They kept the
noiseless
tenor of their way.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
He soon be-
came drawn into open political life, entering the Irish Parliament in
1775
In Parliament he espoused the popular cause. His memorable
displays of oratory followed fast and plentifully. On April 19th, 1780,
he attacked the right of England to legis-
late for Ireland. With that address his rep-
utation was made. He became incessant in
his efforts to remove oppressive legislation.
By his eloquence he quickened into life a
national spirit, to culminate in a convention
at Dungannon on February 15th, 1782, where
resolutions in favor of legislative independ-
ence were stormily adopted. Presently, after
a speech of surpassing power from him, the
Declaration of Rights Bill was passed unani-
mously by both houses, with an unwilling
enactment from England. The idol now of
Ireland, Grattan was voted by its Parliament
a grant of £50,000 "as a testimony of na-
tional gratitude for great national services. " The next eighteen years
saw him resolute to secure for Ireland liberal laws, greater commer-
cial freedom, better conditions for the peasantry, the wiping out of
Parliamentary corruption, and especially the absolute emancipation of
the Roman Catholics. After the Union he lived in retirement, devoting
himself to the study of the classics and to the education of his child-
ren until 1805. Then at the request of Fox he entered the imperial
Parliament, making his first speech in favor of Fox's motion for a
committee on the Roman Catholic Petition, an address described as
"one of the most brilliant speeches ever made within the walls of
Parliament. " In 1806 he was elected a member for Dublin, which city
he represented until his decease. His last speech was made on May
5th, 1819, in favor of Roman Catholic emancipation. It is to be noted
that he was by profession and conviction a Protestant. He died in
HENRY GRATTAN
## p. 6616 (#610) ###########################################
6616
HENRY GRATTAN
1820. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Chat-
ham and Fox.
In spite of great natural drawbacks, Grattan achieved the highest
rank as an orator; and his passionate eloquence has rarely been
equaled in fervor and originality.
ON THE CHARACTER OF CHATHAM
THE
HE Secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached
him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his
character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind
overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so
impaired in his presence that he conspired to remove him, in
order to be relieved from his superiority. No State chicanery,
no narrow system of vicious politics, sank him to the vulgar
level of the great; but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable,
his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without divid-
ing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age
unanimous.
France sank beneath him. With one hand he smote the
house of Bourbon, and wielded with the other the democracy of
England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes
were to affect, not England and the present age only, but Europe
and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes
were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the sug-
gestions of an understanding animated by order and enlightened
by prophecy.
The ordinary feelings which render life amiable and indolent
were unknown to him. No domestic difficulty, no domestic weak-
ness reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life,
and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our
system to counsel and to decide. A character so exalted, so
strenuous, so various, and so authoritative astonished a corrupt
age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt, through all
her classes of venality. Corruption imagined indeed that she
had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the
ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the
calamities of the enemy refuted her.
Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence
was an era in the Senate; peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly
## p. 6617 (#611) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6617
expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like
the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of
Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder and sometimes the
music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the
understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation, nor
was he, like Townshend, forever on the rack of exertion; but
rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by
flashings of the mind, which like those of his eye were felt but
could not be followed.
Upon the whole, there was something in this man that could
create, subvert, or reform: an understanding, a spirit, and an
eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds
of slavery asunder and to rule the wilderness of free minds with
unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm
empires, and strike a blow in the world which should resound
throughout the universe.
OF THE INJUSTICE OF DISQUALIFICATION OF CATHOLICS
From the Speech of May 31st, 1811
WHA
HATEVER belongs to the authority of God, or to the laws of
nature, is necessarily beyond the province and sphere of
human institution and government. The Roman Catholic,
when you disqualify him on the ground of his religion, may with
great justice tell you that you are not his God, that he cannot
mold or fashion his faith by your decrees. You may inflict pen-
alties, and he may suffer them in silence; but if Parliament as-
sume the prerogative of Heaven, and enact laws to impose upon
the people a different religion, the people will not obey such
laws. If you pass an act to impose a tax or regulate a duty,
the people can go to the roll to learn what are the provisions of
the law. But whenever you take upon yourselves to legislate.
for God, though there may be truth in your enactments, you
have no authority to enforce them. In such a case, the people
will not go to the roll of Parliament, but to the Bible, the testa-
ment of God's will, to ascertain his law and their duty. When
once man goes out of his sphere, and says he will legislate for
God, he in fact makes himself God. But this I do not charge
upon the Parliament, because in none of the Penal Acts has the
## p. 6618 (#612) ###########################################
6618
HENRY GRATTAN
Parliament imposed a religious creed. It is not to be traced in
the qualification oath, nor in the declaration required. The qual-
ifying oath, as to the great number of offices and seats in Par-
liament, scrupulously evades religious distinctions; a Dissenter of
any class may take it, a Deist, an atheist, may likewise take it.
The Catholics are alone excepted; and for what reason? Certainly
not because the internal character of the Catholic religion is
inherently vicious; not because it necessarily incapacitates those
who profess it to make laws for their fellow-citizens. If a Deist
be fit to sit in Parliament, it can hardly be urged that a Christ-
ian is unfit. If an atheist be competent to legislate for his coun-
try, surely this privilege cannot be denied to the believer in the
divinity of our Savior. But let me ask you if you have forgotten
what was the faith of your ancestors, or if you are prepared to
assert that the men who procured your liberties are unfit to make
your laws? Or do you forget the tempests by which the Dissent-
ing classes of the community were at a former period agitated,
or in what manner you fixed the rule of peace over that wild
scene of anarchy and commotion? If we attend to the present
condition and habits of these classes, do we not find their con-
troversies subsisting in full vigor? and can it be said that their
jarring sentiments and clashing interests are productive of any
disorder in the State; or that the Methodist himself, in all his
noisy familiarity with his Maker, is a dangerous or disloyal sub-
ject? Upon what principle can it be argued that the application
of a similar policy would not conciliate the Catholics, and pro-
mote the general interests of the empire? I can trace the con-
tinuance of their incapacities to nothing else than a political
combination; a combination that condemned the Catholic religion,
not as a heresy, but as a symptom of a civil alienation. By this
doctrine, the religion is not so much an evil in itself as a perpet-
ual token of political disaffection. In the spirit of this liberal
interpretation, you once decreed to take away their arms, and on
another occasion ordered all Papists to be removed from London.
In the whole subsequent course of administration, the religion has
continued to be esteemed the infallible symptom of a propensity
to rebel. Known or suspected Papists were once the objects of
the severest jealousy and the bitterest enactments. Some of these
statutes have been repealed, and the jealousy has since somewhat
abated; but the same suspicions, although in a less degree, per-
vade your councils. Your imaginations are still infected with
## p. 6619 (#613) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6619
apprehensions of the proneness of the Catholics to make cause
with a foreign foe. A treaty has lately been made with the
King of the Two Sicilies. May I ask: Is his religion the evidence
of the warmth of his attachment to your alliance? Does it enter
into your calculation as one of the motives that must incline him
to our friendship, in preference to the friendship of the State
professing his own faith? A similar treaty has been recently
entered into with the Prince Regent of Portugal, professing the
Roman Catholic religion; and one million granted last year and
two millions this session, for the defense of Portugal. Nay, even
in the treaty with the Prince Regent of Portugal, there is an
article which stipulates that we shall not make peace with France
unless Portugal shall be restored to the house of Braganza. And
has the Prince of Brazil's religion been considered evidence of
his connection with the enemy? You have not one ally who is
not Catholic; and will you continue to disqualify Irish Catholics,
who fight with you and your allies, because their religion is evi-
dence of disaffection?
