The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
Author: Thomas Gray
Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15409]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK an elegy wrote in A country ***
Produced by David Starner, Diane Monico and the Online
Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
THOMAS GRAY
An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard
(1751)
and
The Eton College Manuscript
George Sherburn
Los Angeles
Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1951
H. Richard Archer, Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
John Loftis, University of California,
Los Angeles
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, Duke University
Louis I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan
CLEANTH Brooks, Yale University
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California,
Los Angeles
LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University
SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota
ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas
JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London
H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California,
Los Angeles
To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter is unacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not “must”) consist in “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed,” Gray’s “Churchyard” is a majestic achievement—perhaps (accepting the definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to “the common reader”; and though no friend of Gray’s other work, Dr. Johnson went on to commend the “Elegy” as abounding “with images which find a mirrour
Often in the art of the period an affectation of simplicity covers and reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift’s prose is a fair example; in the “Tale of a Tub” and even in “Gulliver” at first sight there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but pry beneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled by their coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you are watching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignity of Dr. Johnson’s exquisitely chosen diction is likewise ingeniously studied and self-conscious. When Gray soared into the somewhat turgid pindaric tradition of his day, he too was slaking a thirst for rhetorical complexities. But in the “Elegy” we have none of that. Nor do we have artifices like the “chaste Eve” or the “meek-eyed maiden” apostrophized in Collins and Joseph Warton. For Gray the hour when the sky turns from opal to dusk leaves one not “breathless with adoration,” but moved calmly to placid reflection tuned to drowsy tinklings or to a moping owl. It endures no contortions of image or of verse. It registers the sensations of the hour and the reflections appropriate to it—simply.
It is not difficult to be clear—so we are told by some who habitually fail of that quality—if you have nothing subtle to say. And it has been urged on high authority in our day that there is nothing really “fine” in Gray’s “Churchyard.” However conscious Gray was in limiting his address to “the common reader,” we may be certain he was not writing to the obtuse, the illiterate or the insensitive. He was to create an evocation of evening: the evening of a day and the approaching night of life. The poem was not to be perplexed by doubt; it ends on a note of “trembling hope”—but on “hope.” There are perhaps better evocations of similar moods, but not of this precise mood. Shakespeare’s poignant Sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year"), which suggests no hope, may be one. Blake’s “Nurse’s Song” is, in contrast, subtly tinged with modernistic disillusion:
When the voices of children
are heard on the green
And whisp’rings are
in the dale,
The days of my youth rise
fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home, my children,
the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring & your day are
wasted in play,
And your winter and night
in disguise.
Here, too, are no tremblings of hope, no sound confidence in the “average” man, such as Gray surprisingly glimpses. One begins to suspect that it is more necessary to be subtle in evocations of despair than in those of hope, even if the hope is tremulous. The mood Gray sought required no obvious subtlety. The nearest approach to Gray (found in Catullus) may likewise be said to be deficient in overtones; but it also comes home to the heart of everyman:
o quid solutis est beatius curis, cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum desideratoque acquiescimus lecto!
These simple lines convey what Gray’s ploughman is achieving for one evening, but not what the rude forefathers have achieved for eternity. From the ploughman and the simple annals of the poor the poem diverges to reproach the proud and great for their disregard of undistinguished merit, and moves on to praise of the sequestered life, and to an epitaph applicable either to a “poeta ignotus” or to Gray himself. The epitaph with its trembling hope transforms the poem into something like a personal yet universal requiem; and for one villager—perhaps for himself—Gray seems to murmur through the gathering darkness: “et lux perpetua luceat ei.” Although in this epitaph we may seem to be concerned with an individual, we do well to note that the youth to fortune and fame unknown, whose great “bounty” was only a tear, is as completely anonymous as the ploughman or the rude forefathers.
The somber aspects of evening are perhaps more steadily preserved by Gray than by his contemporaries. From Milton to Joseph Warton all poets had made their ploughman unwearied as (to quote Warton):
He jocund whistles thro’ the twilight groves.
