In the 21st we have "fame and _epitaph_ supply."
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he 23d has "_And_ in our ashes _glow_," the readings "Ev'n" and"live" being inserted in the margin. The 27th stanza has "_would he_ rove." We suspect that this is alsothe reading of the Wrightson MS., as Mitford says it is noted byMason. In the 28th stanza, the first line reads "_from_ the custom'd hill." In the 29th a word which we cannot make out has been erased, and"aged" substituted. Before the Epitaph, two asterisks refer to the bottom of the page,where the following stanza is given, with the marginal note, "Omittedin 1753:" "There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the Year,By Hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found;The Red-breast loves to build, and warble there,And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground." The last two lines of the 31st stanza (see note below) are pointed asfollows: "He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear,He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend." Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following:"Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Huswife;""Ile" (aisle); "wast" (waste); "village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;""spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc. Mitford, in his Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton" edition of hisPoems (edited by Rev. John Moultrie, 1847), says: "I possess manycurious variations from the printed text, taken from a copy of it inhis own handwriting." He adds specimens of these variations, a few ofwhich differ from both the Wrightson and Pembroke MSS. We give thesein our notes below. See on 12, 24, and 93. Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene ofthe _Elegy_, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, beenin favor of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in1742; and there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In thatchurchyard his mother was buried, and there, at his request, his ownremains were afterwards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, inall respects in perfect keeping with the spirit of the poem. According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parishabout two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in thehabit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of thepoem; and the great bell of St. Mary's is the "curfew" of the firststanza. Another tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, somethree miles and a half northwest of Cambridge. Both places havechurchyards such as the _Elegy_ describes; and this is about all thatcan be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parishcalled Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at leasthas suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason thanthat Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, andcasually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot ofwhich he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a wholemorning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poetoften visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fondand tender associations that gathered about Stoke. 1. _The curfew_. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to supposethat the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark ofNorman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest,it only shows that the old English police was less well-regulatedthan that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superiorcivilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse ofthe timber-built towns of the Middle Ages: 'Solae pestes Londoniaesunt stultorum immodica potatio et _frequens incendium_'(Fitzstephen). The enforced extinction of domestic lights at anappointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them."
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