the rhyme, return.'

'No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.' Here the epithet lowly, as applied to bed, occasions an ambiguity, as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which is in poetry called a low or lowly bed. Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter. There can be no greater fault in composition than a doubtful meaning,-vitanda in primis ambiguitas.

'Or busy housewife ply her evening care.'

To ply a care, is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme-' share.’

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund, did they drive their team afield;
How bent the woods beneath their sturdy stroke.'

This stanza is made up of various pieces inlaid. 'Stubborn glebe,' is from Gay; drive afield,' from Milton; ' sturdy stroke,' from Spenser. Such is too much the system of Gray's compositions, and therefore such the cause of his imperfections. Purity of language, accuracy of thought, and even similarity of rhyme-all give way to the introduction of certain poetical expressions; in fact, the beautiful jewel, when brought, does not fit into the new setting, or socket. Such is the difference between the flower stuck into the ground, and those that grow from it.

Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
The shor and simple annals of the poor.'

A very imperfect rhyme; such as Swift would not have allowed, and ought not to have appeared in such a poem, where the finishing is supposed to be high, and the expression said to be select.

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave.'

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This expression simply means beauty and wealth,' and is much weakened by the addition e'er gave, which was necessary for the rhyme' grave.'

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault.'

A prosaic and colloquial line.

'Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust?'

An unusually bold expression, to say the least. Pope has,

Again,

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But when our country's cause provokes to arms.'

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid,

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,' &c. Incorrect in the syntax :- Some hands is laid.

Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd.'

The rod of empire' is rather a semi-burlesque expression, than a serious one, and degrades the image. Tickell has a better:

'Proud names, that once the reins of empire held.' But then the rhyme 'sway'd' would not have done. We see, while writing this, that 'reins' was in the original MS., and undoubtedly dispossessed of its place for the sake of the verb.

• But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll,' &c. It is necessary to go back six stanzas to find the subject to which the relative their refers; i. e.

The short and simple annals of the Poor.'

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll,'

This fine expression is taken from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici—' Rich with the spoils of Nature.'

• Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage.'

The use of the word 'rage' for desire, if not introduced by Pope, was too much used by him

'So just thy skill, so regular thy rage.

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Be justly warm'd by your own native rage.'

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast.'

It should be who,' instead of that.'

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land.'

This is from Tickell

To scatter blessings on the British land.'

6

From insult to protect.' Sculpture deck'd,' is not an allowable rhyme; and what is the force or meaning of the word still erected nigh?'

Their lot forbade,-nor circumscrib'd alone,

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd— Forbade to wade thro' slaughter to a throne,

Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrines of luxury and pride

With incense kindled at the muse's flame."

Who does not feel how flat and superfluous is the latter stanza, after the fine concluding couplet of the ormer? the two stanzas ought to have been remodelled; part of the second thrown into the first, and then the whole should conclude with the greatest crime, the grandest imagery, and the finished picture,—

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Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'

There should the description close; all after that must be weak and superfluous.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray.'

There is an ambiguity in this couplet, which indeed gives a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which, one must break the grammatical construction. The first line is from Drummond :- Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords.'

'Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day.'

'Precincts,' a lifeless and prosaic word; and unsuited to the epithet warm.' How superior is Tasso

E lascio mesta l'aure suave della vita.'
And many a holy text around he strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.'

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'On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires,
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.'

Pious drops' is from Ovid-' piæ lacrymæ ;' Closing eye,' is from Pope's Elegy; Voice of Nature,' from the Anthologia; and the last line from Chaucer

• Yet in our ashes cold is fire yreken.'

From so many different quarries are the stones brought to form this elaborate mosaic pavement. From this stanza the style of composition drops into a lower key; the language is plainer, and is not in harmony with the splendid and elaborate diction of the former part. Mr. Mason says it has a Doric delicacy.

There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,

His listless limbs at noontide would he stretch.' Such imperfect rhymes are not allowable in short and finished poems. And so, in the following stanza, 'we saw him borne' - beneath yon aged thorn.' And in the xx and xxi stanzas, there are four lines in the rhymes of similar sound, as' nigh,'' sigh,'' supply,' ' die.'

Now drooping woful-wan, like one forlorn.'

'Woful-wan' is not a legitimate compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they are, when released from the handcuffs of the hyphen. Hurd has wrongly given lazy-pacing,' and 'barren-spirited,' and 'high-sighted,' as compound epithets, in his notes on Horace's Art of Poetry!!

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.'

A very bald, flat, prosaic line.

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Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth.'

Such personifications are not in.the taste of our old and best writers, but grow up in modern times. Dodsley's Specimens are full of them. So little did the printer know about it, that he has not even printed science with a capital letter, Horace is correct, as well as beautifully poetical: :

Quem tu, Melpomene, semel
Nascentem placido lumine videris.'

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