COWLEY AND GRAY, NO. III.

Before again recurring to Gray's partiality for the poems of Cowley, I will make a remark or two on Mr. Wakefield's edition of Gray.

In his delightful "Ode to Adversity" Gray has written:

"Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,

The bad affright, afflict the best."

Upon which Wakefield gives us this brilliant criticism:

"'Torturing hour.' There seems to be some little impropriety and incongruity in this. Consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain."

Afterwards he seems to speak diffidently of his own judgment, which is rather an unusual thing in Mr. Wakefield. Well would it have been for the reputations of Bentley, Johnson, and Wakefield, that, before improving upon Milton and Gray and Collins, they had remembered the words of a truly great critic, even Horace himself:

"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus:

Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens,

Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum;

Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus.

Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis

Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,

Aut humana parum cavit natura."

Epist. ad Pisones, 347.

Not by any means that I am allowing in this case the existence of a "macula," or an "incuria" either. To D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature I think I am indebted for the remark, that Gray borrowed the expressions from Milton:

"When the scourge

Inexorably, and the torturing hour

Calls us to penance."

Par. Lost, lib. ii. 90.

It is therefore with Milton, and not with Gray, that Mr. Wakefield must settle the matter. And in proof of my earnest sympathies with him during the very unequal contest, I will console him with "proprieties," "congruities," "consistencies of figure," and "material images," enough.

"The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel."

Goldsmith's Traveller, ad finem.

Or better for this purpose still:

"Swords, daggers, bodkins, bearded arrows, spears,

Nails, pincers, crosses, gibbets, hurdles, ropes,

Tallons of griffins, paws and teeth of bears,

Tigre's and lyon's mouths, not iron hoops,

Racks, wheels, and trappados, brazen cauldrons which

Boiled with oil, huge tuns which flam'd with pitch."

Beaumonts's Psyche, cant. XXII. v. 69. p. 330. Cambridge, 1702. Folio.

"Torturing hour" is used by Campbell in his Pleasures of Hope, Part I.:

"The martyr smiled beneath avenging power,

And braved the tyrant in his torturing hour."

And, indeed, "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," had used it before any of them:

"Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

Again, Gray writes in his truly sublime ode, "The Bard:"

"On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood,

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air),

And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre."

Ordinary readers would have innocently supposed the above "pictured" passage beyond all praise or criticism. "At non infelix" Wakefield:

"A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."

Macbeth.

I must give his note as it stands, for I question whether the whole range of verbal criticism could produce anything more ludicrous:

"I wish Mr. Gray could have introduced a more poetical expression, than the inactive term stood, into this fine passage: as Shakspeare has, for instance, in his description of Dover cliff:

'Half way down

Hangs one, that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!'

King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

"Which is the same happy picture as that of Virgil:

"'Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo.'

Ecl. I.77."

He might, when his hand was in, have adduced other passages also from Virgil, e.g.:

"Imminet in rivi præstantis imaginis undam."

Culex, 66.

However, with all due respect for Mr. Wakefield's "happy pictures," I do not see anything left, but his eyebrows, for the luckless bard to hang by! He could not have hung by his hair, which "stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air;" nor yet by his hands, which "swept the deep sorrows of his lyre." Besides, there can scarcely be more opposite pictures than that of a man gathering samphire, or kids browsing, amongst beetling rocks; and the commanding and awe-inspiring position in which Gray ingeniously places his bard. The expressions chosen by Virgil, Shakspeare, and Gray were each peculiarly suitable to the particular objects in view. If Gray was thinking of Milton, as I intimated in a former letter, he may have still kept him in mind:

"Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood

Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war."

Par. Lost, lib. ii. 706.

Or again:

"On th' other side, Satan, alarm'd,

Collecting all his might dilated stood,

Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:

His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest

Sat Horror plum'd; nor wanted in his grasp

What seem'd both spear and shield."

Par. Lost, lib. iv. 985.

It would be easy to adduce similar instances from the ancient sources, but I will only mention From Milton an illustration of theσυστρεψας of Demosthenes, and of the passionate abruptness with which Gray commences "The Bard:"

"As when of old some orator renown'd

In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence

Flourish'd, since mute, to some great cause addressed

Stood in himself collected, while each part,

Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue,

Sometimes in height began, as no delay

Of preface brooking through his zeal of right."