But if the Catholic religion be this evidence of repugnance, is
Protestantism the proof of affection to the Crown and government
of England? For an answer, let us look at America. In vain
did you send your armies there; in vain did you appeal to the
ties of common origin and common religion. America joined
with France, and adopted a connection with a Catholic govern-
ment. Turn to Prussia, and behold whether her religion has had
any effect on her political character. Did the faith of Denmark
prevent the attack on Copenhagen? It is admitted on all sides
that the Catholics have demonstrated their allegiance in as strong
a manner as the willing expenditure of blood and treasure can
evince. And remember that the French go not near so far in
their defense of Catholicism, as you in your hatred of it in your
own subjects and your reverence for it in your allies. They
have not scrupled to pull down the ancient fabrics of supersti-
tion in the countries subjected to their arms. Upon a review of
these facts, I am justified in assuming that there is nothing in-
herent in Catholicism which either proves disaffection, or disqual-
ifies for public trusts. The immediate inference is that they
have as much right as any dissentient sect to the enjoyment of
civil privileges and a participation of equal rights; that they are
as fit morally and politically to hold offices in the State or seats
in Parliament. Those who dispute the conclusion will find it
## p. 6620 (#614) ###########################################
6620
HENRY GRATTAN
their duty to controvert the reasoning on which it is founded. I
do not believe the Church is in any danger; but if it is, I am
sure that we are in a wrong way to secure it. If our laws will
battle against Providence, there can be no doubt of the issue of
the conflict between the ordinances of God and the decrees of
man: transient must be the struggle, rapid the event.
Let us
suppose an extreme case, but applicable to the present point:
Suppose the Thames were to inundate its banks, and suddenly
swelling, enter this House during our deliberations (an event
which I greatly deprecate, from my private friendship with many
members who might happen to be present, and my sense of the
great exertions which many of them have made for the public
interest), and a motion of adjournment being made, should be
opposed, and an address to Providence moved that it would
be graciously pleased to turn back the overflow and direct the
waters into another channel. This, it will be said, would be
absurd; but consider whether you are acting upon a principle of
greater intrinsic wisdom, when after provoking the resentments
you arm and martialize the ambition of men, under the vain
assurance that Providence will work a miracle in the constitution
of human nature, and dispose it to pay injustice with affection,
oppression with cordial support. This is in fact the true char-
acter of your expectations; nothing less than that the Author of
the Universe should subvert his laws to ratify your statutes, and
disturb the settled course of nature to confirm the weak, the base
expedients of man. What says the Decalogue? Honor thy father.
What says the penal law? Take away his estate! Again, says
the Decalogue, Do not steal. The law, on the contrary, pro-
claims, You may rob a Catholic!
ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPARTE
From the Speech of Ma 25th, 1815
HE French government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective,
THE
aggressive, and predatory; her armies live to fight, and
fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the
object of that war the conquest of Europe. What such a person
as Bonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may
judge by what he has done and first he took possession of a
greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he
:
## p. 6621 (#615) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6621
made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King
of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he
imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Por-
tugal, and formed his plan to take possession of the Crown of
England. England had checked his designs; her trident had
stirred up his empire from its foundation. He complained of her
tyranny at sea; but it was her power at sea which arrested his
tyranny on land, the navy of England saved Europe. Knowing
this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the
accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction.
of her marine necessary for the conquest of England. Accord-
ingly, besides raising an army of 60,000 men for the invasion
of England, he applied himself to the destruction of her com-
merce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this
object and on his plan of a Western empire, he conceived and
in part executed the design of consigning to plunder and de-
struction the vast regions of Russia. He quits the genial clime
of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an
immense empire; he abandons comfort and security, and he hur-
ries to the Pole to hazard them all, and with them the compan-
ions of his victories and the fame and fruits of his crimes and
his talents, on speculation of leaving in Europe, throughout the
whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation. To
oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great
potentate of the north from his gloomy recesses advances to
defend himself against the voracity of ambition, amid the steril-
ity of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous; it feasts on famine
and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice in order to
commit a robbery on desolation. The power of the north, I say,
joins another prince, whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the
whole of his authority,- the King of Prussia; and then another
potentate, whom Bonaparte had deprived of the principal part of
his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers,
-
physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in
Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the
achievements and renown of your great commander [the Duke
of Wellington], together with the precipitation of his own ambi-
tion, combine to accomplish his destruction; Bonaparte is con-
quered. He who said, "I will be like the Most High," he who
smote the nations with a continual stroke,- this short-lived son
of the morning, Lucifer,- falls, and the earth is at rest; the
―
## p. 6622 (#616) ###########################################
6622
HENRY GRATTAN
phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three kings to
the gates of Paris: there they stand, the late victims of his
ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny and the masters
of his empire. Without provocation he had gone to their coun-
tries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they
came to his country with life and liberty: they do an act unpar-
alleled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor
malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to
his subjects liberty, and to himself life and royalty. This is
greater than conquest! The present race must confess their vir-
tues, and ages to come must crown their monuments, and place
them above heroes and kings in glory everlasting.
-
Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart
of Europe, a tyranny founded on the triumph of the army
over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize
throughout Europe the domination of the sword,- and to reduce
to paper and parchment, Magna Charta and all our civil consti-
tutions? An experiment such as no country ever made and no
good country would ever permit: to relax the moral and religious
influences; to set heaven and earth adrift from one another, and
make God Almighty a tolerated alien in his own creation; an
insurrectionary hope to every bad man in the community, and a
frightful lesson to profit and power, vested in those who have
pandered their allegiance from king to emperor, and now found
their pretensions to domination on the merit of breaking their
oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should you do anything so
monstrous as to leave your allies in order to confirm such a sys-
tem; should you forget your name, forget your ancestors, and the
inheritance they have left you of morality and renown; should
you astonish Europe by quitting your allies to render immortal
such a composition, would not the nations exclaim: "You have
very providently watched over our interests, and very generously
have you contributed to our service,- and do you falter now? In
vain have you stopped in your own person the flying fortunes of
Europe; in vain have you taken the eagle of Napoleon and
snatched invincibility from his standard, if now, when confed-
erated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in the deser-
tion and preach the penitence of Bonaparte and the poverty of
England. "
## p. 6622 (#617) ###########################################
## p. 6622 (#618) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY.
## p. 6622 (#619) ###########################################
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## p. 6622 (#620) ###########################################
## p. 6623 (#621) ###########################################
6623
THOMAS GRAY
(1716-1771)
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
HE fame of Thomas Gray is unique among English poets, in
that, although world-wide and luminous, it springs from a
single poem, a flawless masterpiece, the Elegy Written in
a Country Church-Yard. ' This is the one production by which he is
known to the great mass of readers and will continue to be known
to coming generations; yet in his own time his other poems were
important factors, in establishing the high repute accorded to him
then and still maintained in the esteem of critics. Nevertheless, liv-
ing to be nearly fifty-five and giving himself exclusively to letters,
the whole of the work that he left behind him amounted only to
some fourteen hundred lines.
His value to literature and to posterity, therefore, is to be meas-
ured not by the quantity of his literary contributions or by any special
variety in their scope, but by a certain wholesome and independent.
influence which he exerted upon the language of poetry, and by a
rare quality of intense yet seemingly calm and almost repressed
genius, which no one among his commentators has been able to define
clearly. The most comprehensive thing ever written about him—
wise, just, witty, yet sympathetic and penetrating-is the essay by
James Russell Lowell in his final volume of criticism.
"It is the rarest thing," says Lowell, "to find genius and dilettantism
united in the same person (as for a time they were in Goethe): for genius
implies always a certain fanaticism of temperament, which, if sometimes it
seem fitful, is yet capable of intense energy on occasion; while the main char-
acteristic of the dilettante is that sort of impartiality which springs from
inertia of mind, admirable for observation, incapable of turning it to practical
account. Yet we have, I think, an example of this rare combination of quali
ties in Gray; and it accounts both for the kind of excellence to which he
attained, and for the way in which he disappointed expectation.
