REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE The French Revolution, during the period 1789-1792, found many supporters in England. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Charles James Fox, and liberal clergymen among whom Priestly and Price were the most prominent, openly gloried in the deeds that were being done in the name of Liberty. From these enthusiasts Burke was separated by a wide gulf. He did not comprehend the need for change in the French social and economic systems; he saw only the overthrow of an established civilization by hungry peasants and doctrinaire philosophers, and with impassioned earnestness he protested. The Reflections appeared in November, 1790. 330. 43. The civil social man. As distinguished from man in his aboriginal "state of nature," before the existence of society. 332. 233. Liceat perire poetis. Poets have the right to die. 236. Ardentem frigidus, etc. In cold blood he leaped into glowing Etna. Empedocles, a Sicilian philosopher, is said to have died thus. A slipper, cast out in an eruption, was proof of his act. THOMSON THE SEASONS 334. 311. In vain for him, etc. Gray seems to have had the following three lines in mind when he composed the stanza of the Elegy beginning "For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn." THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE 335. 35. A coil the grasshopper did keep. "To keep a coil is an Elizabethan expression meaning to make a noise. BLAIR THE GRAVE 337. It was in part, at least, from this poem that Bryant drew the inspiration for his Thanatopsis. 338. 34. Night's foul bird. The owl. Shakespeare's spelling of the proper name is Guiderius. ODE WRITTEN . . . IN THE YEAR 1746 The year 1745 saw the death of many English soldiers in battle, both in the war of the Austrian Succession, and in Scotland, during the second Jacobite rising. THE PROGRESS OF POESY 345. A Pindaric Ode. Gray is adopting the ode form of the Greek poet Pindar. Professor Phelps's note explains the structure of the poem succinctly: " As Hales pointed out, this Ode is really divided into 3 stanzas, with 41 lines in each stanza. Again, each stanza is divided into 3 parts -strophe, antistrophe, and epode-the turn, counter-turn, and after-song, Greek theatrical names. The three strophes, antistrophes, and epodes are similar in construction; hence the architecture of the poem is curiously symmetrical, though one could easily read it without any perception of this fact." (Athenæum Press Edition, p. 149.) 1. Awake, Æolian lyre. Gray is invoking the Eolian harp of Pindar. 3, 4. From Helicon's harmonious springs, etc. The different streams of the world's poetry all have their source in the sacred fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon. 9. Ceres' golden reign. Fields of grain, in the care of Ceres, goddess of the harvest. 15. Enchanting shell. The lyre, to which the first three sections of the poem are addressed. Hermes, according to the legend, made the first lyre from a tortoise shell. 17. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War. 21. The feathered king. Jove's eagle. 27. Idalia. A town in Cyprus, sacred to 346. 36. Their Queen. Venus. 47. Justify the ways of Jove. An obvious echo of Milton's " Justify the ways of God to men." 48. Has he given in vain the heavenly Muse? Has poetry been of no value to mankind? 53. Hyperion. The sun. 66. Delphi's steep. Delphi's mountain, location of the famous oracle. 68. Ilissus. A river of Attica. 69. Mæander. A river of Asia Minor. 77-82. Poetry left Greece for Rome, and 84. Nature's Darling. Shakespeare. 105. Two coursers of ethereal race. 347. 107. His hands. Dryden's. 112. What daring spirit? Gray himself. 115. The Theban Eagle. Gray's own note reads: "Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise." was 70. The rising morn. "Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign." (Gray.) 77-82. "Richard the Second starved to death." (Gray.) 83-86. The wars of the Roses, between the houses of York and Lancaster, 14551485. 87. Towers of Julius. According to an old legend, Julius Cæsar is supposed to have begun the Tower of London. 89. His Consort's faith. Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI), a woman of heroic spirit, who struggled hard to save her husband and her crown." (Gray.) His father. Henry V. 90. The meek usurper. "Henry the Sixth very near being canonized. The line of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown." (Gray.) 91, 2. The rose of snow, etc. "The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster." (Gray.) 348. 93. The bristled Boar. "The silver boar was the badge of Richard the Third." (Gray.) In infant gore. A reference to Richard's murder of the two young princes. 99. Half of thy heart. "Eleanor of Castile (wife of Edward I), died a few years after the conquest of Wales." (Gray.) 109. Long-lost Arthur. "It was the common belief of the Welsh nation, that King Arthur was still alive in Fairy-Land, and should return again to reign over Britain." (Gray.) 110. Ye genuine Kings. "Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied, that the Welsh should regain their sovereignty over this island; which seemed to be accomplished in the House of Tudor." (Gray.) 115. A form divine. Queen Elizabeth. 349. 127. Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest. The allusion is to the allegorical nature of Spenser's Faerie Queene. 128. In buskined measures. Shakespeare's tragedies. 131. A voice. Milton. 