"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds :

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain,

Of such as, wandering near his secret bower,

Molest her ancient, solitary reign."

HUS wrote Thomas Gray, one
of

THU
To England's best known poets

of the last century, whose "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" has been memorized and quoted perhaps as frequently as any other literary composition of its time. It is recorded that the author kept the lyric by him for twenty years, ripening it by frequent revision much as good wine is kept to ripen, before he gave it to the public It is not only considered to be his masterpiece, but also one of the unfading gems of English literature It is known and loved wherever the English tongue is spoken, and metrical versions in other living languages and in the Latin have been frequent.

Prepared with such care, and for so long a time studied and admired by a world-wide circle of scholars. it seems strange that any question could now arise in regard to any sentiment or expression in the poem. Doubtless Gray felt sure of his own meaning in every line and word, but

his readers of to-day find an ambiguity which interests and puzzles them.

In the first number of the Atlantic Monthly there was a fragment of a few lines, "Brahma," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, beginning

"If the Red Slayer thinks he slays" about the meaning of which there is as much speculation, and the riddle has not yet been solved. Emerson was appealed to for an explanation, and his reply was that he was sure he knew what he meant when he wrote it, but really he had now forgotten! Unfortunately there is

no record that even that much of

inquiry was ever addressed to Gray,

and it is now too late, unless some reliable access to his disembodied spirit can be secured.

There are other ambiguities in the poem other than the one now in mind, but that one is so palpable, once it is pointed out, as to excite the interest of all students of language, and it is so puzzling that there seems to be no interpretation that meets general approval. The discussion is over the second line of the opening stanza, quoted above: "And all the air a solemn stillness holds."

Some five years ago a Boston gentleman, whose attention had been called to the line, took the trouble to write a note of inquiry to about a hundred people of recognized standing in the literary and educational world, asking whether in their opinion "air" or "stillness" was the sub

ject; did the "air" hold the "stillness," or did the "stillness” hold the "air"? That it was a pertinent question was proved by the fact that nearly all answered it, some briefly and others with argument in support of the opinion given. A summary of the result numerically bears about an even balance of opinion; the "weight of argument," however, must be left to the decision of the reader. As a practical matter the discussion is of value to all students of language, for its consideration cannot but result in more careful reading, and more care for clearness of expression in composition.

Many of the responses received express the idea that either reading is admissible, without argument, but a much larger number have decided opinions, but record them without giving reasons. Even the bare list of these is of value in assisting the reader in his own consideration of the question, for often the name of a well known authority carries weight of its own.

Of those who believed "stillness" to be the subject of the sentence without argument, are:

Horace E. Scudder, Henry Cabot Lodge, Minot J. Savage, James Russell Lowell, Thomas W. Higginson, M. E. S. Walton, professor in Wellesley College, George W. Howland, superintendent of Chicago public schools; Charles Francis Adams, E. B. Andrews, ex-president Brown University; J. M. Z. Sill, L. B. R. Briggs, professor at Harvard; S. W. Clark, George William Curtis, J. Q. A. Brackett, Philip S. Moxom, W. D. Howells, George D. Robinson, James A. Page, C. J. Lincoln, D. J. Harris, Charles M. Clay, E. H. Marston, Robert Swan.

The last six names are of masters in Boston schools.

The list favoring "air" as the subject, merely expressing the opinion, includes the following:

Phillips Brooks, Charles Dudley Warner, Oliver W. Holmes, Preston Gurney, C. P. Becker, proof reader for D. Appleton & Company; Arthur Gilman, George A. Gordon, John D. Long, Lawrence Hutton, Hezekiah Butterworth, Moses True Brown, E. P. Seaver, ex-superintendent Boston schools; R. G. Conklin, author of an English Grammar; Francis A. Waterhouse, Charles C. Bruce.

The last two named are masters of Boston schools.

These lists of themselves are interesting as showing the opposite opinions on an apparently trivial and easy question, but the interest deepens when the large number of answers which carry with them the "reason why" is examined. But first it will be well to approach the arguments through a series of answers which argue without conclusion, and first we will listen to Oliver W. Holmes, of the United States Supreme Court:

I think "air" not "stillness" is the subject. It is more logical, perhaps, to say that stillness holds all the air, i. e. every part of it, except that part where "the beetle," etc., than to say that all the air, i. e. the air considered a collective whole, holds stillness except in a certain part, but I think my view more in accordance with the habit of the poem, which is to avoid classical inversions; and I also think it more poetical. I prefer the conception of the air holding the stillness as the sea holds its salt, in solution so to speak, to that of stillness dropping on the back of the air and fastening its teeth in its neck like a wolverine.

I have been too busy to examine the two or more Latin translations of the poem, which perhaps would show how the text has been interpreted.

P. S. On further reflection I am on the fence.

Justin Winsor, ex-librarian of the Boston Public Library, wrote:

The note reaches me here in England. I have not immediate access to Gray's Elegy, and don't remember the context. Taking the line as it stands alone, it is certainly ambiguous, and there is no grammatical reason why it may not mean, either that all the air holds a solemn stillness

or that a solemn stillness holds all the air. The context might make one rendering more likely than the other. I am quite conscious that so obvious a decision is hardly worth running the gauntlet of the

ocean storms.

Mrs. Alice F. Palmer, ex-president of Wellesley College, was also in doubt:

I do not know, and I do not see any possible means of determining past question, the subject of the sentence you quote from the Elegy. My personal preference is to consider "all the air" as the subject, but the meaning is practically unchanged if "a solemn stillness" is made the subject, and, as I say, I know no way of finding which idea prevailed in Gray's mind when he wrote the line.

