Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80 When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast. III. 1. Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, To him the mighty mother did unveil 85 V. 83. "Piu lontan del Ciel," Dante. Il Inferno, c. ix. V. 84. "Nature's darling." Shakespeare. Gray. This expression occurs in Cleveland. Poems, p. 314: "Here lies within this stony shade, In him heaping all her glory.' Stat. Theb. iv. 786, "At puer in gremio vernæ telluris." "The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose." Milton. Son. on May Morn. Gray. V. 85. Senec. Thyest. 129, "gelido flumine lucidus Alpheos." Luke. V. 86. "The mighty mother, and her son who brings The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings." Pope. Dunc. i. 1. "A cloud of fogs dilates her awful face." Id. i. 262. W. See also Virg. Georg. i. 466, by Dryden: "On the green turf thy careless limbs display, And celebrate the mighty mother's day." V. 87. "Animosus infans," Hor. iii. 4. 20. Luke. Wakefield refers to Virg. Eclog. iv. 60: "Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem." And Berdmore, in his Literary Resemblances, p. 40, to the description of the infant Hercules in Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd. "This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." III. 2. Nor second He, that rode sublime Var. V. 93. Horror] Terror. MS. 90 90 Theoc. Idyll. xxv. 55. But the two lines in Gray are the same as two in Sandys. Ovid, p. 78, ed. 12mo. (see Metam. iv. 515.) 66 -the child Stretch'd forth its little arms, and on him smil'd." See also Catulli Ep. Jul. et Manl. c. lxi. ver. 216. "Parvolus Matris e gremio suæ Porrigens teneras manus, V. 89. Milton. P. L. v. 24, "How nature paints her colours." Luke. V. 91. Similar, perhaps, кabaρàv ȧvoížav τα κλῇδα φρενῶν· "Nature, which favours to the few, All art beyond, imparts, To him presented, at his birth, The key of human hearts." Eurip. Med. 658. Young. Resig. "Yet some there be, that with due steps aspire To lay their hands upon that golden key That opes the palace of eternity." Milton. Com. 13. W. V. 92. See Soph. Antig. v. 803. V. 95. Milton. P. L. vi. 771. Gray. V. 97. This alludes to Milton's own picture of himself: Up led by thee Into the Heaven of Heavens, I have presum'd An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air." Par. L. vii. 12, also Eleg. v. 15. Upon the seraph-wings of Extasy, The secrets of th' abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car 100 104 [pace. With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding V. 98. "Flammantia monia mundi," Lucret. i. 74. Gray. See also Stat. Silv. iv. 3. 156: "Ultra sidera, flammeumque solem." And Cicero de Finibus, ii. 31. Hor. Epist. I. xiv. 9. V. 99. "For the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. And above the firmament that was over their heads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone. This was the appearance of the glory of the Lord." Ezek. i. 20, 26, 28. Gray. - -"Ay sang before the saphircolor'd throne," Poem at a solemn Music (Milton), ver. 7. "Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The cherub Contemplation." Il. Pens. ver. 53. "Whereon a sapphire throne inlaid, with pure Amber, and colours of the showery arch." Par. L. vi. 758. "He on the wings of cherub rode sublime, On the crystalline sky, in sapphire thron'd." Ibid. ver. 771. V. 101. "Dark with excess of bright thy skirts appear." Milt. P. L. iii. 380. Luke. V. 102. Οφθαλμῶν μὲν ἄμερσε· δίδου δ' ἠδεῖαν ἀοιδὴν. Hom. Od. O. ver. 64. Gray. "In æternam clauduntur lumina noctem," Virg. Æn. x. 746. W. "And closed her lids, at last, in endless night." Dryden. V. 103. See Pope. Account of Dryden, Ep. I. b. ii. ver. 267: "Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine." V. 105. "Ethereal race" is a phrase of Pope, v. Hom. Il. xi. 80. III. 3. Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er, Scatters from her pictur❜d urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 110 Oh! lyre divine, what daring spirit Var. V. 108. Bright-eyed] Full-plumed. Ms. V. 106. "Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" Job. This verse and the foregoing are meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes. "Currum, geminosque jugales Semine ab æthereo, spirantes naribus ignem." Gray. Virg. Æn. vii. 280. W. "The long-resounding course." Thomson. Winter, 775, Hymn. 85. V. 110. "Words that weep, and tears that speak," Cowley. Prophet, vol. i. p. 113. Gray. "Her words burn as fire," Eccles. ix. 10. Rogers. "Oaths are burning words," Dekker. Satirom. p. 65, 4to. V. 111. We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind, than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley, who had his merit, yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some of his choruses; above all in the last of Caractacus: "Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread ?" &c. Gray. V. 113. So Elegy, st. xii: "Or wake to extasy the living lyre." And Lucret. ii. 412: "Ac Musæa mele per chordas organicei quæ Mobilibus digitis expergefacta figurant.' And Callimach. Hymn. Del. 312. W. V. 114. 66 They shape his ample pinions swift as darted flame," Young. N. Thoughts. V. 115. Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον, Olymp. ii. 159. Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Var. V. 118. "Yet when they first were open'd on the day V. 119. Forms]" shapes." MS. MS. 115 regardless of their noise. Gray. See Spenser. F. Q. V. iv. 42: "Like to an eagle in his kingly pride Soaring thro' his wide empire of the aire To weather his brode sailes." Cowley, (i. 166. ed. Hurd.) in his Translation of Hor. Od. IV. ii. calls Pindar "the Theban swan: "" "Lo! how the obsequious wind and swelling air The Theban Swan does upward bear." Pope, Temple of Fame, 210, has copied Horace, and yoked four swans to the car of the poet: "Four swans sustain a car of silver bright." "Coeli fre See also Berdmore, Specimens of Lit. Resemblance, p. 102. V. 117. Eurip. Med. 1294: ἐς αἶθερος βάθος. tum," Ennius apud Non. Marcell. 3. 92. Lucret. ii. 151. v. 277: "Aeris in magnum fertur mare." W. Κυνηγ. iii. 497: Μέρος ὑψιπόροισιν ἐπιπλωούσι κελεύθοις. Oppian. Timon of Athens, act iv. sc. 2. p. 126. ed. Steevens: "Into this sea of air." And Cowley's Poems: "Row thro' the trackless ocean of the air." V. 118. See the observation of D. Stewart, Philosophy of the Human Mind, p. 486: "that Gray, in describing the infantine reveries of poetical genius, has fixed with exquisite judgment on that class of our conceptions which are derived from visible objects." And see also his Philosophical Essays, p. 231. There is a passage in Sir W. Temple. Essay on Poetry, vol. iii. p. 402, which has been supposed to have been the origin of this passage. See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxi. p. 91. |