Gray Poems of Thomas Gray

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-7364-0694-0
Verlag: anboco
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 500 Seiten

BOSTON, Ralph Waldo Emerson PAUL REVERE'S RIDE, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, Sidney Lanier HYMN, Ralph Waldo Emerson TICONDEROGA, V. B. Wilson GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER HILL BATTLE, Oliver Wendell Holmes WARREN'S ADDRESS, John Pierpont THE OLD CONTINENTALS, Guy Humphrey McMaster NATHAN HALE, Francis Miles Finch THE LITTLE BLACK-EYED REBEL, Will Carleton MOLLY MAGUIRE AT MONMOUTH, William Collins SONG OF MARION'S MEN, William Cullen Bryant TO THE MEMORY OF THE AMERICANS WHO FELL AT EUTAW, Philip Freneau GEORGE WASHINGTON, James Russell Lowell PERRY'S VICTORY ON LAKE ERIE, James Gates Percival THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, Francis Scott Key THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, Thomas Dunn English THE AMERICAN FLAG, Joseph Rodman Drake OLD IRONSIDES, Oliver Wendell Holmes MONTEREY, Charles Fenno Hoff man THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD, Theodore O'Hara HOW OLD BROWN TOOK HARPER'S FERRY, Edmund Clarence Stedman APOCALYPSE, Richard Realf THE PICKET GUARD, Ethel Lynn Beers THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD, James Russell Lowell BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, Julia Ward Howe AT PORT ROYAL, John Greenleaf Whittier READY, Phoebe Gary 'HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?', Bret Harte SONG OF THE SOLDIERS, Charles G. Halpine JONATHAN TO JOHN, James Russell Lowell THE CUMBERLAND, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow KEARNY AT SEVEN PINES, Edmund Clarence Stedman DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER, George H. Boker BARBARA FRIETCHIE, John Greenleaf Whittier FREDERICKSBURG, Thomas Bailey Aldrich MUSIC IN CAMP, John R. Thompson KEENAN'S CHARGE, George Parsons Lathrop THE BLACK REGIMENT, George H. Boker JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG, Bret Harte TWILIGHT ON SUMTER, Richard Henry Stoddard THE BAY-FIGHT, Henry Howard Brownell SHERIDAN'S RIDE, Thomas Buchanan Read CRAVEN, Henry Newbolt SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA, Samuel H. M. Byers O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!, Walt Whitman ABRAHAM LINCOLN, James Russell Lowell THE BLUE AND THE GRAY, Francis Miles Finch AT THE FARRAGUT STATUE, Robert Bridges GRANT, H. C.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gray, Thomas

Leseproben

SELECT POEMS OF THOMAS GRAY.



EDITED BY WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M., FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.