Edmund Clarence Stedman, the "banker-poet," writes more interestingly than conclusively:

The verse quoted contains, as you have discovered, one of those "inversions" which are, almost of necessity, frequent in the "iambic pentameter quatrain." When such an inversion occurs, the only way to distinguish between an inanimate subject and the equally inanimate object is by aid of the meaning of the passage. The syntax affords no clue. Now, I can conceive of "stillness" holding "the air," in the rather stilted language of the last century, and we say, even now, that "a hush fell upon the audience," "suspense held him," etc. But how can the air hold a stillness? That would be carrying impersonation and metaphor beyond the method cf the artificial eighteenth century, even. Meanwhile, as the sentence, or phrase, can be parsed either way you prefer, any bets made with respect to the subject and object must be considered "off."

James Whitcomb Riley contributes a characteristic reply:

I venture to say, simply, that it involves a principle that keeps hosts of Gray's like in genius from being quite poets: namely, inversion. In this instance, as the inverted phraseology permits either "air" or "stillness" to do duty as the grammatical subject, the context and rhetorical fitness must be invoked to tell us, if they can, what the poet's intention was. The question is a close one, perhaps, but I prefer "air" for the subject. However, the end of the

problem, as we say in Hoosier idiom, is of such a character that the more we chew it the more it swells! Is it poetry? Isn't it more like algebra? There is positive evidence that the poet "ciphered" it out. Clearness is poetry's first virtue-should be, as I believe. Readers should read, not conjecture, speculate, grope, and be left groping.

B. F. Tweed suggests an, at this late date, impossible solution. Would that he had made it earlier :

It strikes me as being rather more poetical to have "a solemn stillness" hold the air, but I would not argue the question with one who differed with me. If one could have heard Gray read the line I think his emphasis or intonation might have given some intimation of his meaning. Rabbi Solomon Schindler only

says:

How can I tell what Gray meant?

And George W. Cable thinks he can tell a little later. He says:

I have written to Mr. Gray and as soon as I hear from him will let you know.

William F. Warren, ex-president of Boston University, is also waiting for the ghost of Gray:

My idea is that a logician would say, "air"; a poet, "stillness"; a grammarian, "Gray's ghost alone can tell."

And here is a bit of "authority" contributed by Anna B. Thompson a Boston teacher:

Either might be the subject; the Boston Supervisors so decided in a recent examination. The figure is more poetical, I think, if "stillness" is made the subject.

H. W. Lull must close this list of "doubtfuls," and he is, as he says, "as clear as mud":

You have raised a question, and at the same time you ought to have raised the poet to answer it. I find no harmony among those who ought to know. From previous lines the poet seems to have used his subject first, therefore "air" is the subject. In the line before this he, however,

self and all others in her realm astir from four o'clock Monday morning until the shades of Saturday evening. But Seth Bede, Arthur Donnithorne, and the other vague background figures, are only mech

anisms.

We miss wholly the vitalizing touch in "Silas Marner" and "Felix Holt." The latter barely fails of being great.

Had its maker sympathized with Esther for one day even, as she did with Maggie every minute, or with the sturdy and more than half lovable young Radical as she did with carpenter Adam, this feeling of the work's incompleteness would not be so universal.

Mary Garth is genuine flesh and blood, and redeems from lifelessness the earlier pages of "Middlemarch." Even Rosamond at moments moves hitherward from unreality. We are not sure of either Lydgate or Mrs. Casaubon at first; and we feel a little as do children who visit a waxworks show: we should like to pinch the figures or pull their hair, to see if they would stir. This continues until, in the one case, Dorothea comes upon veritable love, and, in the other, Lydgate knows the height and depth of human ɛemptation, as he watches alone at midnight beside the dying man whose secret, if spoken, will forever blast the physician's honorable repute. At the crucial moment of either existence, George Eliot was drawn into vivid sympathy with both, and, as always, this heavenly spark touched to life. From that hour, the wavering shadow becomes a

man, a woman.

But the artist never felt with Deronda's Mirah; from first to last, she simply made a pretty, painted

ness.

doll of the little Jewess, assuring us that the innocent thing suffered and loved and in the end found happiWe take her seriously in the beginning, for we are used to hearing the puppet's mistress declare that her plaything has some melodious name, that she is dear and good, and her wee heart beats with love, that she had many woes yesterday but is happy to-day. Nor do we raise a protest until Mirah is set above Gwendolen, fair, rebellious, unrighteous Gwendolen, who is truly human and alive from the palpitant pulse in her long, graceful throat to the impatient movement of her slender foot; from her intolerance of Alice's ugly shoulderlifting to her loathing of Grandcourt's sin when she gets overclose to it; from her cowardice in refusing to face poverty, because, alas! refined surroundings cannot go with it, to her passionate and worldforgetting worship of the noblest nature she has found; in short, from her utter selfishness to her self-renunciation. Deronda himself sometimes rings wooden, and we are in terror lest, after all the adoration Gwendolen has poured out-to the exalting of her better self-he should still prove but an automatically moving piece of the stage-setting. Strange, then, that Henleigh Grandcourt and the abominable Lush should in some subtle way have caught a real breath from their maker.

Take Walter Scott. He is an immortal painter! and as long as the romantic canvas, with its chivalrous love, valor, villainy, and adventure, retains its power to fascinate, so long shall his cult endure. To-day cannot see beyond the time

we