110. Gray quotes Cowley, _Prophet_: "Words that weep, and tears that
speak."
Dugald Stewart remarks upon this line: "I have sometimes thought that
Gray had in view the two different effects of words already
described; the effect of some in awakening the powers of conception
and imagination; and that of others in exciting associated emotions."
111. "We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind
than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley (who had his
merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That
of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late
days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some
of his choruses; above all in the last of _Caractacus_:
'Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread!' etc." (Gray).
113. _Wakes thee now_. Cf. _Elegy_, 48: "Or wak'd to ecstasy the
living lyre."
115. "[Greek: Dios pros ornicha theion]. _Olymp._ ii. 159. Pindar
compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak
and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of
their noise" (Gray).
Cf. Spenser, _F. Q._ v. 4, 42:
"Like to an Eagle, in his kingly pride
Soring through his wide Empire of the aire,
To weather his brode sailes."
Cowley, in his translation of Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, calls Pindar "the
Theban swan" ("Dircaeum cycnum"):
"Lo! how the obsequious wind and swelling air
The Theban Swan does upward bear."
117. _Azure deep of air_. Cf. Euripides, _Med._ 1294: [Greek: es
aitheros bathos]; and Lucretius, ii. 151: "Aëris in magnum fertur
mare." Cowley has "Row through the trackless ocean of air;" and
Shakes. (_T. of A._ iv. 2), "this sea of air."
118, 119. The MS. reads:
"Yet when they first were open'd on the day
Before his visionary eyes would run."
D. Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) remarks that "Gray, in
describing the infantine reveries of poetical genius, has fixed with
exquisite judgment on that class of our conceptions which are derived
from _visible_ objects."
120. _With orient hues_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ i. 546: "with orient
colours waving."