Par. Lost, lib. ix. 670.

Wakefield's hypercritical fastidiousness would have completely defeated the intentions of Gray. His "Bard" had a mission to fulfil which could not have been fulfilled by one suspended like king Solomon, in the ancient Jewish traditions, or like Mahomet's coffin, mid-way between heaven and earth. His cry wasδος που στω, and the poet heard him. And thus, from his majestic position, was not—

"Every burning word he spoke

Full of rage and full of grief?"

In the full blaze of poetic phrensy, he flashes out at once with the awfully grand and terrible exordium:

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

Confusion on thy banners wait!

Tho' fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,

They mock the air with idle state.

Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,

From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears."

Collins thus describes the passion of anger:

"Next Anger rush'd;—his eyes on fire,

In lightnings own'd his secret stings:

In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with flurried hand the strings."

Word-painting can go no farther. When, however, he comes to melancholy, in lines which contain more suggestive beauty, as well as more poetic inspiration, than perhaps any others of the same length in the English language, how does he sing?

"With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sate retired;

And, from her wild sequester'd seat,

In notes, by distance made more sweet,

Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul:

And, dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,

Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,

Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away."

Ode on the Passions.

This is the concentrated essence of poetry. Surely Gray had forgotten Collins when he penned the beautiful lines:

"But not to one in this benighted age,

Is that diviner inspiration given,

That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page,

The pomp and prodigality of heaven,

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,

The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,

Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light."

Stanzas to Mr. Bentley.

From a memorandum made by Gray himself, it is evident that he once had contemplated placing his "Bard" in a sitting posture; but I cannot but rejoice that he altered his mind, for such breath-taking words could never have been uttered in so composed and contented a posture. I give part of it from Mr. Mason's edition:

"The army of Edward I., as they marched through a deep valley, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure, seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock; who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation he had brought on his country, &c., &c. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot."—Vol. i. p. 73. Lond. 1807.

The last two lines of the passage before us—

"And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre"—

remind us in some degree of Cowley:

"Sic cecinit sanctus vates, digitosque volantes

Innumeris per fila modis trepidantia movit,

Intimaque elicuit Medici miracula plectri."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 13.

Again:

"Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes."

Gray, The Bard.

"Namque oculis plus illa suis, plus lumine cœli

Dilexit."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 14.

And—

"The Attick warbler pours her throat."

Ode to Spring.

"Tum magnum tenui cecinerunt gutture Numen."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 20.

Also—

"The hues of bliss more brightly glow,

Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe;

And blended form with artful strife,

The strength and harmony of life."

Gray, On the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude.

The word chastised is similarly used by Cowley:

"From Saul his growth, and manly strength he took,

Chastised by bright Ahinoam's gentler look."

Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 133.

The idea of the whole passage may be found in Pope:

"Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train;

Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind;

The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife,

Gives all the strength and colour of our life."

Essay on Man, Epist. II.

Again:

"Amazement in his van with Flight combin'd,

And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."

Gray, The Bard.

"Victorious arms thro' Ammon's land it bore,

Ruin behind, and terror march'd before."

Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 135.

Wakefield mentions some parallel passages, but omits the best of all:

"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; Yea, and nothing shall escape them."—Joel, ii. 3.

In the "Ode on the Installation" Gray says:

"Their tears, their little triumphs o'er

Their human passions now no more."

Wakefield dwells enraptured on the expression human passions. Cowley speaks of "humana quies" (Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.). Horace says:

"—— Carminibus quæ versant atque venenis

Humanos animos."

Sat. viii. 19. lib. i.

Human passions is not, however, a creation of Gray's; for, if not anywhere else, he might have found the words very often in the writings of William Law, as vigorous a prose writer as England can boast of since the days of Dr. South. See his answer to Dr. Trapp's Not Righteous overmuch, p. 62., Lond. 1741; and his Serious Call, cap. xii. p. 137., and cap. xxi. p. 293., Lond. 1816.

To mention its use by modern writers would be endless. I selected these few passages on reading Mr. Wakefield's laudations, for otherwise I should not perhaps have remarked the words as unusual. Wakefield adduces from Pope's Eloisa to Abelard:

"One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven."

"Noble rage," Gray's Elegy. "Noble rage," Cowley's Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 137. Again, in the Elegy:

"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The mopeing owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

Cowley, in describing the palace of Lucifer, has some fine sentences; and amongst them:

"Non hic gemmatis stillantia sidera guttis

Impugnant sævæ jus inviolabile noctis."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.

And in English:

"No gentle stars with their fair gems of light,

Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night."

Davideidos, lib. i. p. 6.

Akenside constantly used the adjective human in different conjunctions.

R T.

Warmington.

OLD SONG: THE CUCKOLD'S CAP.

The following song I never saw in print. I knew an old lady, who fifty years ago used to sing it. Is it known?

Near Reading there lived a buxom young dame,

The wife of a miller, and Joan was her name;

And she had a hen of a wondrous size,

The like you never beheld with your eyes:

It had a red head, gay wings, yellow legs,

And every year laid her a bushel of eggs,

Which made her resolve for to set it with speed,

Because she'd a mind to have more of the breed.

Now as she was setting her hen on a day,

A shepherd came by, and thus he did say:

"Oh, what are you doing?" She answered him then,

"I'm going to set my miraculous hen."

"O, Joan," said the shepherd, "to keep your eggs warm,

And that they may prosper and come to no harm,

You must set them all in a large cuckold's cap,

And then all your chickens will come to good hap."

"O, I have no cuckold's cap, shepherd," said she,

"But nevertheless I'll be ruled by thee;

For this very moment I'll trudge up and down,

And borrow one, if there be one in the town."

So she went to the baker's, and thus she did say:

"O, lend me a cuckold's cap, neighbour, I pray,

For I'm going to set my miraculous hen,

And when that I've done with't, I'll bring it again."

The baker's wife answered, and thus she replied:

"Had I got such a thing, you should not be denied;

But these nineteen or twenty years I have been wed,

And my husband ne'er had such a cap to his head.

But go to my cousin, who lives at the mill,

I know she had one, and she may have it still;

Tell her I sent you, she'll lend it, I know."

"Thank ye," says Joan, and away she did go.

So, straight to the house of the miller she went,

And told her that she by her cousin was sent,

To borrow a thing which was wondrous rare,

'Twas a large cuckold's cap, which her husband did wear.

"I do not dispute but such things there may be;

But why should my cousin, pray, send you to me?

For these nineteen or twenty years I've been a wife,

And my husband ne'er had such a cap in his life.

"But go to the quaker who lives at the Swan,

I know she had one, and if 'tisn't gone,

Tell her to lend it to you for my sake,

Which I the same for a great favour shall take."

So she went to the house of old Yea and Nay,

And said to his wife, who was buxom and gay,

"I'm come for to borrow, if that you will lend,

A large cuckold's cap: I was sent by a friend."

The quaker's wife answered and said, with a frown,

"Why, I've no such thing, if thou'dst give me a crown;

Besides, I'd not lend it, friend Joan, if I had,

For fear it should make my old husband run mad.

In town there are many young damsels, perhaps,

Who may be ingenious in making these caps,

But as for their names, I really can't say,

So, therefore, friend Joan, excuse me, I pray."

Now Joan being tired and weary withal,

She said, "I've had no good fortune at all.

I find that it is the beginning of sorrow,

To trudge up and down among neighbours to borrow.

A large cuckold's cap I wanted indeed,

A thing of small value, and yet couldn't speed:

But, as I'm a woman, believe me," says Joan,

"Before it be long, I'll have one of my own."

J. R. R ELTON.

THE GODODIN.