. . He
is especially interesting as an artist in words and phrases, a literary type far
less common among writers of English than it is in France or Italy, where per-
haps the traditions of Latin culture were never wholly lost.
When so
many have written so much, we shall the more readily pardon the man who
has written too little or just enough. "
•
## p. 6624 (#622) ###########################################
6624
THOMAS GRAY
He was born in London, December 26th, 1716, the son of a money
scrivener who had dissipated most of his inherited property, but was
skilled in music, and perhaps transmitted to the son that musical
element which gives beauty and strength to his poetry. ' Gray's
mother was a woman of character, who with his aunt set up an
India warehouse and supported herself; also sending the young man
to St. Peter's College, Cambridge, after his studies at Eton. Leaving
college without a degree, he traveled on the Continent of Europe
with Horace Walpole in 1739; then returned to Cambridge and passed
the remainder of his life in the university, as a bachelor of civil law
nominally, not practicing, but devoting himself to study and to
excursions through rural England. He had a profound and passionate
love for nature, a kind of religious exaltation in the contemplation
of it and in mountain worship, which was at variance with the pre-
vailing eighteenth-century literary mood and prefigured the feeling
of Wordsworth. His mother having retired to Stoke Poges, Bucking-
hamshire, he often made visits there; and the church-yard of his
deathless Elegy is generally believed to be that of the parish
church at Stoke Poges. It was here that he was laid to rest in
the same tomb with his mother and his aunt, after his death, July
24th, 1771.
(
The 'Elegy' was finished in 1749. He had begun writing it seven
years before.
This has sometimes been alluded to as an instance in
point of Horace's advice, that a poem should be matured for seven
years. The length of time given to the 'Elegy,' however, may be
accounted for partly by Gray's dilatory habits of writing, and partly
by the parallel of Tennyson's long delay in perfecting the utterance
of his meditations on the death of his friend Hallam through In
Memoriam. ' Gray's dearest friend, Richard West, died in 1742; and
it was apparently under the stress of that sorrow that he began the
'Elegy,' which was completed only in 1749. Two years later it was
published. It won the popular heart immediately, and passed through
four editions in the first twelvemonth.
Of Gray's other poems, those which have left the deepest impres
sion are his 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,' 'The
Progress of Poesy,' and 'The Bard. ' The last two are somewhat
Pindaric in style, but also suggest the influence of the Italian can-
zone. In the Eton College ode, his first published piece, occurs the
phrase since grown proverbial, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly
to be wise. " It is a curious fact that while most readers know Gray
only as the author of the 'Elegy,' every one is familiar with certain
lines coined by him, but unaware of their source. For instance, in
'The Progress of Poesy,' he speaks of
"The unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame. »
## p. 6625 (#623) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6625
«<
It is in the same place that he describes Milton as blasted with ex-
cess of light," and in alluding to Dryden, evolves the image of
"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. »
His, too, in The Bard,' is the now well-known line-
"Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. »
Many of his finest expressions are in part derived from classic or
other poets; but he showed undeniable genius in his adaptation,
transformation, or new creation from these suggestive passages.
Gray was small and delicate in person, handsome and refined, fond
of fashionable dress, and preferred to be known as a "gentleman"
rather than a poet. He was very reticent, somewhat melancholy, and
an invalid; a man also of vast erudition, being learned not only in
literature but in botany, zoölogy, antiquities, architecture, art, history,
and philosophy as well. He enjoyed the distinction of refusing the
post of poet laureate, after the death of Cibber. On the other hand,
he coveted the place of professor of modern literature and languages
at Cambridge University, to which he was appointed in 1769; but he
never performed any of the duties of his professorship beyond that of
drawing the salary.
He brought forth nothing in the special kinds of knowledge which
he had acquired in such large measure; and the actual ideas con-
veyed in his poetry were not original, but savored rather of the
commonplace. Lowell says of the Elegy that it won its popularity
"not through any originality of thought, but far more through origi-
nality of sound. " There must, however, be some deeper reason than
this for the grasp which it has upon the minds and hearts of all
classes. Two elements of power and popularity it certainly possessed
in the highest degree. One is the singular simplicity of its language
(a result of consummate art), which makes it understandable by every-
body. The other is the depth and the sincerity of the emotion with
which it imbues thoughts, sentiments, and reflections that are com-
mon to the whole of mankind. The very unproductiveness of Gray's
mind in other directions probably helped this one product. The
quintessence of all his learning, his perceptive faculty, and his medi-
tations was infused into the life-blood of this immortal poem.
George Parsons Lathrop
XI-415
## p. 6626 (#624) ###########################################
6626
THOMAS GRAY
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD
HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
THE
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
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:
Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering 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;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
## p. 6627 (#625) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6627
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of Pain and Ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,—
Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And 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 shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
[The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave, and idolize success;
But more to Innocence their safety owe,
Than Power and Genius e'er conspired to bless. ]
[Hark, how the sacred calm that broods around
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease,
## p. 6628 (#626) ###########################################
6628
THOMAS GRAY
In still, small accents whispering from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. ]
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life.
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their names, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
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.
For thee who, mindful of th' unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If, chance, by lonely Contemplation led.
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say: -
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
"One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree:
## p. 6629 (#627) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6629
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:
"The next, with dirges due in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne; -
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. "
["There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground. "]
THE EPITAPH
HERE rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had,-a tear;
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)--
The Bosom of his Father and his God.
[The stanzas included in brackets were omitted by Gray in the first edition
of the Elegy,' and as sanctioned by him or by later editors are (except as
to the third one) of infrequent appearance in the poem. ]
ODE ON THE SPRING
L
o! WHERE the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus's train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
The untaught harmony of spring;
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.
## p. 6630 (#628) ###########################################
5630
THOMAS GRAY
Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!
Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark! how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed spring,
And float amid the liquid noon;
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.
To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of Man;
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the Busy and the Gay
But flutter through life's little day,
In Fortune's varying colors drest;
Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
We frolic while 'tis May.
## p. 6631 (#629) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6631
ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE
YⓇ
E DISTANT spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way!
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
Say, Father Thames,- for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green,
The paths of pleasure trace,—
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?
While some, on earnest business bent,
Their murmuring labors ply
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
And unknown regions dare descry;
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
## p. 6632 (#630) ###########################################
6632
THOMAS GRAY
Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,
And lively cheer, of vigor born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of morn.
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to-day:
Yet see, how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,
And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah, show them where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murtherous band!
Ah! tell them they are men!
These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.
Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness's altered eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.
Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,-
## p. 6633 (#631) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6633
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every laboring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.
To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more: where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
THE BARD
A PINDARIC ODE
"R
UIN seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, -
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears! "
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance;
"To arms! " cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance.
On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air;)
## p. 6634 (#632) ###########################################
6634
THOMAS GRAY
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre:
"Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.
"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
That hushed the stormy main;
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed;
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries.
No more I weep: they do not sleep;
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land;
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.
"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race;
Give ample room, and verge enough,
The characters of hell to trace;
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.
## p. 6635 (#633) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6635
"Mighty victor, mighty lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes:
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
"Fill high the sparkling bowl!
The rich repast prepare!
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And through the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed,
Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,
And spare the meek usurper's holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.
"Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun. )
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done. )
Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track that fires the western skies,
They melt, ey vanish from my eyes.
## p. 6636 (#634) ###########################################
6636
THOMAS GRAY
But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!
"Girt with many a baron bold,
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames and statesmen old
In bearded majesty appear.
In the midst a form divine!
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line;
Her lion port, her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to virgin grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air;
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear!
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored wings.
"The verse adorn again
Fierce war, and faithful love,
And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.
In buskined measures move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;
And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.
Fond impious man, thinkest thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me; with joy I see
The different doom our fates assign;
Be thine despair, and sceptred care;
To triumph and to die are mine. "
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.
