I have here, in the country, few editions of Gray's works by me, and
those not the best; for instance, I have neither of those by the Rev. J.
Mitford (excepting his Aldine edition, in one small volume), which,
perhaps, would render my present Query needless. It relates to a line,
or rather a word in the _Elegy_, which is of some importance. In the
second stanza, as the poem is usually divided (though Mason does not
give it in stanzas, because it was not so originally written), occurs,
"Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight."
And thus the line stands in all the copies (five) I am able at this
moment to consult. But referring to Dodsley's _Collection of Poems_,
vol. iv., where it comes first, the epithet applied to "flight" is not
"droning," but _drony_--
"Save where the beetle wheels his _drony_ flight."
Has anybody observed upon this difference, which surely is worthy of a
Note? I cannot find that the circumstance has been remarked upon, but,
as I said, I am here without the means of consulting the best
authorities. The _Elegy_, I presume, must have been first separately
printed, and from thence transferred to Dodsley's _Collection_; and I
wish to be informed by some person who has the earliest impression, how
the line is there given? I do not know any one to whom I can appeal on
such a point with greater confidence than to MR. PETER CUNNINGHAM, who,
I know, has a large assemblage of the first editions of our most
celebrated poets from the reign of Anne downwards, and is so well able
to make use of them. It would be extraordinary, if _drony_ were the
epithet first adopted by Gray, and subsequently altered by him to
"droning," that no notice should have been taken of the substitution by
any of the poet's editors. I presume, therefore, that it has been
mentioned, and I wish to know where?
Now, a word or two on Dodsley's _Collection of Poems_, in the fourth
volume of which, as I have stated, Gray's-_Elegy_ comes first.
Dodsley's is a popular and well-known work, and yet I cannot find _that
anybody has given the dates connected with it accurately_. If Gray's
_Elegy_ appeared in it for the first time (which I do not suppose), it
came out in 1755 which is the date of vol. iv. of Dodsley's
_Collection_, and not in 1757, which is the date of the Strawberry Hill
edition of Gray's _Odes_. The Rev. J. Mitford (Aldine edit. xxxiii.)
informs us that "Dodsley published three volumes of this _Collection_ in
1752; the fourth volume was published in 1755 and the fifth and sixth
volumes, which completed the _Collection_, in 1758." I am writing with
the title-pages of the work open before me, and I find that the first
three volumes were published, not in 1752, but in 1748, and that even
this was the second edition so that there must have been an edition of
the first three volumes, either anterior to 1748, or earlier in that
year. The sale of the work encouraged Dodsley to add a fourth volume in
1755, and two others in 1758 and the plate of Apollo and the Muses was
re-engraved for vols. v. and vi., because the original copper, which had
served for vols. i., ii., iii., and iv., was so much worn.
This matter will not seem of such trifling importance to those who bear
in mind, that if Gray's _Elegy_ did not originally come out in this
_Collection_ in 1755, various other poems of great merit and
considerable popularity did then make their earliest appearance.