This poem, though not absolutely the earliest in point of date, is the longest of the numerous poems produced among the Kymry of the north of England during the sixth and seventh centuries. Two translations have already appeared in English; one by the Rev. Edward Davies, the author of Celtic Researches, and the other by a gentleman named Probert. Of these the latter, though very imperfect and extremely defective, is the only one which an English reader should consult; the version given by Davies is only a very ingenious misrepresentation. The poem has no more reference to Hengist than it has to the man-in-the-moon; and GOMER might have suspected that a version which, without rule or reason, deprived historic personages of their reality, could not have been correct. Every proper name mentioned in the Gododin may be shown without any alteration to be those of persons living between 577 and 642.The proof of this assertion, when carefully examined, is all but overwhelming; but here I can only cite a few of the most tangible facts. The design of the poem is thus described by the bard himself:—

"O ved O vuelin,

O Gattraeth werin,

Mi a na vi Aneurin

Ys gwyr Taliesin,

Oveg cyvrenhin

Neu cheing Ododin

Cyn gwawr dydd dilin."

These lines may be thus translated:—

"Of mead from the mead horn,

Of the host of Cattraeth,

I, Aneurin, will do

What is known to Taliesin,

A man of kindred disposition.

Will I not sing of what befell

Gododin, before the break of day?"

From frequent notices in other parts of the poem, we find that the subject is the defeat of (the Ottadini) the men of Gododin, in a battle which took place in the year 603, near Cattraeth, which may be identified with the Cataracton of Ptolemy, the Cataract of Bede, and the present Catterick in Yorkshire. The men of Gododin in this campaign were in league with the Novantæ of Wigtonshire, the Britons of Strathclyde, the Scots of Argyle, and the Picts of Fife and Perth. Of this army the chiefs alone amounted to three hundred and sixty; but, to use the words of the bard, "Mead brought shame on the best of armies;" and the chiefs, on account of temporary success over a part of Ethelfrith's Northumbrian army, spent the night in wild carousal. Overtures of peace were made to them by Ethelfrith, and contemptuously rejected; they rushed pell-mell to battle before the break of day; and the bard, seeing them falling helplessly drunk from their horses, "drew a veil over his face and fled, weeping on his way." I here assume that Cattraeth and Cataract are the same place; and to cite only one of many evidences, the position of the Ottadini in the immediate neighbourhood of Catterick, lends this view strong confirmation. But there is here another assumption, to which I invite the attention of English antiquaries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates the occurrence of a great battle between Ethelfrith of Northumbria and the northern Britons in the year 603: of that battle the site is variously named Degstan, Dægsanstane, and Egesanstane; but antiquarian researches have not determined where Egesanstane was. Some place it at Dawston, near Jedburg, in Scotland, and others at Dalston in Cumberland; but all confess uncertainty. Now I assume that the place called Egesanstane is more likely to be Siggeston, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which is about five or six miles east of Catterick; and this conjecture is strongly supported by the fact that Ethelfrith in this case was not the invader but the invaded, as it is said, "Hering, the son of Hussa, led the enemy thither," to the dominions of Ethelfrith, which were then but little else than the eastern coast of Northumberland and Yorkshire. If this view be correct, our antiquaries have hitherto been in error on this point; the site of the great battle of 603 is no longer unknown; and Egesanstane and Cattraeth are only two names for the same battle, just as another battle-field is variously named the battle of Waterloo by us, and that of Mont St. Jean by the French.

Probert places the death of Aneurin in 570: the Gododin shows him to have been an eyewitness of an event which took place in 642. Davies, whose works are striking evidences of a powerful intellect completely led astray, makes the subject to have been the reported massacre at Stonehenge, which possibly never took place, but which he fixes in 472. Now I have cited a passage which, referring to Taliesin as an authority, implies that Aneurin was his junior; and Taliesin was living in 610. Again, Davies makes an abortive attempt to get rid of the last poem of Llywarch Hen, which shows him to have been living as late as the year 640, when most of his sons had fallen in battle. Llywarch himself was either at the battle of Cattraeth, or assisted in organising the campaign; for though not mentioned by Aneurin, he himself alludes to the time "when we attacked the great-smoker-of-towns (Ethelfrith)."