With Gray all this blithe whistling stopped together. Evening poems by Dyer, Warton, and Collins had tended to be “pretty,” but here again Gray resisted temptation and regretfully omitted a stanza designed to precede immediately the epitaph:
There scatter’d oft,
the earliest of ye Year
By hands unseen, are Show’rs
of Violets found;
The Red-breast loves to build
& warble there,
And little Footsteps lightly
print the Ground.
With similar critical tact Gray realized that one might have too much of stately moral reflections unmixed with drama. Possibly such an idea determined him in discarding four noble quatrains with which he first designed to end his poem. After line 72 in the manuscript now in Eton College appeared these stanzas:
The thoughtless World to Majesty
may bow
Exalt the brave, & idolize
Success
But more to Innocence their
Safety owe
Than Power & Genius e’er
conspired to bless
And thou, who mindful of the
unhonour’d Dead
Dost in these Notes their
artless Tale relate
By Night & lonely Contemplation
led
To linger in the gloomy Walks
of Fate
Hark how the sacred Calm,
that broods around
Bids ev’ry fierce tumultuous
Passion cease
In still small Accents, whisp’ring
from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal
Peace
No more with Reason & thyself
at Strife
Give anxious Cares & endless
Wishes room
But thro the cool sequester’d
Vale of Life
Pursue the silent Tenour of
thy Doom.
“And here,” comments Mason, “the Poem was originally intended to conclude, before the happy idea of the hoary-headed Swain, &c. suggested itself to him.” To reconstitute the poem with this original ending gives an interesting structure. The first three quatrains evoke the fall of darkness; four stanzas follow presenting the rude forefathers in their narrow graves; eleven quatrains follow in reproach of Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., for failure to realize the high merit of humility. Then after line 72 of the final version would come these four rejected stanzas, continuing the reproach of “the thoughtless world,” and turning all too briefly to one who could “their artless tale relate,” and to the calm that then breathes around tumultuous passion and speaks of eternal peace—and “the silent tenor of thy doom.”
That would give a simpler structure; and one may argue whether turning back from the thoughtless world to praise again the “cool sequester’d vale of life” and then appending “the happy idea of the hoary-headed swain, &c.” does really improve the poem structurally. Its method is, however, more acceptable in that now the reflections are imbedded in “drama” (or at least in narrative), and the total effect is more pleasing to present-day readers since we escape, or seem to escape, from the cool universality of humble life to a focus on an individual grief. To end on a grim note of generalized “doom,” would have given the poem a temporary success such as it deserved; and it must be acknowledged that the knell-like sound of “No more ... No more” (lines 20, 21) echoed and re-echoed for decades through the imaginations of gloom-fed poets. But Gray, although an undoubted “graveyard” poet, is no mere graveyard poet: he stands above and apart from the lot of them, and he was not content to end despondently in a descending gloom. His, as he told West, in a celebrated letter, was a “white melancholy, or rather leucocholy”; and he wrote of “lachrymae rerum” rather than of private mordant sorrows.
The poem is couched in universals: Gray writes in “a” country churchyard, and the actual Stoke Poges, dear and lovely as it doubtless was to Gray, clings to the fame of the poem almost by accident. And yet, by a sort of paradox, this “universal” poem in its setting and mood is completely English. One could go too far from home for examples of distinction—for the polar stars of the rude forefathers—just as one could err by excess of “commonplace” reflections. Some such idea encouraged Gray to modify his fifteenth quatrain, which in the Eton MS reads (the first line has partly perished from folding of the paper):
Some [Village] Cato [who]
with dauntless Breast
The little Tyrant of his Fields
withstood;
Some mute inglorious Tully
here may rest;
Some Caesar, guiltless of
his Country’s Blood.
The substitution of English names is an obvious attempt to bring truth closer to the souls of his readers by use of “domestica facta” and the avoidance of school-boy learning.
