قراءة كتاب Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 101, October 4, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
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Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 101, October 4, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
allusion perhaps, to that verse of Virgil,
'Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem.'"
Instead of Virgil, I suspect that Gray was thinking of the first Nemean Ode of Pindar, wherein the infant Hercules is described as strangling the snakes sent to destroy him by Juno:
"ὁ δ' ὀρθὸν
μὲν ἄντεινεν κάρα,
πειρᾶτο δὲ πρῶτον μάχας,
δισσαῖσι δοιοὺς αὐχένων
μάρψας ἀφύκτοις χερσὶν ἑαῖς ὄφιας."
Let me give a portion of Cowley's translation:
"The big-limb'd babe in his huge cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by nurse's hands,
Wrapt in purple swaddling bands;
When, lo! by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents come.
"All naked from her bed the passionate mother lept
To save, or perish with her child,
She trembled, and she cry'd; the mighty infant smiled:
The mighty infant seem'd well pleased
At his gay gilded foes,
And as their spotted necks up to the cradle rose,
With his young warlike hands on both he seiz'd."
The stretching forth of the child's hands he found in Pindar and Cowley; his "smiling" in Cowley alone, for there is no trace of it in the original. While speaking of Gray, one scarcely likes alluding to that great whetstone, Dr. Johnson; for certainly the darkest shade on his well-merited literary reputation arises from his unjust, ill-natured, and unscholarlike criticisms upon a poet whose sole transgression was to have been his cotemporary. But Johnson eulogises Shakspeare, as did Gray, and I cannot help thinking that he, as well as Gray, was indebted to Cowley: e.g. Johnson writes:
"When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspeare rose;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain."
"He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find;
He found them not so large as was his mind,
But, like the large Pellaean youth, did mone
Because that art had no more worlds than one.
And when he saw that he through all had past,
He dy'd, lest he should idle grow at last."
And with Dr. Johnson's sixth line—
"Panting Time toil'd after him in vain,"
we may, I think, compare Cowley's description of King David's earlier years:
"Bless me! how swift and growing was his wit!
The wings of Time flag'd dully after it."
But to return to Gray, Ode VI. "The Bard:"
"With haggard eyes the poet stood,
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air."
Wakefield quotes Paradise Lost, lib. i. 535.:
"The imperial ensign, which full high advanc'd,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind."
Campbell, in The Pleasures of Hope, Part I., does borrow from Milton in the above passage:
"Where Andes, giant of the western star,
With meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd;"
but Gray is alluding to hair, and not to a standard; to the original derivation of the word comet (κόμη), and possibly to a different passage in Milton, viz. Par. Lost, ii. 706.:
"on the other side,
Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified: and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge,
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."
Or as Virgil before him, Æneid, lib. x. 270.:
"Ardet apex capiti, cristisque a vertici flamma
Funditur, et vastos umbo vomit aureus ignes:
Non secus, ac liquida si quando nocti cometæ
Sanguinei lugubre rubent, aut Sirius ardor," &c.
One of the meanings of κόμη is "the luminous tail of a comet;" and Suidas mentions from the LXX, καὶ ἕσπερον τὸν ἀστέρα ἐπὶ κόμης αὐτοῦ ἄξεις αὐτον (Job xxxviii. 32.). See Scott and Liddell's Lexicon at the words Κόμη, and Πώγων and Πωγωνίας, which latter words are used in reference to the beard of a comet.
Gray must now speak for himself. He says in a note:
"The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the Vision of Ezekiel. There are two of these paintings, both believed originals, one at Florence, the other at Paris."
And Mr. Mason adds, in a note to his edition of Gray, vol. i. p. 75. Lond. 1807:
"Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, by Parmegiano, was a figure which Mr. Gray used to say came still nearer to his meaning than the picture of Raphael."
I cannot help thinking that Cowley too was not forgotten. Speaking of the angel Gabriel, he says:
"An harmless flaming meteor shone for haire,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care."
Indeed, I must give the entire passage, however fantastic or unconnected with my purpose; for the last four lines, which describe the angel's wings, appear beyond measure dreamy and beautiful:
"When Gabriel (no blest spirit more kind or fair)
Bodies and cloathes himself with thicken'd air,
All like a comely youth in life's fresh bloom;
Rare workmanship, and wrought by heavenly loom!
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That ere the mid day sun pierc'd through with light:
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash't from the morning's beauties deepest red.
An harmless flaming meteor shone for haire
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes.
This he with starry vapours spangles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall.
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece took out, a scarf is made.
Small streaming clouds he does for wings display,
Not virtuous lovers' sighs more soft than they.
These he gilds o'er with the sun's richest rays,
Caught gliding o'er pure streams on which he plays."
Again, in a verse which was inserted in the Elegy as it originally stood (and the subsequent rejection of which we must ever grieve