## p. 6637 (#635) ###########################################
6637
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS
HE greater monuments of Greece all men know, the incom-
parable peaks of the chain; and the chain lasted seventeen
hundred years, nor ever sank to the dead level about. The
steadfast sight of these great Greek originals warps and dwarfs our
conception of Greek life. We behold the Parthenon; we forget that
each village shrine had its sense of proportion and subtle curve. The
Venus of Melos we remember, and the Victory is poised forever on
its cliff; but Tanagra figurines tell as much, and reveal more, of
Greek life. Nor is it otherwise in letters. The great names all know.
For a brief span they stood close together, and the father who heard
Eschylus might have told his experience to his long-lived son who
read Aristotle, while between the two stood all the greatest genius
that makes Greece Greek,- save only Homer. So brief was the
noonday,— and it is at high noon, and high noon only, that men
have agreed to take the sun; but this uplift was gained in the ascent
of nigh two hundred years from the first written Greek literature
that still lives. The descent, to the last of the Greek verse which
still remained poetry, ran through thirteen centuries. Over all this
prodigious span of fifteen hundred years stretches the Greek Anthol-
ogy, a collection of 4,063 short Greek poems, two to eight lines long
for the most part, collected and re-collected through more than a
thousand years. The first of these poets, Mimnermus, was the con-
temporary of Jeremiah, and dwelt in cities that shuddered over tidings
of Babylonian invasion. The last, Cometas, was the contemporary of
Edward the Confessor, and dreaded Seljuk and Turk.
As the epic impulse faded, and before Greek genius for tragedy
rose, the same race and dialect which had given epic narrative the
proud, full verse that filled like a sail to zephyr and to storm alike,
devised the elegiac couplet. With its opening even flow, its swifter
rush in the second line, and its abrupt pause, it was a medium in
which not narrative but man spoke, whether personal in passion, or
impersonal in the dedication of a statue, or in epitaph. This verse
had conventions as rigorous and restrained as the sonnet, and was
briefer. It served as well for the epitaph of Thermopylæ as for the
cradle-bier of a child, dead new-born; and lent itself as gracefully to
the gift of a bunch of roses as it swelled with some sonorous blast
## p. 6638 (#636) ###########################################
6638
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
of patriotism. It could sharpen to a gibe, or sink to a wail at un-
toward fate. Through a period twice as long as the life of English
letters, these short poems set forth the vision of life, the ways and
works of men, the love and death of mortals. These lines of weight,
of moment, always of grace and often of inspiration, stood on mile-
stones; they graced the base of statues; they were inscribed on
tombs; they stood over doorways; they were painted on vases. The
rustic shrines held them, and on the front of the great temple they
were borne. In this form, friend wrote to friend and lover to lover.
Four or five of the best express the emotion of the passing Greek
traveler at the statue of Memnon on the Nile. The quality of verse
that fills the inn album to-day we all know; but Greek life was so
compact of form and thought that even this unknown traveler's
verse, scrawled with a stylus, still thrills, still rings, as the statue
still sounds its ancient note.
In this long succession of short poems is delineated the Greek
character, not of Athens but of the whole circle of the Mediter-
ranean. The sphered life of the race is in its subjects.
Each great
Greek victory has its epigrams. In them, statues have an immortal
life denied to marble and to bronze. The critical admiration of the
Hellene for his great men of letters stands recorded here; his early
love for the heroes of his brief-lived freedom, and his sedulous flat-
tery of the Roman lords of his slavery. Here too is his domestic life,
its joy and its sorrow. In this epigram, the maid dedicates her dolls
to Artemis; and in that, the mother, mother and priestess both, lays
down a life overflowing in good deeds and fruited with honorable
offspring. The splendid side of Greek life is painted elsewhere. Here
is its homely simplicity. The fisher again spreads his nets and the
sailor his peaked lateen sail. The hunter sets his snares and tracks
his game in the light snow. The caged partridge stretches its weary
wings in its cage, and the cat has for it a modern appetite. Men
gibe and jest. They see how hollow life is, and also how truth rings
true. Love is here, sacred and revered, in forms pure and holy; and
not less, that foul pool decked with beauty in which Greek manhood
lost its masculine virtue.
Half a century before Christ, when Greek life overspread the east-
ern Mediterranean, and in every market-place Greek was the tongue
of trade, of learning, and of gentle breeding, Greek letters grew con-
scious of its own riches. For six centuries and more, or as long as
separates us from Chaucer, men had been writing these brief epi-
grams. The first had the brevity of Simonides, the next Alexandrian
luxuriance. Many were carved by those who wrote much; more by
those who composed but two or three. In Syrian Gadara there dwelt
a Greek, Meleager, whose poetry is the very flower of fervent Greek
## p. 6639 (#637) ###########################################
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
6639
verse. Yet so near did he live to the great change which was to
overturn the gods he loved, and substitute morality for beauty as the
mainspring of life, that some who knew him must also, a brief span
of years later, have known Jesus the Christ. Meleager was the first
who gathered Greek epigrams in an Anthology, prefacing it with
such apt critical utterance as has been the despair of all critics called
since to weigh verse in ruder scales and with a poise less perfect.
He had the wide round of the best of Greek to pick from, and he
chose with unerring taste. To his collection Philippus of Thessa-
lonica, working when Paul was preaching in Jason's house, added the
work of the Roman period, the fourth development of the epigram.
Other collections between have perished, one in the third or Byzan-
tine period, in which this verse had a renaissance under Justinian.
In the tenth century a Byzantine scholar, Constantinos Cephalas,
rearranged his predecessors' collections,-Meleager's included, and
brought together the largest number which has come down to us.
The collection is known to-day as the 'Palatine Anthology,' from the
library which long owned it. His work was in the last flare of life
in the Lower Empire, when Greek heroism, for the last time, stemmed
the Moslem tide and gave Eastern Europe breathing-space. When
his successor Maximus Planudes, of the century of Petrarch,- monk,
diplomat, theologian, and phrase-maker,— addressed himself to the
last collection made, the shadow of new Italy lay over Greek life,
and the Galilean had recast the minds of men. He excluded much
that Greeks, from Meleager to Cephalas, had freely admitted, and
which modern lovers of the Anthology would be willing to see left
out of all copies but their own. The collection of Planudes long
remained alone known (first edition Florence, 1594). That of Cepha-
las survived in a single manuscript of varied fortune, seen in 1606
by Salmasius at eighteen,-happy boy, and happy manuscript! -lost
to learning for a century and a half in the Vatican, published by
Brunck, 1776, and finally edited by Frederic Jacobs, 1794-1803, five
volumes of text and three of comment, usually bound in eight. The
text has been republished by Tauchnitz, and the whole work has its
most convenient and familiar form for scholars in the edition of both
the collections of Planudes and Cephalas, with epigrams from all
other sources prepared by Frederic Dübner for Didot's 'Bibliotheca
Scriptorum Græcorum,' 1864-1872, three volumes. The Anthology as
a whole has no adequate English translation. About one-third of the
poems have a prose translation by George Burges in the 'Greek
Anthology, 1832, of Bohn's series, with versions in verse by many
hands.
----
The first English translation of selections appeared anonymously,
1791. Others have succeeded: Robert Bland and John Herman
## p. 6640 (#638) ###########################################
6640
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
Merivale, 1806; Robert Bland, 1813; Richard Garnett, 1864; Sir Edwin
Arnold, 1869; John Addington Symonds, 1873; J. W. Mackail, 1890;
Lilla Cabot Perry, 1891. A collection of selected translations edited
by Graham R. Tomson was published in 1889. Of these partial ver-
sions, the only one which approaches the incommunicable charm of the
original is Mr. Mackail's, an incomparable translation. His versions
are freely used in the selections which follow. All the metrical ver-
sions, except those by Mrs. Perry, are from Miss Tomson's collection.