All these changes illustrate the quality of Gray’s curious felicity. His assault on the reader’s sensibilities was organized and careful: here is no sign of that contradiction in terms, “unpremeditated art.” He probably did not work on the poem so long as historians have said he did, but he scanted neither time nor attention. Mason thought the poem begun and perhaps finished in 1742, and he connected its somberness with Gray’s great sorrow over the death of his close friend Richard West. All this seems more than doubtful: to Dr. Thomas Wharton in September 1746 Gray mentioned recently composing “a few autumnal verses,” and there is no real evidence of work on the poem before this time. Walpole evidently inclined to 1746 as the date of commencement, and it may be pointed out that Mason himself is not so sure of 1742 as have been his Victorian successors. All he says is, “I am inclined to believe that the Elegy ... was begun, if not concluded, at this time [1742] also.” Gray’s reputation for extreme leisurely composition depends largely on the “inclination” to believe that the “Elegy” was begun in 1742 and on a later remark by Walpole concerning Gray’s project for a History of Poetry. In a letter of 5 May 1761 Walpole joked to Montagu saying that Gray, “if he rides Pegasus at his usual foot-pace, will finish the first page two years hence.” Not really so slow as this remark suggests, Gray finally sent his “Elegy” to Walpole in June of 1750, and in December he sent perhaps an earlier form of the poem to Dr. Wharton. Naturally delighted with the perfected utterance of this finely chiseled work, these two friends passed it about in manuscript, and allowed copies to be taken.
Publication, normally abhorrent to Gray, thus became inevitable, though apparently not contemplated by Gray himself. The private success of the poem was greater than he had anticipated, and in February of 1751 he was horrified to receive a letter from the editor of a young and undistinguished periodical, “The Magazine of Magazines,” who planned to print forthwith the “ingenious poem, call’d Reflections in a Country-Churchyard.” Gray hastily wrote to Walpole (11 February), insisting that he should “make Dodsley print it immediately” from Walpole’s copy, without Gray’s name, but with good paper and letter. He prescribed the titlepage as well as other details, and within four days Dodsley had the poem in print, and anticipated the piratical “Magazine” by one day. But the “Magazine” named Gray as the author, and success without anonymity was the fate of the “Elegy.” Edition followed edition, and the poem was almost from birth an international classic.
One of the author’s prescriptions for publication concerned the verse form. He told Walpole that Dodsley must “print it without any Interval between the Stanza’s, because the Sense is in some Places continued beyond them.” In the Egerton MS Gray had written the poem with no breaks to set off quatrains, but in the earlier MS (Eton College), where the poem is entitled, “Stanza’s, wrote in a Country Church-Yard,” the quatrains are spaced in normal fashion. The injunction shows Gray’s sensitiveness as to metrical form. He had called the poem an Elegy only after urging by Mason, and he possibly doubted if his metre was “soft” enough for true elegy. The metre hitherto had not been common in elegies, though James Hammond’s “Love Elegies” (1743) had used it and won acclaim. But the heroic (hendecasyllabic) quatrain was regarded in general as too lofty, stately, cool, for elegy. For the universal aspect of Gray’s lament, however, it was highly apt as compared with the less majestic octosyllabic line, hitherto normal in this genre. For years after Gray’s great success, however, most elegies, if in quatrain form, followed Gray’s quatrain in manner, whether or not their subjects demanded the stately line.
The reasons why Gray is almost a poet of only one poem are not far to seek. He did not covet applause, and apart from melancholy his own emotions were too private to be published. In the “Elegy” he is true to himself and to the spirit of his age—perhaps of most ages. When he sought for material outside of his own experience, he went curiously to books, and was captivated by the “recherche.” He was also caught by the rising cult of sublimity in his two great pindaric odes, and by the cult of the picturesque in his flirtations with Scandinavian materials. In these later poems he broadened the field of poetic material notably; but in them he hardly deepened the imaginative or emotional tone: his manner, rather, became elaborate and theatrical. The “Elegy” is the language of the heart sincerely perfected.
