Part 11 (1/2)
Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet.
63. Mitford quotes Tickell:
”To scatter blessings o'er the British land;”
and Mrs. Behn:
”Is scattering plenty over all the land.”
66. _Their growing virtues_. That is, the growth of their virtues.
67. _To wade through slaughter_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Temp. of Fame_, 347:
”And swam to empire through the purple flood.”
68. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. V._ iii. 3:
”The gates of mercy shall be all shut up.”
70. _To quench the blushes_, etc. Cf. Shakes. _W. T._ iv. 3:
”Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself.”
73. _Far from the madding crowd's_, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:
”Far from the madding worldling's hoa.r.s.e discords.”
Mitford points out ”the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which one must break the grammatical construction.” The poet's meaning is, however, clear enough.
75. Wakefield quotes Pope, _Epitaph on Fenton_:
”Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, Content with science in the vale of peace.”
77. _These bones_. ”The bones of these. So _is_ is often used in Latin, especially by Livy, as in v. 22: '_Ea_ sola pecunia,' the money derived from that sale, etc.” (Hales).
84. _That teach_. Mitford censures _teach_ as ungrammatical; but it may be justified as a ”construction according to sense.”
85. Hales remarks: ”At the first glance it might seem that _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ was in apposition to _who_, and the meaning was, 'Who that now lies forgotten,' etc.; in which case the second line of the stanza must be closely connected with the fourth; for the question of the pa.s.sage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who ever died without wis.h.i.+ng to be remembered?' But in this way of interpreting this difficult stanza (i.) there is comparatively little force in the appositional phrase, and (ii.) there is a certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbal though apparently coordinate) in which, as has just been noticed, the point of the question really lies. Perhaps therefore it is better to take the phrase _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ as in fact the completion of the predicate _resign'd_, and interpret thus: Who ever resigned this life of his with all its pleasures and all its pains to be utterly ignored and forgotten?=who ever, when resigning it, reconciled himself to its being forgotten? In this case the second half of the stanza echoes the thought of the first half.”
We give the note in full, and leave the reader to take his choice of the two interpretations. For ourself, we incline to the first rather than the second. We prefer to take _to dumb Forgetfulness a prey_ as appositional and proleptic, and not as the grammatical complement of _resigned_: Who, yielding himself up a prey to dumb Forgetfulness, ever resigned this life without casting a longing, lingering look behind?
90. _Pious_ is used in the sense of the Latin _pius_. Ovid has ”piae lacrimae.” Mitford quotes Pope, _Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady_, 49:
”No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd.”
”In this stanza,” says Hales, ”he answers in an exquisite manner the two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding stanza.... What he would say is that every one while a spark of life yet remains in him yearns for some kindly loving remembrance; nay, even after the spark is quenched, even when all is dust and ashes, that yearning must still be felt.”
91, 92. Mitford paraphrases the couplet thus: ”The voice of Nature still cries from the tomb in the language of the epitaph inscribed upon it, which still endeavours to connect us with the living; the fires of former affection are still alive beneath our ashes.”
Cf. Chaucer, _C. T._ 3880: