nce_, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On the
whole passage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil,
_Aen._ vi. 275.

86. _That every labouring sinew strains_. An example of the
"correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (_Essay on
Criticism_, 371),

"The line too labours, and the words move slow."

90. _Slow-consuming Age_. Cf. Shenstone, _Love and Honour_: "His
slow-consuming fires."

95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in _Comus_,
359:

"Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
For grant they be so, while they rest unknown
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?"

97. _Happiness too swiftly flies_. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil,
_Geo._ iii. 66:

"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit."

98. _Thought would destroy their paradise_. Wakefield quotes
Sophocles, _Ajax_, 554: [Greek: En toi phronein gar meden hedistos
bios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").

99. Cf. Prior, _Ep. to Montague_, st. 9:

"From ignorance our comfort flows,
The only wretched are the wise."

and Davenant, _Just Italian_: "Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,
it is not safe to know."

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE END OF THE LONG WALK.]

[Illustration: HOMER ENTHRONED.]

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

This Ode, as we learn from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was
finished, with the exception of a few lines, in 1755. It was not
published until 1757, when it appeared with _The Bard_ in a quarto
volume, which was the first issue of Walpole's press at Strawberry
Hill. In one of his letters Walpole writes: "I send you two copies of
a very honourable opening of my press--two amazing odes of Mr. Gray.
They are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime, consequently I
fear a little obscure; the second particularly, by the confinement of
the measure and the nature of prophetic vision, is mysterious. I
could not persuade him to add more notes." In another letter Walpole
says: "I found Gray in town last week; he had brought his two odes to
be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to
be the first-fruits of my press." The title-page of the volume is as
follows:

ODES
BY
MR. GRAY.
[Greek: PHONANTA SUNETOISI]--PINDAR, Olymp, II.
PRINTED AT STRAWBERRY-HILL,
for R. and J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall.
M