ADVISORY EDITORS
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MMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_ INTRODUCTION To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter isunacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not"must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed,"Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement--perhaps (accepting thedefinition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Itssuccess, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to"the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr.Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images whichfind a mirrour in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosomreturns an echo." Universality, clarity, incisive lapidarydiction--these qualities may be somewhat staled in praise of the"classical" style, yet it is precisely in these traits that the"Elegy" proves most nobly. The artificial figures of rhetoricalarrangement that are so omnipresent in the antitheses, chiasmuses,parallelisms, etc., of Pope and his school are in Gray's bestquatrains unobtrusive or even infrequent. Often in the art of the period an affectation of simplicity covers andreveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fairexample; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sightthere seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but prybeneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled bytheir coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you arewatching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignityof Dr. Johnson's exquisitely chosen diction is likewise ingeniouslystudied and self-conscious. When Gray soared into the somewhat turgidpindaric tradition of his day, he too was slaking a thirst forrhetorical complexities. But in the "Elegy" we have none of that. Nordo we have artifices like the "chaste Eve" or the "meek-eyed maiden"apostrophized in Collins and Joseph Warton. For Gray the hour when thesky turns from opal to dusk leaves one not "breathless withadoration," but moved calmly to placid reflection tuned to drowsytinklings or to a moping owl. It endures no contortions of image or ofverse. It registers the sensations of the hour and the reflectionsappropriate to it--simply. It is not difficult to be clear--so we are told by some who habituallyfail of that quality--if you have nothing subtle to say. And it hasbeen urged on high authority in our day that there is nothing really"fine" in Gray's "Churchyard." However conscious Gray was in limitinghis address to "the common reader," we may be certain he was notwriting to the obtuse, the illiterate or the insensitive. He was tocreate an evocation of evening: the evening of a day and theapproaching night of life. The poem was not to be perplexed by doubt;it ends on a note of "trembling hope"--but on "hope." There areperhaps better evocations of similar moods, but not of this precisemood. Shakespeare's poignant Sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year"),which suggests no hope, may be one. Blake's "Nurse's Song" is, incontrast, subtly tinged with modernistic disillusion: When the voices of children are heard on the greenAnd whisp'rings are in the dale,The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,My face turns green and pale. Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,And the dews of night arise;Your spring & your day are wasted in play,And your winter and night in disguise. Here, too, are no tremblings of hope, no sound confidence in the"average" man, such as Gray surprisingly glimpses. One begins tosuspect that it is more necessary to be subtle in evocations ofdespair than in those of hope, even if the hope is tremulous. The moodGray sought required no obvious subtlety. The nearest approach to Gray(found in Catullus) may likewise be said to be deficient in overtones;but it also comes home to the heart of everyman: o quid solutis est beatius curis,cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrinolabore fessi venimus larem ad nostrumdesideratoque acquiescimus lecto! These simple lines convey what Gray's ploughman is achieving for oneevening, but not what the rude forefathers have achieved for eternity.From the ploughman and the simple annals of the poor the poem divergesto reproach the proud and great for their disregard of undistinguishedmerit, and moves on to praise of the sequestered life, and to anepitaph applicable either to a "poeta ignotus" or to Gray himself. Theepitaph with its trembling hope transforms the poem into somethinglike a personal yet universal requiem; and for one villager--perhapsfor himself--Gray seems to murmur through the gathering darkness: "etlux perpetua luceat ei." Although in this epitaph we may seem to beconcerned with an individual, we do well to note that the youth tofortune and fame unknown, whose great "bounty" was only a tear, is ascompletely anonymous as the ploughman or the rude forefathers. The somber aspects of evening are perhaps more steadily preserved byGray than by his contemporaries. From Milton to Joseph Warton allpoets had made their ploughman unwearied as (to quote Warton):
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