At this battle Aneurin was taken prisoner, and confined in "an earthen house," from which he was released "by the bright sword of Cenau, the son of Llywarch." The son of Llywarch could scarcely have been living in 472; and Davies in vain essays to get rid of this obdurate fact. This passage in Aneurin—

"Under foot was gravel,

Stretched out was my leg

In the subterranean house,

And an iron chain

Was bound about my knees,"

shows the use of under-ground hovels to have extended far into the historic period.

One fact more, and this demonstration that Aneurin has been ante-dated will be complete. The bard in three several places mentions a battle of Mannan, in much the same way as we at this day speak of Waterloo; and it is evident that, in the estimation of the bard and his countrymen, the battle of Mannan was the last great event before the battle of Cattraeth. The first of these passages is—

"Caeawe Cymnyviat cyvlat Erwyt

. . . . .

Rae ergit Cadfannan catwyt."

"Caeog was a conflictor with destructive pikes.

. . . . .

He was preserved from the blows of Mannan-fight."

Cæog, whom Davies converts into the adjective "adorned," was the brother of Cynddylan, Prince of Powys (Elegies of Llywarch Hen, p. 70.). On the death of his brother in 577, he went to North Briton; he escaped from the blows of Mannan, and afterwards fell at Cattraeth. Again, of a chief named Twrch it is said:—

"He loved the battling of spears,

At Mannan, and before Aldud the renowned."

"Emyt af crennyt y gat waewawr

Catvannan yr Aelut clodvawr."

Again he says of another chief:—

"Yn dieding . . . . .

Ac Adan Cadvannan cochre,

Veirch marchawg goddrud y more."

"Resistless

As Aeddan of the blood-stained steeds of Mannan-fight,

He was an impetuous rider that morning."

Here we have three separate proofs of the fact, that Cadvannan was anterior to the battle of Cattraeth: now when and where did that take place? In the year 582, and probably at Clackmannan, on the Firth of Forth in Scotland. Here is my authority (Annals of Ulster):

"DLXXXII. Bellum Manan, in quo victor erat Aodhan Mar Gawran."

The battle of Cattraeth must be that of 603, at which Aeddan was also present.

These few annotations from a new translation of The Gododin now in MS., will, it is hoped, satisfy your correspondent GOMER that I am justified in repeating the views of Davies. Should he wish to get a correct text, and a judicious version of The Gododin, he had better subscribe to a translation by the Rev. J. Williams (author of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry), now about to issue from the Llandovery press, at a very moderate price. Probert's translation is very scarce.

Is there no tradition of this battle at Sigston?

THOS. S TEPHENS.

FOLK LORE.

Lincolnshire Folk Lore. —The following, illustrating as it does a superstition still very prevalent in Lincolnshire, may interest some of your readers. I transcribed it a few days ago in the British Museum from Holly's Lincolnshire Notes, vol. iii. fol. 358.:—

"The other I receaued from Mr. Thomas Codd, minister of Laceby in Linc, wĉh he gave under his owne hand; he himself being a native of ye place where this same happened, and it was thus:

"At Axholme, alias Haxey, in ye Isle, one Mr. Edward Vicars (curate to Mr. Wm. Dalby, vicar), together with one Robert Hallywell a taylor, intending on St. Marke's even at night to watch in ye church porch to see who shoud die in ye yeare following (to this purpose using divers ceremonies), they addressing themselues to the busines, Vicars (being then in his chamber) wished Hallywell to be going before and he would pŝently follow him. Vicars fell asleep, and Hallywell (attending his coming in ye church porch) forthwith sees certaine shapes pŝnting themselves to his view, resemblances (as he thought) of diuers of his neighbours, who he did nominate; and all of them dyed the yeare following; and Vicars himselfe (being asleep) his phantome was seen of him also, and dyed with ye rest. This sight made Hallywell so agast that he looks like a Ghoast ever since. The lord Sheffield (hearing this relation) sent for Hallywell to receiue account of it. The fellow fearing my Lord would cause him to watch the church porch againe he hid himselfe in the Carrs till he was almost starued. The number of those that died (whose phantasmes Hallywell saw) was as I take it about fower score.

"Tho. Cod, Rector Ecclie de Laceby."

EDWARD PEACOCK.

Bottesford Moors, Messingham, Kirton in Lindsey.

Minor Notes.