EPITAPH ON SIR WILLIAM WILLIAMS.*

This Epitaph was written at the request of Mr. Frederick Montagu, who intended to have inscribed it on a monument at Bellisle, at the siege of which Sir W. Williams was killed, 1761. See Mason's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 73; and vol. iv. p. 76; and H. Walpole's Lett. to G. Montagu, p. 244. See account of Sir W. P. Williams, in Brydges. Restituta, vol. iii. p. 53; and in Clubs of London, vol. ii. p. 13. "In the recklessness of a desponding mind, he approached too near the enemy's sentinels, and was shot through the body."

"Valiant in arms, courteous and gay in peace,
See Williams snatch'd to an untimely tomb."
Hall Stevenson's Poems, ii. p. 49.

HERE, foremost in the dangerous paths of fame, Young Williams fought for England's fair re

nown;

His mind each Muse, each Grace adorn'd his frame, Nor envy

dar'd to view him with a frown.

* Sir William Peere Williams, bart. a captain in Burgoyne's dragoons.

V. 3. Εἵνεκεν εὐεπίης πινυτόφρονος, ἣν ὁ μελιχρὸς ἤσκησεν Μουσῶν, ἄμμιγα καὶ Χαρίτων.

Sophoc. Epit. ed. Brunck. vol. i. p. 10. Τὸν Μώσαις φίλον ἄνδρα, τὸν οὐ Νυμφαίσιν ἀπέχθη. Theocr. Idyll. a. 141. I recollect also the same expression in Gregory Nazianzen's Epitaph on Euphomius. ὄντος ὅν ἁι χάριτες μόυσαις δόσαν. "A thousand Graces round her person play, And all the Muses mark'd her fancy's way." A. Hill. Poems, vol. iii. p. 60.

At Aix, his voluntary sword he drew,

There first in blood his infant honour seal'd; From fortune, pleasure, science, love, he flew, And scorn'd repose when Britain took the field.

'With eyes of flame, and cool undaunted breast,
Victor he stood on Bellisle's rocky steeps
Ah, gallant youth! this marble tells the rest,
Where melancholy friendship bends, and weeps.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCH-YARD.

5

10

The manuscript variations in this poem, in the Wharton papers, agree generally with those published by Mr. Mathias, vol. i. p. 65, in his edition of Gray's Works. See Barrington on the Statutes, p. 154. British Bibliog. vol. iii. p. viii.

THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

V. 1.

V. 5. Sir William Williams, in the expedition to Aix, was on board the Magnanime with Lord Howe; and was deputed to receive the capitulation. This expression has been adopted by Scott:

"Since riding side by side, our hand
First drew the voluntary brand."

Marmion, Introd. to Cant. iv.
"squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore.'

99

Dante, Purgat. 1. 8. Gray.

6

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Var. V. 8. And] Or. мs. M. and W.

"The curfew tolls! — the knell of parting day." So I read, says Dr. Warton, Notes on Pope, vol. i. p. 82. Dryden has a line resembling this:

"That tolls the knell of their departed sense."

See Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, ver. 22. And not dissimilar is Shakes. Henry IV. pt. ii. act i. sc. 2:

"a sullen bell

Remember'd knolling a departed friend."

V. 2. In the Diosem. of Aratus, this picture is drawn similar to that of the English poet, ver. 387:

δ' ὅτε μυκηθμοῖο περίπλειοι ἀγέρωνται Ἐρχόμεναι σταθμόνδε βοές βουλύσιον ὥρην, Σκυθραὶ λειμωνὸς πόριες καὶ βουβοσίοιο. And so Dionys. in his Perieg. ver. 190:

Κείνοις δ' ὄυποτε τερπνὸς ἀκούεται ὁλκὸς ἁμάξης,
Οὐ δὲ βοῶν μυκηθμὸς ἐς αὔλιον ἐρχομενάων.

See also Hom. Odyss. xvii. 170, pointed out by Wakefield. Add Petrarch, " Veggio la sera, i buoi tornare sciolte, de le campagne e de solcate colli."

V. 3. Spens. F. Q. b. vi. st. 7. c. 39:

"And now she was upon the weary way." Luke. V. 4. A similar expression occurs in Petrarch, p. 124: "Quando 'l sol bagna in mar l' aurato cerco, E'l aer nostro, e la mia mente imbruna." "Has paid his debt to justice and to me." Dryd. Ovid. "E lascia il Mundo al Foscombra." Ariosto. Rogers. V. 7. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons, The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hum Hath rung night's yawning peal.” And so Collins, in his Ode to Evening:

Rogers.

Macb. act iii. sc. 2.

"Or where the beetle winds

His small, but sullen horn;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r,

The moping owl does to the moon complain 10 Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring

heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum." W.

And

V. 10. The "ignavus bubo" of Ovid. Met. v. 550. The two following passages might supply the images in the Elegy: "Assiduous in his bower the wailing owl Plies his sad song."

Thoms. Winter, 114.

در

"the wailing owl
Screams solitary to the mournful moon."

15

Mallett. Excursion, p. 244. V. 12. "Desertaque regna pastorum," Virg. Georg. iii. 476. W.

V. 13. De Lille, in his "Jardins," has imitated these stanzas of the Elegy, cant. iv. p. 86.

V. 14. "Those graves with bending osier bound, That nameless heave the crumbled ground." Parnell. Night Piece, 29. W. V. 15. See Hor. Od. i. iv. 17: "Domus exilis Plutonia." The word domus, which answers to our poet's cell, is often in Latin authors put for sepulchrum; as may be seen by referring to Burmann's Petronius, cap. 71; and Markland's Statius, p. 255: the reason of which is given in Barthelemy. Travels in Italy, p. 349.

V. 17. " And e'er the odorous breath of morn."

Arcades, ver. 56.

W.

"In Eden, on the humid flowers that breath'd Their morning incense." Par. L. b. ix. 192. And so Pope. Messiah, ver. 24:

"With all the incense of the breathing spring."

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.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

Var. V. 19. Or] And. мs. M. and W.

V. 18. "Mane jam clarum reserat fenestras,
Jam strepit nidis vigilax hirundo."

Auson. ed Tollii, p. 94.

Hesiod gives the swallow a very appropriate epithet: xɛSav opopoyón Epy. 567. Wakefield quotes Thomson. Autumn. ver. 835. "The swallow-people; there they twitter cheerful." "Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma, et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus." v. Virg. Æn. viii. 455. V. 19. "When chanticleer with clarion shrill recalls The tardy day." Philips. Cyder, i. 753. Wakefield cites Par. Lost, b. vii. 443:

"The crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours."

"I slept not, till the early bugle-horn

Of chaunticlere had summon'd in the morn."

And Hamlet, act i. sc. 1. L'Allegro, ver. 53. To which add Quarles. Argalus and Parthenia, p. 22:

22

"The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter,
Wayting upon the rising of the sunne.

The wandering swallow with her broken song."

Thomas Kyd has also joined the two images (England's Parnassus, p. 325):

V. 21. Compare Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1062.

"Nam jam non domus accipiet se læta, neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Præripere.'

Lucretius, iii. 907.

Horace has added to the picture an image copied by Gray:

"Quod si pudica mulier, in partem juvet
Domum, atque dulces liberos,