"The curfew tolls!--the knell of parting day."
It is sufficient to say that Gray, as the manuscript shows, did not
want it to read so, and that we much prefer his way to Warton's.
Mitford says that _toll_ is "not the appropriate verb," as the curfew
was rung, not tolled. We presume that depended, to some extent, on
the fancy of the ringer. Milton (_Il Pens._ 76) speaks of the curfew
as
"Swinging slow with sullen roar."
Gray himself quotes here Dante, _Purgat._ 8:
--"squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore;"
and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those
unfamiliar with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation:
--"from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day."
Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, _Prol. to Troilus and
Cressida_, 22:
"That tolls the knell for their departed sense."
On _parting_=departing, cf. Shakes. _Cor._ v. 6: "When I parted
hence;" Goldsmith, _D. V._ 171: "Beside the bed where parting life
was laid," etc.
2. _The lowing herd wind_, etc. _Wind_, and not _winds_, is the
reading of the MS. (see fac-simile of this stanza on p. 73) and of
_all_ the early editions--that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's,
Mathias's, etc.--but we find no note of the fact in Mitford's or any
other of the more recent editions, which have substituted _winds_.
Whether the change was made as an amendment or accidentally, we do
not know;[10] but the original reading seems to us by far the better
one. The poet does not refer to the herd as an aggregate, but to the
animals that compose it. He sees, not _it_, but "_them_ on their
winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the meaning and the
melody of the line.
[Footnote 10: Very likely the latter, as we have seen that _winds_
appears in the unauthorized version of the _London Magazine_ (March,
1751), where it may be a misprint, like the others noted above.
We may remark here that the edition of 1768--the _editio princeps_ of
the _collected_ Poems--was issued under Gray's own supervision, and
is printed with remarkable accuracy. We have detected only one
indubitable error of the type in the entire volume. Certain
peculiarities of spelling were probably intentional, as we find the
like in the fac-similes of the poet's manuscripts. The many
quotations from Greek, Latin, and Italian are correctly given
(according to the received texts of the time), and the references to
authorities, so far as we have verified them, are equally exact. The
book throughout bears the marks of Gray's scholarly and critical
habits, and we may be sure that the poems appear in precisely the
form which he meant they should retain. In doubtful cases, therefore,
we have generally followed this edition. Mason's (the _second_
edition: York, 1778) is also carefully edited and printed, and its
readings seldom vary from Gray's. All of Mitford's that we have
examined swarm with errors, especially in the notes. Pickering's
(1835), edited by Mitford, is perhaps the worst of all. The Boston
ed. (Little, Brown, & Co., 1853) is a pretty careful reproduction of
Pickering's, with all its inaccuracies.]
3. The critic of the _N. A. Review_ points out that this line "is
quite peculiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he
adds, "twenty different versions preserving the rhythm, the general
sentiment and the rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be,
not inappropriately, substituted for the original reading."
Luke quotes Spenser, _F. Q._ vi. 7, 39: "And now she was uppon the
weary way."