phising children; Henry Carey (see introductory note to No. 16) nicknamed him 'Namby-Pamby"; but the charming simplicity of these poems has kept alive his memory, whilst his more pretentious work has been forgotten. Metre. A simple trochaic line of four accents, often used by Shakespeare and Milton. In a long poem it becomes monotonous: hence Milton in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso varies it continually. So, too, Keats and Shelley varied it in such poems as the Ode on the Poets (G.T., CCIX.) and To a Lady, with a Guitar (G. T., ccc.). In Philips' poem the only variation is in the last couplet, where the slower iambic movement is appropriate to the reflective tone of the conclusion. 1. Timely, seasonable, early. The force of the epithet is not very clear. Does it mean that the parents are in the prime of life? 4. solicitous, involving anxious care (as precious and fragile). 5. still, always. 7. gossip, in its modern sense of tattler.' Gossip was originally god-sib, a kinsman with respect to God, a sponsor at baptism, godfather or godmother. 13. Yet, as yet. "In our present English, when yet, in the sense it has here, is placed before the verb of its sentence, we qualify it by prefixing as. We could say either 'While there was not yet any fear of Jove' or 'While as yet there was no fear of Jove (Hales, note on Il Penseroso, 1. 30). ووو 18. Moduling, a variation for 'modulating'-i.e. forming sound to a certain key or to certain notes. 22. bloomy, full of blooms or blossoms, flowery. Used by Milton, Sonnet I., "O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve. 7. When Britain first at Heaven's command JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748) is best known as the author of The Seasons, a blank verse poem of very considerable merit, full of genuine feeling for Nature, though the language is the artificial diction of the eighteenth century. Rule Britannia probably owes its inclusion in the Golden Treasury to its fame and popularity as a national song rather than to its possession of any of the higher qualities of lyric poetry. 2. main. The full phrase is the main sea. King Lear, III. i. 6, main-main-land. 66 In Shakespeare, 3. charter, a writing bestowing privileges or rights" (Dr. Johnson). 11. Compare the language about Rome put into the mouth of Hannibal by Horace, Odes, Iv. iv. "Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus ("So the broad oak that spreads its dusky shade And Roman dames for aye blazon their husbands' worth." 17. generous flame, fire of high-spirited indignation. Generous is properly of noble race' (Lat. generosus), then applied to the qualities that are supposed to accompany noble birth. Cp. Pope: "Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good, With manners generous as his noble blood." 19. the rural reign. It is not easy to fix the sense in which Thomson uses this phrase. Reign' in the eighteenth century often meant 'realm'-cp. No. 36. 12, No. 48. 36-so that the words need only mean, "To thee belongs the country.' But probably more than this is implied: "Thine are the triumphs of agriculture. Cp. Virgil's praise of Italy: Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus (Georgics, II. 173). 23. still, always. 8. Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! The Bard was first printed in 1757 with the Progress of Poesy (No. 26) at Horace Walpole's private press, Strawberry Hill. Gray had written it at various times during the two previous years. "In 1757, when this splendid ode was completed, so very little had been printed, whether in Wales or in England, in regard to Welsh poetry, that it is hard to discover whence Gray drew his Cyinric allusions. The fabled massacre of the Bards (shown to be wholly groundless in Stephens' Literature of the Kymry) appears first in the family history of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (cir. 1600), not published till 1773; but the story seems to have passed in MS. to Carte's History, whence it may have been taken by Gray. The references to high-born Hoel and soft Llewellyn, to Cadwallo and Urien, may similarly have been derived from the 'Specimens' of early Welsh poetry by the Rev. E. Evans: as, although not published till 1764, the MS., we learn from a letter to Dr. Wharton, was in Gray's hands by July, 1760, and may have reached him by 1757. It is, however, doubtful whether Gray (of whose acquaintance with Welsh we have no evidence) must not have been also aided by some Welsh scholar. He is one of the poets least likely to scatter epithets at random: 'soft' or gentle is the epithet emphatically and specially given to Llewellyn in contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with particular propriety. Yet, without such assistance as we have suggested, Gray could hardly have selected the epithet, although applied to the King (pp. 141-3), among a crowd of others, in Llygad Gwr's Ode, printed by Evans" (F. T. P.). 