6 Peter the Great made overtures for peace. Charles is said to have replied, I will treat with the Czar at Moscow.' Pultowa, where Charles was totally defeated, July 8, 1709. distant lands. Charles fled to Turkey and succeeded in embroiling that country in a war with Russia. In 1714 he returned to Sweden. petty fortress: Frederickshall in Norway. dubious hand. It was long disputed whether the fatal bullet came from an enemy in the front or a traitor in the rear. In 1859 it was proved by an examination of the King's scull that he had been shot from the front. It would be well for you to commit to memory this fine passage (191–222), of which lines 196 and 221-222 have become household words. If you compare this characterization of Charles XII. with that of Villiers (Absalom and Achitophel, I. 544–568) you will see that where Johnson draws a type, Dryden paints a man. 223-240. Persia's tyrant; Xerxes. See a History of Greece, under the years 486-479 B.C., and compare the third and fourth stanzas of Byron's Isles of Greece (p. 152 of this book). 241-254. The bold Bavarian; Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria; elected Emperor of Germany in 1742 under the title of Charles VII. Cæsarean Imperial. 'Kaiser' and 'Czar' are both derived from 'Cæsar.' fair Austria; Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria. Upon the death of her father Charles vI. in 1740, she was treacherously attacked by Prussia, France, Bavaria and Saxony. Her people rallied around her with enthusiasm; after an heroic resistance, peace was made with Prussia, and the Bavarian troops, at first successful, were driven back. The Austrian cavalry, composed largely of Croats and Hussars, over-ran Bavaria, and the unlucky Charles, deserted by his allies and a prey to disappointed ambition, died after an inglorious Kaisership of only three years. For a lively picture of these events, see the opening pages of Macaulay's Essay on Frederick the Great. 255-282. This is one side of Old Age, and admirably drawn. Compare As You Like It, ii. 6 (near the end): The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; In second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. But there is another and a pleasanter side to Old Age. See Thackeray's touching description of the last days of Colonel Newcome (The Newcomes, Chapters LXXV. and LXXx.); also the character of Adam in As You Like It. 283-290. The Miser; a favorite theme with great descriptive writers. Well-known types are Golden Trapbois in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel, Harpagon in Molière's L'Avare and Père Grandet in Balzac's Eugénie Grandet. 291-310. prime; the first part, the spring of life. Superfluand famous ous lags the vet'ran on the stage; a famous line because the poet has herein expressed, in striking phrase, an observation on life that we instantly recognize as true. 311-318. Lydia's monarch; Croesus, renowned for his wealth. The story goes that Croesus, exhibiting his treasures to Solon, asked the sage if he did not consider the owner of such treasures a happy man. To this Solon replied, 'Count no man happy until he is dead.' This story is probably apocryphal. Marlb'rough died in 1722. Johnson seems to have drawn upon his imagination and his Tory prejudice for this line. The comparison would be extremely effective did it not lack the first condition of effective comparison - Truth. Swift was hopelessly insane for some five years before his death (1745). 343-368. The poet has now enumerated some of the chief blessings that men long for in this troublous world - Wealth, Political Power, Literary Fame, Military Glory, Long Life, Beauty. He has shown - often by concrete examples that these so-called blessings are more often curses in disguise. Is there then nothing for which we may safely petition heaven? 'Yes,' he replies, but very little.' Lines 360–368 tell us what this little is. They contain the sum and substance of that somewhat melancholy but thoroughly sincere philosophy by which Johnson bravely lived his own life, — a life not unacquainted with grief. THOMAS GRAY. BORN in London, 1716; educated at Eton and Cambridge with Horace Walpole. From boyhood his health was delicate and he was subject to periods of gloom and depression. Something more than two years (1739–1741) spent in France and Italy brightened his mental tone and quickened his artistic sensibilities. His Ode to Spring (written in 1742), breaking away from the conventional eighteenth century forms- the heroic couplet and the rimed octo-syllabic - marks the beginning of the return to freer lyrical movements. For many years he resided at Cambridge; his opinion of life at his alma mater may be gathered from the opening of his Hymn to Ignorance: - Hail, horrors, hail! ye ever gloomy bowers Ah, Ignorance! soft salutary power! Perhaps to escape these horrors he plunged into a severe and prolonged course of study which made him one of the most learned men and most accomplished critics in Europe. To the development of this critical faculty may be partly attributed the small amount of Gray's verse— for the critical and the creative faculties seem mutually destructive. His studies in Norse poetry opened up a field that is being vigorously worked to-day, while of the Elegy, did not Wolfe say, on the eve of Quebec, 'I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow' ? In 1757 Gray had the good sense to decline the laureateship. In 1768 he was appointed to the sinecure Professorship of Modern Literature and Modern Languages at Cambridge, and never delivered any lectures. Three years later he died. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIFE AND TIMES. - Gray is best studied in Gosse's 4-vol. edition (London, 1884), which gives the Poems, Journals, Essays, Letters, and Notes on Aristophanes and Plato. The Journal in the Lakes (in Vol. I.) is especially valuable as showing that Gray exploited the Lake Country before Wordsworth was born. The only good Life of Gray is also by Gosse (E. M. L.). CRITICISM. Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Thomas Gray. Attributes Gray's scantiness of production to the fact that he lived in an age unfavorable to 'genuine poetry'—that is, poetry 'conceived and composed in the soul' as distinguished from poetry composed in the 'wits' (!). Lowell: Latest Literary Essays and Addresses: Gray. Takes a much wider range than Arnold's Essay and is not tied to a theory. Classes Gray with Dryden as a 'well of English undefiled.' Written in Lowell's best manner, ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. This poem, which was seven years a-making, was published in 1751 - within two years of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Johnson, a severe and unsympathetic critic of Gray, confesses that 'The "Churchyard," abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.' This is undoubtedly the chief cause of the wide-spread popularity of this poem; a secondary cause is the exquisite felicity of the diction. Perhaps the two may be summed up in Pope's line: What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. While it would be easy to point to exemplars for many of Gray's famous lines, the fact remains that the thought lives, not in other men's phrases, but in his. In this lies his triumph as an artist. I-12. The curfew. See note on Il Penseroso, 74-84. The second stanza owes something, perhaps, to the third stanza of Collins' Ode To Evening: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat His small but sullen horn. The moping owl. Compare Tennyson's two songs, The Owl. reign realm. 13-20. Notice the love of Nature, which we saw in Thomson, reappearing here. From this time on, we shall find it becoming more and more prominent in English verse. 21-24. Compare the third stanza of Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night. 25-56. storied urn; an urn on which a story is carved. imated life-like. provoke = call forth, arouse. an He 57-60. Hampden. John Hampden, a wealthy country gentleman, refused to pay the illegal ship-money tax levied by Charles 1. was the first cousin of Oliver Cromwell, and, so far as we can judge, a man of scarcely less ability than the Protector himself. He was wounded in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field in June, 1643, and died within a few days. His death was a national calamity. Since the publication of Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845) no intelligent person has ventured to uphold the view of Cromwell approved by Gray. 61-92. madding raging, distracted. Compare madded,' Vanity of Human Wishes, line 30. uncouth. See note on L'Allegro, 5. rimes. See note on Lycidas 11. elegy. The eighteenth century was much given to elegy and epitaph writing-as the to dumb For disfigured walls of Westminster Abbey testify. getfulness seems best taken as indirect object with resigned. In lines 89-92, some critics find a regular climax in thought. Do you agree with this interpretation, or do you find it far-fetched? Johnson finely said of lines 77-92: 'Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame and useless to praise him.' 93-128. chance perchance. Penseroso, 51-54. Contemplation; compare Il forlorn. wan may mean either pale' or 'sad.' In Old English it generally means 'dark' or 'gloomy.' The prefix in this word is merely intensive; in 'forbid' it is negative. 'Lorn' is from the Old English leósan,' to lose; compare the German verloren.' for thou canst read. Reading was not a common accomplishment in eighteenth century England, nor is it as common in the United States to-day as it is in Prussia and Saxony. lay is generally associated with the idea of music and seems an inappropriate word for an Epitaph. In Gray's manuscript, after line 116, came the following: There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; This beautiful stanza — enough to make the fortune of an ordinary poet, as Lowell says — Gray relentlessly cut out, because he thought it too long a parenthesis in this place. Had other poets shown a tithe of this artistic conscientiousness, how many tons of verse would the world have been happily spared! THE BARD. with Gray worked at this poem through some two years and a half; in 1757, the Ode on the Progress of Poesy, it was 'Printed at Strawberry Hill for R. & J. Dodsley, in Pall Mall.' Though many 'Pindaric Odes' had been published in England before this time, these are the first that give the English reader an idea of the real manner of Pindar. The argument of the Ode is best given in Gray's own words: 'The army of Edward I., as they march through a deep valley, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the King with all the misery and desolation which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot.' |