But no translation equals the sanity, the brevity, the clarity of the
Greek original, qualities which have made these epigrams consum-
mate models of style to the modern world.
came drawn into open political life, entering the Irish Parliament in
1775
In Parliament he espoused the popular cause. His memorable
displays of oratory followed fast and plentifully. On April 19th, 1780,
he attacked the right of England to legis-
late for Ireland. With that address his rep-
utation was made. He became incessant in
his efforts to remove oppressive legislation.
By his eloquence he quickened into life a
national spirit, to culminate in a convention
at Dungannon on February 15th, 1782, where
resolutions in favor of legislative independ-
ence were stormily adopted. Presently, after
a speech of surpassing power from him, the
Declaration of Rights Bill was passed unani-
mously by both houses, with an unwilling
enactment from England. The idol now of
Ireland, Grattan was voted by its Parliament
a grant of £50,000 "as a testimony of na-
tional gratitude for great national services. " The next eighteen years
saw him resolute to secure for Ireland liberal laws, greater commer-
cial freedom, better conditions for the peasantry, the wiping out of
Parliamentary corruption, and especially the absolute emancipation of
the Roman Catholics. After the Union he lived in retirement, devoting
himself to the study of the classics and to the education of his child-
ren until 1805. Then at the request of Fox he entered the imperial
Parliament, making his first speech in favor of Fox's motion for a
committee on the Roman Catholic Petition, an address described as
"one of the most brilliant speeches ever made within the walls of
Parliament. " In 1806 he was elected a member for Dublin, which city
he represented until his decease. His last speech was made on May
5th, 1819, in favor of Roman Catholic emancipation. It is to be noted
that he was by profession and conviction a Protestant. He died in
HENRY GRATTAN
## p. 6616 (#610) ###########################################
6616
HENRY GRATTAN
1820. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Chat-
ham and Fox.
In spite of great natural drawbacks, Grattan achieved the highest
rank as an orator; and his passionate eloquence has rarely been
equaled in fervor and originality.
ON THE CHARACTER OF CHATHAM
THE
HE Secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached
him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his
character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind
overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so
impaired in his presence that he conspired to remove him, in
order to be relieved from his superiority. No State chicanery,
no narrow system of vicious politics, sank him to the vulgar
level of the great; but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable,
his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without divid-
ing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age
unanimous.
France sank beneath him. With one hand he smote the
house of Bourbon, and wielded with the other the democracy of
England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes
were to affect, not England and the present age only, but Europe
and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes
were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the sug-
gestions of an understanding animated by order and enlightened
by prophecy.
The ordinary feelings which render life amiable and indolent
were unknown to him. No domestic difficulty, no domestic weak-
ness reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life,
and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our
system to counsel and to decide. A character so exalted, so
strenuous, so various, and so authoritative astonished a corrupt
age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt, through all
her classes of venality. Corruption imagined indeed that she
had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the
ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the
calamities of the enemy refuted her.
Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence
was an era in the Senate; peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly
## p. 6617 (#611) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6617
expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like
the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of
Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder and sometimes the
music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the
understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation, nor
was he, like Townshend, forever on the rack of exertion; but
rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by
flashings of the mind, which like those of his eye were felt but
could not be followed.
Upon the whole, there was something in this man that could
create, subvert, or reform: an understanding, a spirit, and an
eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds
of slavery asunder and to rule the wilderness of free minds with
unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm
empires, and strike a blow in the world which should resound
throughout the universe.
OF THE INJUSTICE OF DISQUALIFICATION OF CATHOLICS
From the Speech of May 31st, 1811
WHA
HATEVER belongs to the authority of God, or to the laws of
nature, is necessarily beyond the province and sphere of
human institution and government. The Roman Catholic,
when you disqualify him on the ground of his religion, may with
great justice tell you that you are not his God, that he cannot
mold or fashion his faith by your decrees. You may inflict pen-
alties, and he may suffer them in silence; but if Parliament as-
sume the prerogative of Heaven, and enact laws to impose upon
the people a different religion, the people will not obey such
laws. If you pass an act to impose a tax or regulate a duty,
the people can go to the roll to learn what are the provisions of
the law. But whenever you take upon yourselves to legislate.
for God, though there may be truth in your enactments, you
have no authority to enforce them. In such a case, the people
will not go to the roll of Parliament, but to the Bible, the testa-
ment of God's will, to ascertain his law and their duty. When
once man goes out of his sphere, and says he will legislate for
God, he in fact makes himself God. But this I do not charge
upon the Parliament, because in none of the Penal Acts has the
## p. 6618 (#612) ###########################################
6618
HENRY GRATTAN
Parliament imposed a religious creed. It is not to be traced in
the qualification oath, nor in the declaration required. The qual-
ifying oath, as to the great number of offices and seats in Par-
liament, scrupulously evades religious distinctions; a Dissenter of
any class may take it, a Deist, an atheist, may likewise take it.
The Catholics are alone excepted; and for what reason? Certainly
not because the internal character of the Catholic religion is
inherently vicious; not because it necessarily incapacitates those
who profess it to make laws for their fellow-citizens. If a Deist
be fit to sit in Parliament, it can hardly be urged that a Christ-
ian is unfit. If an atheist be competent to legislate for his coun-
try, surely this privilege cannot be denied to the believer in the
divinity of our Savior. But let me ask you if you have forgotten
what was the faith of your ancestors, or if you are prepared to
assert that the men who procured your liberties are unfit to make
your laws? Or do you forget the tempests by which the Dissent-
ing classes of the community were at a former period agitated,
or in what manner you fixed the rule of peace over that wild
scene of anarchy and commotion? If we attend to the present
condition and habits of these classes, do we not find their con-
troversies subsisting in full vigor? and can it be said that their
jarring sentiments and clashing interests are productive of any
disorder in the State; or that the Methodist himself, in all his
noisy familiarity with his Maker, is a dangerous or disloyal sub-
ject? Upon what principle can it be argued that the application
of a similar policy would not conciliate the Catholics, and pro-
mote the general interests of the empire? I can trace the con-
tinuance of their incapacities to nothing else than a political
combination; a combination that condemned the Catholic religion,
not as a heresy, but as a symptom of a civil alienation. By this
doctrine, the religion is not so much an evil in itself as a perpet-
ual token of political disaffection. In the spirit of this liberal
interpretation, you once decreed to take away their arms, and on
another occasion ordered all Papists to be removed from London.
In the whole subsequent course of administration, the religion has
continued to be esteemed the infallible symptom of a propensity
to rebel. Known or suspected Papists were once the objects of
the severest jealousy and the bitterest enactments. Some of these
statutes have been repealed, and the jealousy has since somewhat
abated; but the same suspicions, although in a less degree, per-
vade your councils. Your imaginations are still infected with
## p. 6619 (#613) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6619
apprehensions of the proneness of the Catholics to make cause
with a foreign foe. A treaty has lately been made with the
King of the Two Sicilies. May I ask: Is his religion the evidence
of the warmth of his attachment to your alliance? Does it enter
into your calculation as one of the motives that must incline him
to our friendship, in preference to the friendship of the State
professing his own faith? A similar treaty has been recently
entered into with the Prince Regent of Portugal, professing the
Roman Catholic religion; and one million granted last year and
two millions this session, for the defense of Portugal. Nay, even
in the treaty with the Prince Regent of Portugal, there is an
article which stipulates that we shall not make peace with France
unless Portugal shall be restored to the house of Braganza. And
has the Prince of Brazil's religion been considered evidence of
his connection with the enemy? You have not one ally who is
not Catholic; and will you continue to disqualify Irish Catholics,
who fight with you and your allies, because their religion is evi-
dence of disaffection?
