adjacent country. East and west from the church of Stoke-Pogis, towards Stoke Green in the one direction and towards Farnham Royal in the other, there rises a gentle acclivity, from which the ground gradually slopes southward to the Thames, and which lies opposite those "distant spires" and "antique towers" which Gray has sung in melodious numbers. The woodland parish of Stoke is full of little rights-of-way, meadow-paths without hedges, that skirt the breast of the ridge I speak of, and reveal against the southern sky the embattled outline of Windsor. The Eton Ode is redolent of Stoke-Pogis, and to have sauntered where Gray himself must have muttered his verses as they took shape, gives the reader a certain sense of confidence in the poet's sincerity. Gray had of late been much exercised about Eton; to see a place so full of reminiscences, and yet be too distant to have news of it, this was provoking to his fancy. In his last letter to West he starts the reflection that he developed a few months later in the Ode. It puzzled him to think that Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax, whom he could remember as "dirty boys playing at cricket," were now statesmen, while, "as for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor the wiser than I was then, no, not for having been beyond the sea." Lord Sandwich, of course, as all readers of lampoons remember, remained Gray's pet aversion to the end of his life, the type to him of the man who, without manners, or parts, or character, could force his way into power by the sheer insolence of wealth. The Eton Ode was inspired by the regret that the illusions of boyhood, the innocence that comes not of virtue but of inexperience, the sweetness born not of a good heart but of a good digestion, the elation which childish spirits give and which owes nothing to anger or dissipation, that these simple qualities cannot be preserved through life. Gray was, or thought he was, "never a bit the older" than he was at Eton, and it seemed to him that the world would be better if Lord Sandwich could have been kept for ever in the same infantile simplicity. This description of the joyous innocence of boyhood, a theme requiring indeed the optimism of a Pangloss, has never been surpassed as an ex parte statement on the roseate and ideal side of the question; that the view of ethics is quite elementary, and would have done honour to the experience and science of one of Gray's good old aunts, detracts in no sense from the positive beauty of the poem as a strain of reflection; and it has enjoyed a popularity with successive generations which puts it almost outside the pale of verbal criticism. When a short ode of one hundred lines has enriched our language with at least three phrases which have become part and parcel of our daily speech, it may be taken for granted that it is very admirably worded. Indeed the Eton Ode is one of those poems which have suffered from a continued excess of popularity, and its famous felicities, "to snatch a fearful joy," "regardless of their doom, the little victims play," "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," have suffered the extreme degradation as well as the loftiest honour which attends on passages of national verse, since they have been so universally extolled that they have finally become commonplace witticisms to the million. It is well to take the stanza in which such a phrase occurs, and read it anew, with a determination to forget that one of its lines has been almost effaced in vulgar traffic: While some on earnest business bent Their murmuring labours ply Some bold adventurers disdain And unknown regions dare descry; It is only in the second stanza of the Eton Ode that Gray permits himself to refer to the constant pressure of regret for his lost friend; the fields are beloved in vain, and in Wordsworth's exquisite phrase, he turns to share the rapture,-ah! with whom? In yet one other poem composed during this prolific month of August 1742, that regret serves simply to throw a veil of serious and pathetic sentiment over the tone of the reflection. The Ode on Adversity, so named by Gray himself and by his first editor Mason, but since styled, I know not why, the Hymn to Adversity, is remarkable as the first of Gray's poems in which he shows that stateliness of movement and pomp of allegorical illustration which give an individuality in his mature style. No English poet, except perhaps Milton and Shelley, has maintained the same. severe elevation throughout a long lyrical piece; perhaps the fragments of such lyrists as Simonides gave Gray the hint of this pure and cold manner of writing. The shadowy personages of allegory throng around us, and we are not certain that we distinguish them from one another. The indifferent critic may be supposed to ask, which is Prosperity and which is Folly, and how am I to distinguish them from the Summer Friend and from Thoughtless Joy Adversity herself is an abstraction which has few terrors and few allurements for us, and in listening to the address made to her by the poet, we are apt to forget her in our appreciation of the balanced rhythm and rich persuasive sound: Wisdom in sable garb arrayed, Immersed in rapt'rous thought profound, With leaden eye that loves the ground, Warm Charity, the general friend, With Justice, to herself severe, And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. O gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread goddess, lay thy chast'ning hand! Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning mien, Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear, To soften, not to wound, my heart. Exact my own defects to scan, What others are to feel, and know myself a Man. This last stanza, where he gets free from the allegorical personages, is undoubtedly the best; and the curious couplet about the " generous spark" seems to me to be probably a reference to the quarrel with Walpole. If this be thought fantastic, it must be remembered that Gray's circle of experience and emotion was unusually narrow. To return to the treatment of allegory and the peculiar style of this ode, we are confronted by the curious fact that it seems impossible to claim for these qualities, hitherto unobserved in English poetry, precedency in either Gray or Collins. Actual priority, of course, belongs to Gray, for Collins wrote nothing of a serious nature till 1745 or 1746; but his Odes, though so similar, or rather so analogous, to Gray's, that every critic has considered them as holding a distinct place together in literature, were certainly not in any way inspired by Gray. The latter published nothing till 1747, whereas in December, 1746, Collins' precious little volume saw the light. It is difficult to believe that Collins, at school at Winchester until 1741, at college at Oxford until 1744, could have seen any of Gray's verses, which had not then begun to circulate in MS., in the way in which long afterwards the Elegy and the Bard passed from eager hand to hand. We shall see that Gray read Collins eventually, but without interest, while Collins does not appear to have been ever conscious of Gray's existence; there was no mutual magnetic attraction between the two poets, and we must suppose their extraordinary kinship to have been a mere accident, the result of certain forces acting simultaneously on more or less similar intellectual compounds. There was no other resemblance between them, as men, than this one gift of clear, pure, Simonidean song. Collins was simply a reed, cut short and notched by the great god Pan, for the production of enchanting flutemelodies at intervals; but for all other human purposes a vain and empty thing indeed. In Gray the song, important as it was, seemed merely one phase of a deep and consistent character, of a brain almost universally accomplished, of a man, in short, and not of a mere musical instrument. One more work of great importance was begun at Stoke in the autumn of 1742, the Elegy wrote in a Country Church-Yard. It is, unfortunately, impossible to say what form it originally took, or what lines or thoughts now existing in it are part of the original scheme. We shall examine this poem at length when we F |