66 To be appreciated and enjoyed, this Ode, like the Odes of the Greek poet whom Gray so much admired, must be read more than once. Among its excellencies we may note: (1) the grandeur of the language, which is at once stately and impassioned. Gray understood, as few have done, what Tennysor once called "the glory of words "-the resonant music, the splendour of colour, of which our English language is capable in the hands of a master. He contrasts elsewhere the poetical poverty of his own age with "the pomp and prodigality of Heaven," which he finds in Milton and Shakespeare. There is much of Milton's " pomp," and even something of Shakespeare's 'prodigality" of fine effects in this Ode. Gray is a successor of Milton in "the grand style." (2) The wealth of literary associations, some of which will be recalled in the notes that follow. deepens the charm for the instructed reader. Almost every line is reminiscent for him of some favourite passage in an older author. This was the charm sought by Virgil also. Neither the one nor the other is a plagiarist, for both knew the secret of adorning what they touch, and deepening our love for the original by adapting it to some new and worthy use. (3) The wonderful succession of historical pictures, each painted in a few terse lines. (4) The rapid movement of the verse, so aptly expressive of the bard's impassioned fury. It is obtained by alliteration, by occasional trochaic effects, and by the mid-line rhymes in the epode or third stanza of each group. The Bard and The Progress of Poesy were severely criticised at the time of their first appearance on account of their alleged obscurity. In the edition of 1768 Gray added notes, which are given below, and distinguished from the rest by being placed in inverted commas, and followed by the initial (G.). Metre.-Gray called this Ode and The Progress of Poesy "Pindaric," because they were constructed, like Greek Odes, not in uniform stanzas, but in uniform groups of stanzas. Each Ode contains three groups of three stanzas; the first two stanzas of all the groups are on the same plan; the third stanzas of the three groups correspond to each other, but differ from the first and second. "The technical Greek names for the three parts [of each group of stanzas] were στροφή, ἀντιστροφή, and ἐπῳδός— the Turn, the Counter-turn, and the After-song-names derived from the theatre, the Turn denoting the movement of the chorus from the one side of the opxnoтpá or Dance-stage to the other, the Counter-turn the reverse movement, the After-song something sung after two such movements. Odes thus constructed were called by the Greeks Epodic. Congreve is said to have been the first who so constructed English Odes. This system cannot be said to have prospered with us. Perhaps no English ear would instinctively recognise that correspondence between distant parts which is the secret of it. Certainly very many readers of the Progress of Poesy are wholly unconscious of any such harmony. Does anyone really enjoy it in itself, apart from the pleasure he may receive from his admiration of Gray's skill in construction and imitation? Does his ear hear it, or only his eye perceive it? In other words, was not Gray's labour, as far as pure metrical pleasure is concerned, wasted?" (Prof. Hales). It is probable that a larger number of readers derive pleasure from irregularly constructed English Odes, such as Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality (G. T., CCCXXXVIII.), or Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, in which the metre varies with the thought, now slow and solemn, now light and happy. Of such irregular Odes the most successful is a fragment-Coleridge's Kubla Khan (G.T., CCCXVI.). In a third class of English Odes-Spenser's Prothalamion (G.T., LXXIV.), Milton's Nativity Hymn (G. T., LXXXV.)—the stanzas all correspond with each other. 1. "The following Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death" (G.). The number of Welsh bards living at the beginning of the fourteenth century disproves the tradition. 3. Conquest's crimson wing. Victory is here personified, as often by the ancients, and represented as fanning the royal banners with her wings, which are crimson with blood. 4.Mocking the air with colours idly spread, Shakespeare's King John, v. 1” (G.). 5. (Neither) helm nor hauberk's .... "The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail, that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion" (G.). Properly hauberk means neck-covering armour : A.S. heals, the neck, and beorgan, to protect. Habergeon is etymologically a diminutive from hauberk. 7. secret, inmost. nightly, nocturnal, as in Milton, Nativity Ode (G. T., LXXXV. 179), No nightly trance, or breathed spell.' 66 8. Cambria, Wales, the land of the Cimbri or Kymry. 9. crested pride. "The crested adder's pride, Dryden's Indian Queen [III. 1]" (G.). Gray transfers the expression from the crest of a snake, the swollen part of its head, to the crest or plume of a warrior's helmet. "It 11. Snowdon "was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryri; it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the Castle of Conway, built by King Edward the First, says, 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery'; and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283), 'Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniae fecit erigi castrum forte "" (G.). was in the spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes and heights intact till his death in the preceding December. The surrender of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened a way for the invader, and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at once advanced by it" (Hales). 13, 14. Gloster, "Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law of King Edward. Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. They both were LordsMarchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the King in this expedition" (G.). 14. couch'd. "To fix the spear in the rest, in the posture of attack" (Johnson). 15. a rock. Probably Gray meant Pen-maen-mawr, the height referred to in Milton's Lycidas (G. T., LXXXIX. 52): 66 For neither were ye playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie." The epithet shaggy in 1. 11 may have been a reminiscence of Milton's next line-" Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high." 16. old, a favourite epithet of rivers. Cp. Paradise Lost, 1. 420, "From the bordering flood of old Euphrates." Cp. also No. 48. 9, "the hoary Thames," and Judges v. 21, "that ancient river, the river Kishon." 19. "The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel. |