But if the Catholic religion be this evidence of repugnance, is
Protestantism the proof of affection to the Crown and government
of England? For an answer, let us look at America. In vain
did you send your armies there; in vain did you appeal to the
ties of common origin and common religion. America joined
with France, and adopted a connection with a Catholic govern-
ment. Turn to Prussia, and behold whether her religion has had
any effect on her political character. Did the faith of Denmark
prevent the attack on Copenhagen? It is admitted on all sides
that the Catholics have demonstrated their allegiance in as strong
a manner as the willing expenditure of blood and treasure can
evince. And remember that the French go not near so far in
their defense of Catholicism, as you in your hatred of it in your
own subjects and your reverence for it in your allies. They
have not scrupled to pull down the ancient fabrics of supersti-
tion in the countries subjected to their arms. Upon a review of
these facts, I am justified in assuming that there is nothing in-
herent in Catholicism which either proves disaffection, or disqual-
ifies for public trusts. The immediate inference is that they
have as much right as any dissentient sect to the enjoyment of
civil privileges and a participation of equal rights; that they are
as fit morally and politically to hold offices in the State or seats
in Parliament. Those who dispute the conclusion will find it
## p. 6620 (#614) ###########################################
6620
HENRY GRATTAN
their duty to controvert the reasoning on which it is founded. I
do not believe the Church is in any danger; but if it is, I am
sure that we are in a wrong way to secure it. If our laws will
battle against Providence, there can be no doubt of the issue of
the conflict between the ordinances of God and the decrees of
man: transient must be the struggle, rapid the event.
Let us
suppose an extreme case, but applicable to the present point:
Suppose the Thames were to inundate its banks, and suddenly
swelling, enter this House during our deliberations (an event
which I greatly deprecate, from my private friendship with many
members who might happen to be present, and my sense of the
great exertions which many of them have made for the public
interest), and a motion of adjournment being made, should be
opposed, and an address to Providence moved that it would
be graciously pleased to turn back the overflow and direct the
waters into another channel. This, it will be said, would be
absurd; but consider whether you are acting upon a principle of
greater intrinsic wisdom, when after provoking the resentments
you arm and martialize the ambition of men, under the vain
assurance that Providence will work a miracle in the constitution
of human nature, and dispose it to pay injustice with affection,
oppression with cordial support. This is in fact the true char-
acter of your expectations; nothing less than that the Author of
the Universe should subvert his laws to ratify your statutes, and
disturb the settled course of nature to confirm the weak, the base
expedients of man. What says the Decalogue? Honor thy father.
What says the penal law? Take away his estate! Again, says
the Decalogue, Do not steal. The law, on the contrary, pro-
claims, You may rob a Catholic!
ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPARTE
From the Speech of Ma 25th, 1815
HE French government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective,
THE
aggressive, and predatory; her armies live to fight, and
fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the
object of that war the conquest of Europe. What such a person
as Bonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may
judge by what he has done and first he took possession of a
greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he
:
## p. 6621 (#615) ###########################################
HENRY GRATTAN
6621
made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King
of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he
imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Por-
tugal, and formed his plan to take possession of the Crown of
England. England had checked his designs; her trident had
stirred up his empire from its foundation. He complained of her
tyranny at sea; but it was her power at sea which arrested his
tyranny on land, the navy of England saved Europe. Knowing
this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the
accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction.
of her marine necessary for the conquest of England. Accord-
ingly, besides raising an army of 60,000 men for the invasion
of England, he applied himself to the destruction of her com-
merce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this
object and on his plan of a Western empire, he conceived and
in part executed the design of consigning to plunder and de-
struction the vast regions of Russia. He quits the genial clime
of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an
immense empire; he abandons comfort and security, and he hur-
ries to the Pole to hazard them all, and with them the compan-
ions of his victories and the fame and fruits of his crimes and
his talents, on speculation of leaving in Europe, throughout the
whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation. To
oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great
potentate of the north from his gloomy recesses advances to
defend himself against the voracity of ambition, amid the steril-
ity of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous; it feasts on famine
and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice in order to
commit a robbery on desolation. The power of the north, I say,
joins another prince, whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the
whole of his authority,- the King of Prussia; and then another
potentate, whom Bonaparte had deprived of the principal part of
his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers,
-
physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in
Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the
achievements and renown of your great commander [the Duke
of Wellington], together with the precipitation of his own ambi-
tion, combine to accomplish his destruction; Bonaparte is con-
quered. He who said, "I will be like the Most High," he who
smote the nations with a continual stroke,- this short-lived son
of the morning, Lucifer,- falls, and the earth is at rest; the
―
## p. 6622 (#616) ###########################################
6622
HENRY GRATTAN
phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three kings to
the gates of Paris: there they stand, the late victims of his
ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny and the masters
of his empire. Without provocation he had gone to their coun-
tries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they
came to his country with life and liberty: they do an act unpar-
alleled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor
malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to
his subjects liberty, and to himself life and royalty. This is
greater than conquest! The present race must confess their vir-
tues, and ages to come must crown their monuments, and place
them above heroes and kings in glory everlasting.
-
Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart
of Europe, a tyranny founded on the triumph of the army
over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize
throughout Europe the domination of the sword,- and to reduce
to paper and parchment, Magna Charta and all our civil consti-
tutions? An experiment such as no country ever made and no
good country would ever permit: to relax the moral and religious
influences; to set heaven and earth adrift from one another, and
make God Almighty a tolerated alien in his own creation; an
insurrectionary hope to every bad man in the community, and a
frightful lesson to profit and power, vested in those who have
pandered their allegiance from king to emperor, and now found
their pretensions to domination on the merit of breaking their
oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should you do anything so
monstrous as to leave your allies in order to confirm such a sys-
tem; should you forget your name, forget your ancestors, and the
inheritance they have left you of morality and renown; should
you astonish Europe by quitting your allies to render immortal
such a composition, would not the nations exclaim: "You have
very providently watched over our interests, and very generously
have you contributed to our service,- and do you falter now? In
vain have you stopped in your own person the flying fortunes of
Europe; in vain have you taken the eagle of Napoleon and
snatched invincibility from his standard, if now, when confed-
erated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in the deser-
tion and preach the penitence of Bonaparte and the poverty of
England. "
## p. 6622 (#617) ###########################################
## p. 6622 (#618) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY.
## p. 6622 (#619) ###########################################
17
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## p. 6622 (#620) ###########################################
## p. 6623 (#621) ###########################################
6623
THOMAS GRAY
(1716-1771)
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
HE fame of Thomas Gray is unique among English poets, in
that, although world-wide and luminous, it springs from a
single poem, a flawless masterpiece, the Elegy Written in
a Country Church-Yard. ' This is the one production by which he is
known to the great mass of readers and will continue to be known
to coming generations; yet in his own time his other poems were
important factors, in establishing the high repute accorded to him
then and still maintained in the esteem of critics. Nevertheless, liv-
ing to be nearly fifty-five and giving himself exclusively to letters,
the whole of the work that he left behind him amounted only to
some fourteen hundred lines.
His value to literature and to posterity, therefore, is to be meas-
ured not by the quantity of his literary contributions or by any special
variety in their scope, but by a certain wholesome and independent.
influence which he exerted upon the language of poetry, and by a
rare quality of intense yet seemingly calm and almost repressed
genius, which no one among his commentators has been able to define
clearly. The most comprehensive thing ever written about him—
wise, just, witty, yet sympathetic and penetrating-is the essay by
James Russell Lowell in his final volume of criticism.
"It is the rarest thing," says Lowell, "to find genius and dilettantism
united in the same person (as for a time they were in Goethe): for genius
implies always a certain fanaticism of temperament, which, if sometimes it
seem fitful, is yet capable of intense energy on occasion; while the main char-
acteristic of the dilettante is that sort of impartiality which springs from
inertia of mind, admirable for observation, incapable of turning it to practical
account. Yet we have, I think, an example of this rare combination of quali
ties in Gray; and it accounts both for the kind of excellence to which he
attained, and for the way in which he disappointed expectation.
. . He
is especially interesting as an artist in words and phrases, a literary type far
less common among writers of English than it is in France or Italy, where per-
haps the traditions of Latin culture were never wholly lost.
