"While insects from the
threshold preach." In a letter to Walpole, he says: "I send you a bit
of a thing for two reasons: first, because it is of one of your
favourites, Mr. M. Green; and next, because I would do justice. The
thought on which my second Ode turns [this Ode, afterwards placed
first by Gray] is manifestly stole from hence; not that I knew it at
the time, but having seen this many years before, to be sure it
imprinted itself on my memory, and, forgetting the Author, I took it
for my own." Then comes the quotation from Green's _Grotto_. The
passage referring to the insects is as follows:

"To the mind's ear, and inward sight,
There silence speaks, and shade gives light:
While insects from the threshold preach,
And minds dispos'd to musing teach;
Proud of strong limbs and painted hues,
They perish by the slightest bruise;
Or maladies begun within
Destroy more slow life's frail machine:
From maggot-youth, thro' change of state,
They feel like us the turns of fate:
Some born to creep have liv'd to fly,
And chang'd earth's cells for dwellings high:
And some that did their six wings keep,
Before they died, been forc'd to creep.
They politics, like ours, profess;
The greater prey upon the less.
Some strain on foot huge loads to bring,
Some toil incessant on the wing:
Nor from their vigorous schemes desist
Till death; and then they are never mist.
Some frolick, toil, marry, increase,
Are sick and well, have war and peace;
And broke with age in half a day,
Yield to successors, and away."

47. _Painted plumage_. Cf. Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 118: "His painted
wings; and Milton, _P. L._ vii. 433:

"From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings."

See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 243, and _Aen._ iv. 525: "pictaeque
volucres;" and Phaedrus, _Fab._ iii. 18: "pictisque plumis."

[Illustration]

ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT.

This ode first appeared in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 274,
with some variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray,
placed the china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few
lines of the ode for an inscription.

In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the
subject of the ode in the following jocose strain: "As one ought to
be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of
condolence, i