133. Distant warblings. "The succestime." sion of Poets after Milton's (Gray.) 135. Impious man. Edward I. THE FATAL SISTERS One of Gray's notes, the Preface to the poem as it originally appeared, makes the situation clear: In the Eleventh Century Sigurd, Earl of the Orkney Islands, went with a fleet of ships and a considerable body of troops into Ireland, to the assistance of Sictryg with the Silken Beard, who was then making war on his father-in-law, Brian, King of Dublin: the Earl and all his forces were cut to pieces, and Sictryg was in danger of a total defeat; but the enemy had a greater loss by the death of Brian, their King, who fell in action. On Christmas day, (the day of the battle), a Native of Caithness in Scotland saw at a distance a number of persons on horseback riding full speed towards a hill, and seeming to enter into it. Curiosity led him to follow them, till looking through an opening in the rocks he saw twelve gigantic figures resembling women: they were all employed about a loom; and as they wove, they sung the following dreadful Song; which when they had finished, they tore the web into twelve pieces, and (each taking her portion) galloped six to the North and as many to the South." The "Fatal Sisters" are here represented as the goddesses of fate, and as the Valkyrie, or " choosers of the slain," who select heroes destined to die in battle, and conduct them to Valhalla. 32. The youthful king. Sictryg. "the 350. 1. We set out. Gray was making grand tour with his college friend, Horace Walpole. His impressions of Alpine scenery may interestingly be compared with those of Addison, who wrote from Geneva, December 6, 1701, to Wortley Montagu: "I am just now arrived at Geneva by a very troublesome journey over the Alps, where I have been for some days together shivering among the eternal snows. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices, and you cannot imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain, that is as agreeable to me at present as a shore was about a year ago after one tempest at Genoa." 351. 19. St. Bruno. The founder of the Carthusian order of monks. He located the home of the order in the mountains near Grenoble, 1084 A. D. 21. Dodsley. Robert Dodsley (17031764), English bookseller and publisher, best known for his Select Collection of Old Plays, which he edited and published in 1744. 352. 3. Sack and silver. The poet laureate I was usually given a money stipend and an annual allowance of wine. Gray had been informally offered the post at the time he wrote this letter to Mason. 24. Rowe. Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718), a dramatist. 26. Settle. Elkanah Settle (1648-1723). 28. Eusden. Lawrence Eusden (16881730). 6 THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT 370. The editors of the Centenary Burns note (i. 362): "The piece as a whole is formed on English models. It is the most artificial and the most imitative of Burns's works. These English songs,' he wrote long afterwards (1794) to Thomson, gravel me to death. I have not that. command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think my ideas are more barren in English than in Scottish.' As it is, The Cotter's Saturday Night is supposed to paint an essentially Scottish phase of life; but the Scottish element in the diction,-to say nothing of the Scottish cast of the effect -is comparatively slight throughout, and in many stanzas is altogether wanting." Robert Aiken, to whom the poem is addressed, was an old friend of the Burns family who brought the poet some fame by reading his verses in public. 372. 111-113. Dundee's, Martyr's, Elgin. The names of tunes in the Scottish Presbyterian hymnal. 373. 138. Hope springs exulting," etc. Slightly misquoted from Pope's Windsor Forest. 166. "An honest man," etc. Slightly misquoted from Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 297. 182. Wallace. William Wallace (c. 12701305), the Scottish patriot. TAM O'SHANTER 375. 102. Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze. The editors of the Centenary Burns note (i. 433): “Alloway Kirk was originally the church of the quoad civilia parish of Alloway; but this parish having been annexed to that of Ayr in 1690, the church fell more or less to ruin, and when Burns wrote had been roofless for half a century. It stands some two hundred yards to the north of the picturesque Auld Brig of Doon . . . Burns's birthplace is about three-fourths of a mile to the north; so that the ground and its legends were familiar to him from the first." A good many local traditions centered around the old church; some of them Burns has worked into the poem. 387. 89. The lawless merchant of the main. The smuggler. THE BOROUGH The story of Peter Grimes forms Letter xxii of the poem. WORDSWORTH PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS 389. The first edition of the Lyrical Ballads appeared in 1798; the second edition, in December, 1800, carried a lengthy Preface, from which two passages are here reprinted. LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING 392. The poem is notable as an expression of Wordsworth's idea that Nature is a conscious, sentient spirit. TINTERN ABBEY unremem 393. 22-49. In this passage Wordsworth states the effect that the recollection of the landscape he has just been describing has had on him. First, it has brought him mental restoration in hours of weariness; second, feelings of bered pleasure which have prompted him to " acts of kindness and of love and lastly, it has brought him the mystic's power of seeing beyond the superficial, the apparent, into "the life of things." 394. 72-111. This passage, with which one should compare lines 175-203 of the Intimations of Immortality, is the best statement of Wordsworth's changing attitude towards Nature. The panpsychism, almost the pantheism, of lines 93-102, is noteworthy. 116. My dear, dear friend. Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was the poet's most intimate companion during the years from 1795 to 1802. On their life together one can consult no better work than Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals. |