The poem has pleased many and pleased long—throughout two centuries. In part it works through “pleasing melancholy”; in part it appeals to innumerable humble readers conscious of their own unheralded merit. Inevitably, since the industrial revolution, modernist critics have tended to stress its appeal to class consciousness. This appeal, real though it is, can be overemphasized. The rude forefathers are not primarily presented as underprivileged. Though poverty-stricken and ignorant, they are happy in family life and jocund in the field. “Nature is nature wherever placed,” as the intellectuals of Gray’s time loved to say, and the powers of the village fathers, potentially, equal the greatest; their virtue is contentment. They neither want nor need “storied urn or animated bust.” If they are unappreciated by Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., the lack of appreciation is due to a corruption of values. The value commended in the
George Sherburn
Harvard University
The first edition of the “Elegy” is here reproduced from a copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
By permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, the manuscript preserved in the library of Eton College is also reproduced. This manuscript once belonged to Gray’s friend, biographer, and editor, William Mason. In spite of its dimness, due to creases in the paper and to the fact that the ink shows through from the other side of the paper, this manuscript is chosen for reproduction because it preserves the quatrains discarded before printing the poem, and has other interesting variants in text. Two other MSS of the poem in Gray’s hand are known to exist. One is preserved in the British Museum (Egerton 2400, ff. 45-6) and the other is the copy made by Gray in Volume II of his Commonplace Books. This, is appropriately preserved in the library of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Sir William Fraser bequeathed to Eton College the MS there found, which in certain editions of the poem is called “the Fraser manuscript.”
ELEGY
Country Church Yard.
LONDON:
Printed for R. DODSLEY in Pall-mall;
And sold by M. COOPER in Pater-noster-Row. 1751.
[Price Six-pence.]
The following POEM came into my Hands by Accident, if the general Approbation with which this little Piece has been spread, may be call’d by so slight a Term as Accident. It is this Approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make any Apology but to the Author: As he cannot but feel some Satisfaction in having pleas’d so many Readers already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that Pleasure to many more.
The EDITOR
ELEGY, _&c._
The Curfeu
tolls the Knell of parting Day,
The lowing Herd winds slowly
o’er the Lea,
The Plow-man 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 Tow’r
The mopeing Owl does to the
Moon complain
Of such, as wand’ring
near her sacred Bow’r,
Molest her ancient solitary
Reign.
Beneath those
rugged Elms, that Yew-Tree’s Shade,
Where heaves the Turf in many
a mould’ring Heap,
Each in his narrow Cell for
ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the
Hamlet sleep.
The breezy Call
of Incense-breathing Morn,
The Swallow twitt’ring
from the Straw-built Shed,
The Cock’s shrill Clarion,
or the ecchoing Horn,
No more shall wake them from
their lowly Bed.
For them no more
the blazing Hearth shall burn,
Or busy Houswife 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 they drive
their Team afield!
How bow’d 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 Pow’r,
And all that Beauty, all that
Wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable
Hour.
The Paths of Glory lead but
to the Grave.
Forgive, ye Proud,
th’ involuntary Fault,
If Memory to these no Trophies
raise,
Where thro’ the long-drawn
Isle 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 Honour’s Voice provoke
the silent Dust,
Or Flatt’ry sooth the
dull cold Ear of Death!
Perhaps in this
neglected Spot is laid
Some Heart once pregnant with
celestial Fire,
Hands that the Reins of Empire
might have sway’d,
Or wak’d to Extacy the
living Lyre.
But Knowledge
to their Eyes her ample Page
Rich with the Spoils of Time
did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d
their noble Rage,
And froze the genial Current
of the Soul.
Full many a Gem
of purest Ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d
Caves of Ocean bear:
Full many a Flower is born
to blush unseen,
And waste its Sweetness on
the desart Air.
Some Village-Hampden
that with dauntless Breast
The EPITAPH.
Here rests
his Head upon the Lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to
Fame unknown:
Fair Science frown’d
not on his humble Birth,
And Melancholy mark’d
him for her own.
