In the 29th a word which we cannot make out has been erased, and
"aged" substituted.
Before the Epitaph, two asterisks refer to the bottom of the page,
where the following stanza is given, with the marginal note, "Omitted
in 1753:"
"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the Year,
By Hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found;
The Red-breast loves to build, and warble there,
And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground."
The last two lines of the 31st stanza (see note below) are pointed as
follows:
"He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend."
Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following:
"Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Huswife;"
"Ile" (aisle); "wast" (waste); "village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;"
"spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc.
Mitford, in his Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton" edition of his
Poems (edited by Rev. John Moultrie, 1847), says: "I possess many
curious variations from the printed text, taken from a copy of it in
his own handwriting." He adds specimens of these variations, a few of
which differ from both the Wrightson and Pembroke MSS. We give these
in our notes below. See on 12, 24, and 93.
Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene of
the _Elegy_, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, been
in favor of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in
1742; and there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In that
churchyard his mother was buried, and there, at his request, his own
remains were afterwards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, in
all respects in perfect keeping with the spirit of the poem.
According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parish
about two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in the
habit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of the
poem; and the great bell of St. Mary's is the "curfew" of the first
stanza. Another tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, some
three miles and a half northwest of Cambridge. Both places have
churchyards such as the _Elegy_ describes; and this is about all that
can be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parish
called Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at least
has suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason than
that Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, and
casually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot of
which he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a whole
morning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poet
often visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fond
and tender associations that gathered about Stoke.
1. _The curfew_. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to suppose
that the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark of
Norman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest,
it only shows that the old English police was less well-regulated
than that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior
civilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of
the timber-built towns of the Middle Ages: 'Solae pestes Londoniae
sunt stultorum immodica potatio et _frequens incendium_'
(Fitzstephen). The enforced extinction of domestic lights at an
appointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them."