When so
many have written so much, we shall the more readily pardon the man who
has written too little or just enough. "
•
## p. 6624 (#622) ###########################################
6624
THOMAS GRAY
He was born in London, December 26th, 1716, the son of a money
scrivener who had dissipated most of his inherited property, but was
skilled in music, and perhaps transmitted to the son that musical
element which gives beauty and strength to his poetry. ' Gray's
mother was a woman of character, who with his aunt set up an
India warehouse and supported herself; also sending the young man
to St. Peter's College, Cambridge, after his studies at Eton. Leaving
college without a degree, he traveled on the Continent of Europe
with Horace Walpole in 1739; then returned to Cambridge and passed
the remainder of his life in the university, as a bachelor of civil law
nominally, not practicing, but devoting himself to study and to
excursions through rural England. He had a profound and passionate
love for nature, a kind of religious exaltation in the contemplation
of it and in mountain worship, which was at variance with the pre-
vailing eighteenth-century literary mood and prefigured the feeling
of Wordsworth. His mother having retired to Stoke Poges, Bucking-
hamshire, he often made visits there; and the church-yard of his
deathless Elegy is generally believed to be that of the parish
church at Stoke Poges. It was here that he was laid to rest in
the same tomb with his mother and his aunt, after his death, July
24th, 1771.
(
The 'Elegy' was finished in 1749. He had begun writing it seven
years before.
This has sometimes been alluded to as an instance in
point of Horace's advice, that a poem should be matured for seven
years. The length of time given to the 'Elegy,' however, may be
accounted for partly by Gray's dilatory habits of writing, and partly
by the parallel of Tennyson's long delay in perfecting the utterance
of his meditations on the death of his friend Hallam through In
Memoriam. ' Gray's dearest friend, Richard West, died in 1742; and
it was apparently under the stress of that sorrow that he began the
'Elegy,' which was completed only in 1749. Two years later it was
published. It won the popular heart immediately, and passed through
four editions in the first twelvemonth.
Of Gray's other poems, those which have left the deepest impres
sion are his 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,' 'The
Progress of Poesy,' and 'The Bard. ' The last two are somewhat
Pindaric in style, but also suggest the influence of the Italian can-
zone. In the Eton College ode, his first published piece, occurs the
phrase since grown proverbial, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly
to be wise. " It is a curious fact that while most readers know Gray
only as the author of the 'Elegy,' every one is familiar with certain
lines coined by him, but unaware of their source. For instance, in
'The Progress of Poesy,' he speaks of
"The unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame. »
## p. 6625 (#623) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6625
«<
It is in the same place that he describes Milton as blasted with ex-
cess of light," and in alluding to Dryden, evolves the image of
"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. »
His, too, in The Bard,' is the now well-known line-
"Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. »
Many of his finest expressions are in part derived from classic or
other poets; but he showed undeniable genius in his adaptation,
transformation, or new creation from these suggestive passages.
Gray was small and delicate in person, handsome and refined, fond
of fashionable dress, and preferred to be known as a "gentleman"
rather than a poet. He was very reticent, somewhat melancholy, and
an invalid; a man also of vast erudition, being learned not only in
literature but in botany, zoölogy, antiquities, architecture, art, history,
and philosophy as well. He enjoyed the distinction of refusing the
post of poet laureate, after the death of Cibber. On the other hand,
he coveted the place of professor of modern literature and languages
at Cambridge University, to which he was appointed in 1769; but he
never performed any of the duties of his professorship beyond that of
drawing the salary.
He brought forth nothing in the special kinds of knowledge which
he had acquired in such large measure; and the actual ideas con-
veyed in his poetry were not original, but savored rather of the
commonplace. Lowell says of the Elegy that it won its popularity
"not through any originality of thought, but far more through origi-
nality of sound. " There must, however, be some deeper reason than
this for the grasp which it has upon the minds and hearts of all
classes. Two elements of power and popularity it certainly possessed
in the highest degree. One is the singular simplicity of its language
(a result of consummate art), which makes it understandable by every-
body. The other is the depth and the sincerity of the emotion with
which it imbues thoughts, sentiments, and reflections that are com-
mon to the whole of mankind. The very unproductiveness of Gray's
mind in other directions probably helped this one product. The
quintessence of all his learning, his perceptive faculty, and his medi-
tations was infused into the life-blood of this immortal poem.
George Parsons Lathrop
XI-415
## p. 6626 (#624) ###########################################
6626
THOMAS GRAY
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD
HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
THE
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
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:
Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering 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;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
## p. 6627 (#625) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6627
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of Pain and Ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,—
Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And 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 shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
[The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave, and idolize success;
But more to Innocence their safety owe,
Than Power and Genius e'er conspired to bless. ]
[Hark, how the sacred calm that broods around
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease,
## p. 6628 (#626) ###########################################
6628
THOMAS GRAY
In still, small accents whispering from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. ]
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life.
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their names, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
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.
For thee who, mindful of th' unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If, chance, by lonely Contemplation led.
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say: -
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
"One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree:
## p. 6629 (#627) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6629
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:
"The next, with dirges due in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne; -
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. "
["There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground. "]
THE EPITAPH
HERE rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had,-a tear;
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)--
The Bosom of his Father and his God.
[The stanzas included in brackets were omitted by Gray in the first edition
of the Elegy,' and as sanctioned by him or by later editors are (except as
to the third one) of infrequent appearance in the poem. ]
ODE ON THE SPRING
L
o! WHERE the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus's train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
The untaught harmony of spring;
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.
## p. 6630 (#628) ###########################################
5630
THOMAS GRAY
Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!
Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark! how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed spring,
And float amid the liquid noon;
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.
To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of Man;
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the Busy and the Gay
But flutter through life's little day,
In Fortune's varying colors drest;
Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
We frolic while 'tis May.
## p. 6631 (#629) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6631
ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE
YⓇ
E DISTANT spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way!
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
Say, Father Thames,- for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green,
The paths of pleasure trace,—
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?
While some, on earnest business bent,
Their murmuring labors ply
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
And unknown regions dare descry;
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
## p. 6632 (#630) ###########################################
6632
THOMAS GRAY
Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,
And lively cheer, of vigor born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of morn.
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to-day:
Yet see, how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,
And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah, show them where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murtherous band!
Ah! tell them they are men!
These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.
Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness's altered eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.
Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,-
## p. 6633 (#631) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6633
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every laboring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.
To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more: where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
THE BARD
A PINDARIC ODE
"R
UIN seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, -
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears! "
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance;
"To arms! " cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance.
On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air;)
## p. 6634 (#632) ###########################################
6634
THOMAS GRAY
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre:
"Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.
"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
That hushed the stormy main;
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed;
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries.
No more I weep: they do not sleep;
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land;
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.
"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race;
Give ample room, and verge enough,
The characters of hell to trace;
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.
## p. 6635 (#633) ###########################################
THOMAS GRAY
6635
"Mighty victor, mighty lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes:
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
"Fill high the sparkling bowl!
The rich repast prepare!
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And through the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed,
Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,
And spare the meek usurper's holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.
"Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun. )
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done. )
Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track that fires the western skies,
They melt, ey vanish from my eyes.
## p. 6636 (#634) ###########################################
6636
THOMAS GRAY
But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!
"Girt with many a baron bold,
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames and statesmen old
In bearded majesty appear.
In the midst a form divine!
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line;
Her lion port, her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to virgin grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air;
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear!
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored wings.
"The verse adorn again
Fierce war, and faithful love,
And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.
In buskined measures move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;
And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.
Fond impious man, thinkest thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me; with joy I see
The different doom our fates assign;
Be thine despair, and sceptred care;
To triumph and to die are mine. "
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.