Large was his
Bounty, and his Soul sincere,
Heav’n did a Recompense
as largely send:
He gave to Mis’ry all
he had, a Tear:
He gain’d from Heav’n
(’twas all he wish’d) 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.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
Numbers 1-4 out of print.
5. Samuel Wesley’s Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and Essay on Heroic Poetry (1693).
6. Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the Stage (1704) and Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage (1704).
7. John Gay’s The Present State of Wit (1711); and a section on Wit from The English Theophrastus (1702).
8. Rapin’s De Carmine Pastorali, translated by Creech (1684).
9. T. Hanmer’s (?) Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet (1736).
10. Corbyn Morris’ Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, etc. (1744).
11. Thomas Purney’s Discourse on the Pastoral (1717).
12. Essays on the Stage, selected, with an Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch.
13. Sir John Falstaff (pseud.), The Theatre (1720).
14. Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753).
15. John Oldmixon’s Reflections on Dr. Swift’s Letter to Harley (1712); and Arthur Mainwaring’s The British Academy (1712).
16. Nevil Payne’s Fatal Jealousy (1673).
17. Nicholas Rowe’s Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare (1709).
18. “Of Genius,” in The Occasional Paper, Vol. III, No. 10 (1719); and Aaron Hill’s Preface to The Creation (1720).
19. Susanna Centlivre’s The Busie Body (1709).
20. Lewis Theobold’s Preface to The Works of Shakespeare (1734).
21. Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754).
22. Samuel Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750).
23. John Dryden’s His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681).
24. Pierre Nicole’s An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in Which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams, translated by J.V. Cunningham.
25. Thomas Baker’s The Fine Lady’s Airs (1709).
26. Charles Macklin’s The Man of the World (1792).
27. Frances Reynolds’ An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, etc. (1785).
28. John Evelyn’s An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661).
29. Daniel Defoe’s A Vindication of the Press (1718).
30. Essays on Taste from John Gilbert Cooper’s Letters Concerning Taste, 3rd edition (1757), & John Armstrong’s Miscellanies (1770).
THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
General Editors
H. RICHARD ARCHER
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
R.C. BOYS
University of Michigan
E.N. HOOKER
University of California, Los Angeles
JOHN LOFTIS
University of California, Los Angeles
The Society exists to make available inexpensive reprints (usually facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century works. The editorial policy of the Society continues unchanged. As in the past, the editors welcome suggestions concerning publications. All income of the Society is devoted to defraying cost of publication and mailing.
All correspondence concerning subscriptions in the United States and Canada should be addressed to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2205 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles 18, California. Correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to any of the general editors. The membership fee is $3.00 a year for subscribers in the United States and Canada and 15/-for subscribers in Great Britain and Europe. British and European subscribers should address B.H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England.
* * * * *
Publications for the sixth year [1951-1952],
(At least six items, most of them from the following list, will be reprinted.)
THOMAS GRAY: An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751). Introduction by George Sherburn.
JAMES BOSWELL, ANDREW ERSKINE, and GEORGE DEMPSTER: Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira (1763). Introduction by Frederick A. Pottle.
An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr. Fielding (1751). Introduction by James A. Work.
HENRY GALLY: A Critical Essay on Characteristic Writing (1725). Introduction by Alexander Chorney.
[JOHN PHILLIPS]: Satyr Against Hypocrits (1655). Introduction by Leon Howard.
Prefaces to Fiction. Selected and with an Introduction by Benjamin Boyce.
THOMAS TYERS: A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson ([1785]). Introduction by Gerald Dennis Meyer.
Publications for the first five years (with the exception of NOS. 1-4, which are out of print) are available at the rate of $3.00 a year. Prices for individual numbers may be obtained by writing to the Society.
* * * * *
THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY 2205 WEST ADAMS BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES 18, CALIFORNIA
Make check or money order payable to THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 1]
[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 2]
[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 3]
[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 4]