"The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
_Chastis'd_ by sabler tints of woe;
And blended form with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life."
Gray, _On the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude_.
The word _chastised_ is similarly used by Cowley:
"From Saul his growth, and manly strength he took,
_Chastised_ by bright Ahinoam's gentler look."
_Davideidos_, lib. iv. p. 133.
The _idea_ of the whole passage may be found in Pope:
"Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train;
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
_The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife,
Gives all the strength and colour of our life_."
_Essay on Man_, Epist. II.
Again:
"Amazement in his van with Flight combin'd,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."
Gray, _The Bard_.
"Victorious arms thro' Ammon's land it bore,
Ruin behind, and terror march'd before."
_Davideidos_, lib. iv. p. 135.
Wakefield mentions some parallel passages, but omits the best of all:
"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth:
the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a
desolate wilderness; Yea, and nothing shall escape them."--Joel,
ii. 3.
In the "Ode on the Installation" Gray says:
"Their tears, their little triumphs o'er
Their _human passions_ now no more."
Wakefield dwells enraptured on the expression _human passions_. Cowley
speaks of "_humana quies_" (_Davideidos_, lib. i. p. 3.). Horace says:
"---- Carminibus quae versant atque venenis
_Humanos animos_."--_Sat._ viii. 19. lib. i.
_Human passions_ is not, however, a _creation_ of Gray's; for, if not
anywhere else, he might have found the words very often in the writings
of William Law, as vigorous a prose writer as England can boast of since
the days of Dr. South. See his _answer_ to Dr. Trapp's _Not Righteous
overmuch_, p. 62., Lond. 1741; and his _Serious Call_, cap. xii. p.
137., and cap. xxi. p. 293., Lond. 1816.
To mention its use by modern writers would be endless. I selected these
few passages on reading Mr. Wakefield's laudations, for otherwise I
should not perhaps have remarked the words as unusual. Wakefield adduces
from Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_:
"One _human tear_ shall drop, and be forgiven."
"Noble rage," Gray's _Elegy_. "Noble rage," Cowley's _Davideidos_, lib.
iv. p. 137. Again, in the _Elegy_:
"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The mopeing owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,
_Molest her ancient solitary reign_."
Cowley, in describing the palace of Lucifer, has some fine sentences;
and amongst them:
"Non hic gemmatis stillantia sidera guttis
_Impugnant saevae jus inviolabile noctis_."
_Davideidos_, lib. i. p. 3.
And in English:
"No gentle stars with their fair gems of light,
_Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night_."
_Davideidos_, lib. i. p. 6.
Akenside constantly used the adjective _human_ in different
conjunctions.