## p. 6637 (#635) ###########################################
6637
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS
HE greater monuments of Greece all men know, the incom-
parable peaks of the chain; and the chain lasted seventeen
hundred years, nor ever sank to the dead level about. The
steadfast sight of these great Greek originals warps and dwarfs our
conception of Greek life. We behold the Parthenon; we forget that
each village shrine had its sense of proportion and subtle curve. The
Venus of Melos we remember, and the Victory is poised forever on
its cliff; but Tanagra figurines tell as much, and reveal more, of
Greek life. Nor is it otherwise in letters. The great names all know.
For a brief span they stood close together, and the father who heard
Eschylus might have told his experience to his long-lived son who
read Aristotle, while between the two stood all the greatest genius
that makes Greece Greek,- save only Homer. So brief was the
noonday,— and it is at high noon, and high noon only, that men
have agreed to take the sun; but this uplift was gained in the ascent
of nigh two hundred years from the first written Greek literature
that still lives. The descent, to the last of the Greek verse which
still remained poetry, ran through thirteen centuries. Over all this
prodigious span of fifteen hundred years stretches the Greek Anthol-
ogy, a collection of 4,063 short Greek poems, two to eight lines long
for the most part, collected and re-collected through more than a
thousand years. The first of these poets, Mimnermus, was the con-
temporary of Jeremiah, and dwelt in cities that shuddered over tidings
of Babylonian invasion. The last, Cometas, was the contemporary of
Edward the Confessor, and dreaded Seljuk and Turk.
As the epic impulse faded, and before Greek genius for tragedy
rose, the same race and dialect which had given epic narrative the
proud, full verse that filled like a sail to zephyr and to storm alike,
devised the elegiac couplet. With its opening even flow, its swifter
rush in the second line, and its abrupt pause, it was a medium in
which not narrative but man spoke, whether personal in passion, or
impersonal in the dedication of a statue, or in epitaph. This verse
had conventions as rigorous and restrained as the sonnet, and was
briefer. It served as well for the epitaph of Thermopylæ as for the
cradle-bier of a child, dead new-born; and lent itself as gracefully to
the gift of a bunch of roses as it swelled with some sonorous blast
## p. 6638 (#636) ###########################################
6638
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
of patriotism. It could sharpen to a gibe, or sink to a wail at un-
toward fate. Through a period twice as long as the life of English
letters, these short poems set forth the vision of life, the ways and
works of men, the love and death of mortals. These lines of weight,
of moment, always of grace and often of inspiration, stood on mile-
stones; they graced the base of statues; they were inscribed on
tombs; they stood over doorways; they were painted on vases. The
rustic shrines held them, and on the front of the great temple they
were borne. In this form, friend wrote to friend and lover to lover.
Four or five of the best express the emotion of the passing Greek
traveler at the statue of Memnon on the Nile. The quality of verse
that fills the inn album to-day we all know; but Greek life was so
compact of form and thought that even this unknown traveler's
verse, scrawled with a stylus, still thrills, still rings, as the statue
still sounds its ancient note.
In this long succession of short poems is delineated the Greek
character, not of Athens but of the whole circle of the Mediter-
ranean. The sphered life of the race is in its subjects.
Each great
Greek victory has its epigrams. In them, statues have an immortal
life denied to marble and to bronze. The critical admiration of the
Hellene for his great men of letters stands recorded here; his early
love for the heroes of his brief-lived freedom, and his sedulous flat-
tery of the Roman lords of his slavery. Here too is his domestic life,
its joy and its sorrow. In this epigram, the maid dedicates her dolls
to Artemis; and in that, the mother, mother and priestess both, lays
down a life overflowing in good deeds and fruited with honorable
offspring. The splendid side of Greek life is painted elsewhere. Here
is its homely simplicity. The fisher again spreads his nets and the
sailor his peaked lateen sail. The hunter sets his snares and tracks
his game in the light snow. The caged partridge stretches its weary
wings in its cage, and the cat has for it a modern appetite. Men
gibe and jest. They see how hollow life is, and also how truth rings
true. Love is here, sacred and revered, in forms pure and holy; and
not less, that foul pool decked with beauty in which Greek manhood
lost its masculine virtue.
Half a century before Christ, when Greek life overspread the east-
ern Mediterranean, and in every market-place Greek was the tongue
of trade, of learning, and of gentle breeding, Greek letters grew con-
scious of its own riches. For six centuries and more, or as long as
separates us from Chaucer, men had been writing these brief epi-
grams. The first had the brevity of Simonides, the next Alexandrian
luxuriance. Many were carved by those who wrote much; more by
those who composed but two or three. In Syrian Gadara there dwelt
a Greek, Meleager, whose poetry is the very flower of fervent Greek
## p. 6639 (#637) ###########################################
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
6639
verse. Yet so near did he live to the great change which was to
overturn the gods he loved, and substitute morality for beauty as the
mainspring of life, that some who knew him must also, a brief span
of years later, have known Jesus the Christ. Meleager was the first
who gathered Greek epigrams in an Anthology, prefacing it with
such apt critical utterance as has been the despair of all critics called
since to weigh verse in ruder scales and with a poise less perfect.
He had the wide round of the best of Greek to pick from, and he
chose with unerring taste. To his collection Philippus of Thessa-
lonica, working when Paul was preaching in Jason's house, added the
work of the Roman period, the fourth development of the epigram.
Other collections between have perished, one in the third or Byzan-
tine period, in which this verse had a renaissance under Justinian.
In the tenth century a Byzantine scholar, Constantinos Cephalas,
rearranged his predecessors' collections,-Meleager's included, and
brought together the largest number which has come down to us.
The collection is known to-day as the 'Palatine Anthology,' from the
library which long owned it. His work was in the last flare of life
in the Lower Empire, when Greek heroism, for the last time, stemmed
the Moslem tide and gave Eastern Europe breathing-space. When
his successor Maximus Planudes, of the century of Petrarch,- monk,
diplomat, theologian, and phrase-maker,— addressed himself to the
last collection made, the shadow of new Italy lay over Greek life,
and the Galilean had recast the minds of men. He excluded much
that Greeks, from Meleager to Cephalas, had freely admitted, and
which modern lovers of the Anthology would be willing to see left
out of all copies but their own. The collection of Planudes long
remained alone known (first edition Florence, 1594). That of Cepha-
las survived in a single manuscript of varied fortune, seen in 1606
by Salmasius at eighteen,-happy boy, and happy manuscript! -lost
to learning for a century and a half in the Vatican, published by
Brunck, 1776, and finally edited by Frederic Jacobs, 1794-1803, five
volumes of text and three of comment, usually bound in eight. The
text has been republished by Tauchnitz, and the whole work has its
most convenient and familiar form for scholars in the edition of both
the collections of Planudes and Cephalas, with epigrams from all
other sources prepared by Frederic Dübner for Didot's 'Bibliotheca
Scriptorum Græcorum,' 1864-1872, three volumes. The Anthology as
a whole has no adequate English translation. About one-third of the
poems have a prose translation by George Burges in the 'Greek
Anthology, 1832, of Bohn's series, with versions in verse by many
hands.
----
The first English translation of selections appeared anonymously,
1791. Others have succeeded: Robert Bland and John Herman
## p. 6640 (#638) ###########################################
6640
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
Merivale, 1806; Robert Bland, 1813; Richard Garnett, 1864; Sir Edwin
Arnold, 1869; John Addington Symonds, 1873; J. W. Mackail, 1890;
Lilla Cabot Perry, 1891. A collection of selected translations edited
by Graham R. Tomson was published in 1889. Of these partial ver-
sions, the only one which approaches the incommunicable charm of the
original is Mr. Mackail's, an incomparable translation. His versions
are freely used in the selections which follow. All the metrical ver-
sions, except those by Mrs. Perry, are from Miss Tomson's collection.
But no translation equals the sanity, the brevity, the clarity of the
Greek original, qualities which have made these epigrams consum-
mate models of style to the modern world.
