e _Elegy_ describes; and this is about all that
can be said in favor of their pretensions. There is also a parish
called Burnham Beeches, in Buckinghamshire, which one writer at least
has suggested as the scene of the poem, but for no better reason than
that Gray once wrote a description of the place to Walpole, and
casually mentioned the existence of certain "beeches," at the foot of
which he would "squat," and "there grow to the trunk a whole
morning." Gray's uncle had a seat in the neighborhood, and the poet
often visited here, but the spot was not hallowed to him by the fond
and tender associations that gathered about Stoke.

1. _The curfew_. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to suppose
that the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark of
Norman oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest,
it only shows that the old English police was less well-regulated
than that of many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior
civilization of the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of
the timber-built towns of the Middle Ages: 'Solae pestes Londoniae
sunt stultorum immodica potatio et _frequens incendium_'
(Fitzstephen). The enforced extinction of domestic lights at an
appointed signal was designed to be a safeguard against them."

Warton wanted to have this line read

"The curfew tolls!--the knell of parting day."

It is sufficient to say that Gray, as the manuscript shows, did not
want it to read so, and that we much prefer his way to Warton's.

Mitford says that _toll_ is "not the appropriate verb," as the curfew
was rung, not tolled. We presume that depended, to some extent, on
the fancy of the ringer. Milton (_Il Pens._ 76) speaks of the curfew
as

"Swinging slow with sullen roar."

Gray himself quotes here Dante, _Purgat._ 8:

--"squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore;"

and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those
unfamiliar with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation:

--"from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day."

Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, _Prol. to Troilus and
Cressida_, 22:

"That tolls the knell for their departed sense."

On _parting_=departing, cf. Shakes. _Cor._ v. 6: "When I parted
hence;" Goldsmith, _D. V._ 171: "Beside the bed where parting life
was laid," etc.

2. _The lowing herd wind_, etc. _Wind_, and not _winds_,