PREFACE.
  Many editions of Gray have been published in the last fifty years, some of them very elegant, and some showing considerable editorial labor, but not one, so far as I am aware, critically exact either in text or in notes. No editor since Mathias (A.D. 1814) has given the 2d line of the Elegy as Gray wrote and printed it; while Mathias's mispunctuation of the 123d line has been copied by his successors, almost without exception. Other variations from the early editions are mentioned in the notes. It is a curious fact that the most accurate edition of Gray's collected poems is the editio princeps of 1768, printed under his own supervision. The first edition of the two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard (Strawberry-Hill, 1757), was printed with equal care, and the proofs were probably read by the poet. The text of the present edition has been collated, line by line, with that of these early editions, and in no instance have I adopted a later reading. All the MS. variations, and the various readings I have noted in the modern editions, are given in the notes. Pickering's edition of 1835, edited by Mitford, has been followed blindly in nearly all the more recent editions, and its many errors (see foot-note below and also) have been faithfully reproduced. Even its blunders in the "indenting" of the lines in the corresponding stanzas of the two Pindaric odes, which any careful proof-reader ought to have corrected, have been copied again and again—as in the Boston (1853) reprint of Pickering, the pretty little edition of Bickers & Son (London, n. d.), the fac-simile of the latter printed at our University Press, Cambridge (1866), etc. Of former editions of Gray, the only one very fully annotated is Mitford's (Pickering, 1835), already mentioned. I have drawn freely from that, correcting many errors, and also from Wakefield's and Mason's editions, and from Hales's notes (Longer English Poems, London, 1872) on the Elegy and the Pindaric odes. To all this material many original notes and illustrations have been added. The facts concerning the first publication of the Elegy are not given correctly by any of the editors, and even the "experts" of Notes and Queries have not been able to disentangle the snarl of conflicting evidence. I am not sure that I have settled the question myself (see below and foot-note), but I have at least shown that Gray is a more credible witness in the case than any of his critics. Their testimony is obviously inconsistent and inconclusive; he may have confounded the names of two magazines, but that remains to be proved.1 1 Since writing the above to-day, I have found by the merest chance in my own library another bit of evidence in the case, which fully confirms my surmise that the Elegy was printed in The Magazine of Magazines before it appeared in the Grand Magazine of Magazines. Chambers's Book of Days (vol. ii. p. 146), in an article on "Gray and his Elegy," says: "It first saw the light in The Magazine of Magazines, February, 1751. Some imaginary literary wag is made to rise in a convivial assembly, and thus announce it: 'Gentlemen, give me leave to soothe my own melancholy, and amuse you in a most noble manner, with a full copy of verses by the very ingenious Mr. Gray, of Peterhouse, Cambridge. They are stanzas written in a country churchyard.' Then follow the verses. A few days afterwards, Dodsley's edition appeared," etc. The same authority gives the four stanzas omitted after the 18th (see below) as they appear in the North American Review, except that the first line of the third is "Hark how the sacred calm that reigns around," a reading which I have found nowhere else. The stanza "There scattered oft," etc. (see below), is given as in the review. The reading further below must be a later one. I have retained most of the "parallel passages" from the poets given by the editors, and have added others, without regard to the critics who have sneered at this kind of annotations. Whether Gray borrowed from the others, or the others from him, matters little; very likely, in most instances, neither party was consciously the borrower. Gray, in his own notes, has acknowledged certain debts to other poets, and probably these were all that he was aware of. Some of these he contracted unwittingly (see what he says of one of them in a letter to Walpole, quoted in the note on the Ode on the Spring, 31), and the same may have been true of some apparently similar cases pointed out by modern editors. To me, however, the chief interest of these coincidences and resemblances of thought or expression is as studies in the "comparative anatomy" of poetry. The teacher will find them useful as pegs to hang questions upon, or texts for oral instruction. The pupil, or the young reader, who finds out who all these poets were, when they lived, what they wrote, etc., will have learned no small amount of English literary history. If he studies the quotations merely as illustrations of style and expression, or as examples of the poetic diction of various periods, he will have learned some lessons in the history and the use of his mother-tongue. The wood-cuts, illustrations 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, and 29 are from Birket Foster's designs; illustrations 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, and 16 are from the graceful drawings of "E. V. B." (the Hon. Mrs. Boyle); the rest are from various sources. Cambridge, Feb. 29, 1876.


STOKE-POGIS CHURCH.

THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY.
BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS.     Thomas Gray, the author of the celebrated Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, was born in Cornhill, London, December 26, 1716. His father, Philip Gray, an exchange broker and scrivener, was a wealthy and nominally respectable citizen, but he treated his family with brutal severity and neglect, and the poet was altogether indebted for the advantages of a learned education to the affectionate care and industry of his mother, whose maiden name was Antrobus, and who, in conjunction with a maiden sister, kept a millinery shop. A brother of Mrs. Gray was assistant to the Master of Eton, and was also a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Under his protection the poet was educated at Eton, and from thence went to Peterhouse, attending college from 1734 to September, 1738. At Eton he had as contemporaries Richard West, son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Horace Walpole, son of the triumphant Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole. West died early in his 26th year, but his genius and virtues and his sorrows will forever live in the correspondence of his friend. In the spring of 1739, Gray was invited by Horace Walpole to accompany him as travelling companion in a tour through France and Italy. They made the usual route, and Gray wrote remarks on all he saw in Florence, Rome, Naples, etc. His observations on arts and antiquities, and his sketches of foreign manners, evince his admirable taste, learning, and discrimination. Since Milton, no such accomplished English traveller had visited those classic shores. In their journey through Dauphiny, Gray's attention was strongly arrested by the wild and picturesque site of the Grande Chartreuse, surrounded by its dense forest of beech and fir, its enormous precipices, cliffs, and cascades. He visited it a second time on his return, and in the album of the mountain convent he wrote his famous Alcaic Ode. At Reggio the travellers quarrelled and parted. Walpole took the whole blame on himself. He was fond of pleasure and amusements, "intoxicated by vanity, indulgence, and the insolence of his situation as a prime minister's son"—his own confession—while Gray was studious, of a serious disposition, and independent spirit. The immediate cause of the rupture is said to have been Walpole's clandestinely opening, reading, and resealing a letter addressed to Gray, in which he expected to find a confirmation of his suspicions that Gray had been writing unfavourably of him to some friends in England. A partial reconciliation was effected about three years afterwards by the intervention of a lady, and Walpole redeemed his...