"For other beds the Priests there used none,
But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie;"
and Milton, _P. L._ x. 777:
"How glad would lay me down,
As in my mother's lap!"
Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the
pathetic sentence of Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ii. 63: "Nam terra novissime
complexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, tum maxime, ut mater,
operit."
123. _He gave to misery all he had, a tear_. This is the pointing of
the line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of
Mathias, who seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the
recent editors, almost without exception) to,
"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear."
This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment.
If one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to
try to make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not
only thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as
an illustration of it:
"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live."
126. Mitford says that _Or_ in this line should be _Nor_. Yes, if
"draw" is an imperative, like "seek;" no, if it is an infinitive, in
the same construction as "to disclose." That the latter was the
construction the poet had in mind is evident from the form of the
stanza in the Wrightson MS., where "seek" is repeated:
"No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Nor seek to draw them from their dread abode."
127. _In trembling hope_. Gray quotes Petrarch, _Sonnet_ 104:
"paventosa speme." Cf. Lucan, _Pharsalia_, vii. 297: "Spe trepido;"
Mallet, _Funeral Hymn_, 473:
"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;"
and Beaumont, _Psyche_, xv. 314:
"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear."
Hooker (_Eccl. Pol._ i.) defines hope as "a trembling expectation of
things far removed."
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