This, as Mason informs us, was the first English[1] production of
Gray's that appeared in print. It was published, in folio, in 1747;
and appeared again in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 267,
without the name of the author.
[Footnote 1: A Latin poem by him, a "Hymeneal" on the Prince of
Wales's Marriage, had appeared in the _Cambridge Collection_ in
1736.]
Hazlitt (_Lectures on English Poets_) says of this Ode: "It is more
mechanical and commonplace [than the _Elegy_]; but it touches on
certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to
our latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's 'stately heights,'
or sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of
Gray. He deserves that we should think of him; for he thought of
others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad
music of humanity.'"
The writer in the _North American Review_ (vol. xcvi.), after
referring to the publication of this Ode, which, "according to the
custom of the time, was judiciously swathed in folio," adds:
"About this time Gray's portrait was painted, at Walpole's request;
and on the paper which he is represented as holding, Walpole wrote
the title of the Ode, with a line from Lucan:
'Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.'
The poem met with very little attention until it was republished in
1751, with a few other of his Odes. Gray, in speaking of it to
Walpole, in connection with the Ode to Spring, merely says that to
him 'the latter seems not worse than the former.' But the former has
always been the greater favourite--perhaps more from the matter than
the manner. It is the expression of the memories, the thoughts, and
the feelings which arise unbidden in the mind of the man as he looks
once more on the scenes of his boyhood. He feels a new youth in the
presence of those old joys. But the old friends are not there.
Generations have come and gone, and an unknown race now frolic in
boyish glee. His sad, prophetic eye cannot help looking into the
future, and comparing these careless joys with the inevitable ills of
life. Already he sees the fury passions in wait for their little
victims. They seem present to him, like very demons. Our language
contains no finer, more graphic personifications than these almost
tangible shapes. Spenser is more circumstantial, Collins more
vehement, but neither is more real. Though but outlines in miniature,
they are as distinct as Dutch art. Every epithet is a lifelike
picture; not a word could be changed without destroying the tone of
the whole. At last the musing poet asks himself, _Cui bono?_ Why thus
borrow trouble from the future? Why summon so soon the coming
locusts, to poison before their time the glad waters of youth?
'Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late.
And happiness too quickly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more;--where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.'
So feeling and the want of feeling come together for once in the
moral. The gay Roman satirist--the apostle of indifferentism--reaches
the same goal, though he has travelled a different road. To
Thaliarchus he says:
'Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere: et
Quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro
Appone.'
The same easy-going philosophy of life forms the key-note of the Ode
to Leuconoë:
'Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero;'
of that to Quinctius Hirpinus:
'Quid aeternis minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas?'
of that to Pompeius Grosphus:
'Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est,
Oderit curare.'