The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-09 00:00:00

of Pembroke College in the University of Cam-
bridge. But that, as every one will remember who
ever examined it, is quite manifestly, is indeed
notoriously, a fair transcript by Gray of the
whole poem, when it had been thoroughly
revised and corrected, and altered and abbrevi-
ated—the author's manuscript of the Elegy in fact
as it is. The Original Draught of the Poem as
it was—Mr. R. C. Wrightson possesses, Messrs.
Cundall and Downes have photographed, and
Messrs. Sampson, Low, Son, and Co.:are now pub..
lishing. The Facsimile represents this MS,, of
course, exactly as it now appears—the edges of the
sheet of letter-paper ragged and worn, the ink (never,
perhaps, anything like a jet-black) faded away
into a pale brown--a few of the words, occasionally
nearly a line, of Gray's elegant handwriting so
dimmed by age as to be almost illegible, as to be
all but obliterated. Folded up—evidently for the
purpose of being carried about more conveniently
in the writer's poeketbook—there are other ‘, worn"
edges to the M.S. than those already -mentioned
as the outside edges of the sheet of
letter-paper.
And the MS. appears to have beco'lee thus blurred,
to employ a skater's phrase, purald-
y because of these
" inside edges" having got
warn also by long car-
rying in Gray's pocketbook_
By this, and by fre-
quently going in and ov
reiterated perusal, a it of that pocketbook for
the earnest "request of
friends"—at the liter'ery soirees and conversaziones
then especially in 'rogue in—those " tea-cup times
of hoop and laoor'i,n of which our living Laureate
has sung as of so very long ago though they
are times, by the way, judging at least from
opera cloaks and crinolines, that we seem one
way or another to be fast reverting to ! It should
be related in evidence of the indisputable authen-
ticity of tlr'..s very curious and beautiful autograph
manuscript, that it was among the Papers be-
queathed by Thomas Gray to the Rev. William
Mason, the author of our English Poem of The
Garden, but better known as Gray's intimate
FPnend, and (not always a consequence of inti-
mate Friendship) his judicious Biographer
as well. On William Mason's death, this,
among the rest of Gray's papers, was left in
turn by Gray's friend and biographer to his own
curate, Mr. Bright. And by Mr. Bright's son at
length, in 1845, the Gray Papers were at length
brought to the auctioneer's hammer, and scattered
among eager purchasers. The purchaser therein 1845,
of this (the original) draught autograph of the Elegy
was (and no wonder) Mr. Penn, of Manor House,
at Stoke Pogeis—the churchyard at Stoke Pogeis
being the scene of the "Elegy," and the Manor
House of Stoke Pogies (the residence of Mr. Penn)
the scene of the "Long Story." For that single
worn and faded sheet of old letter paper, precioas
by reason of its containing the original draught of
the famous poem in Gray's own handwriting, Mr.
Penn paid down £lOO. In doing so, however, he
was eclipsed nine years afterwards, namely, In
1854, when the hammer again brought the MS.
under the bidding of an eager throng of competi-
tors. The gentleman already mentioned as the
present possessor of the manuscript, Mr. Wrightson,
himself a graceful writer and accomplished scholar,
gladly paying down then for his prize £l3l ! A hun-
dred and thirty-one pounds for what accident might
at any moment have crumpled up and tossed into
the fire, and burned into a fluttering whiff of tinder
in a twinkling ! Here, however, thanks to t:no
public spirit and generous open-handedness of Mr.
Wrightson, the original draught autograph is hap-
pily rendered in a manner (by means of its photo-
graindestructible !
etusg glance awhile at this original
Andpic multiplication)now
draught autograph—as reflected in its photographic
fac simile—of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Church-
yard." .Elegy it is not—to begin with—in the ori-
ginal, but quaintly, in the slipshod grammar of the
day, Stanzas wrote in a Country Churchyard.
And, by the way, we would here give a hint to any
purchaser of the Jac simile—by simply following
which hint of ours, he (the purchaser) may put him-
self in an instant, as it were, at the elbow of Thomas
Gray while he is writing it! Let the purchaser
then turn his copy of the fae simile up-
side down, and begin reading it, as it were,
at the end. He will thereupon not fail
to observe that at the tap of what will then be
lying before him as the first page (what is now,
of course, the bottom of the fourth and last page),
written by Gray's hand, Stanzas. And he will
understand at once how Gray—either not liking
his pen, or thinking he had begun writing out his
lines too near the top of the page, or, at any
rate,
in obedience to some sudden momentary whim—
turned the sheet of letter paper right over and began
afresh inditing his "Elegy," or rather his "Staizas.
The interesting little items, however. discoverable
in this extraordinary " copy of verses," are, in
truth, to a practised eye, to a memery familiar with
the Elegy as it is (and whose is not ?), like Falstaff's
reasons, "plentiful as blackberries." For example,
there are no less than six separate verses, or rather
stanzas, in this draught copy of the Elegy not to be
found now in the printed version of it ! Five sepa-
rate stanzas, that is, besides the one known already
to a few of the more inquiring admirers of Gray, that
lovely stanza that Lord Byron wondered and
lamented Gray's fastidious taste should have
induced him to eliminate :
" There scattered oft the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found ;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
It were tedious, however, and, in truth—remem-
bering that the fac simile is now readily procurable
by those who care to possess it—superfluous, to par-
ticularise the whole of the differences discoverable
between the printed version of the Elegy and the
Stanzas as they here originally stood in the draught
manuscript. The "pick" among them, however,
may not be inappropriately mentioned. And in
every instance the alteration eventually resolved
upon by Gray will be allowed upon all hands to be
a veritable improvement.
" Hands that the rod of empires might have swayed "
stands in the original draught--
" Hands that the reins of empire, &c.
Again--" And all the air a solemn stillness holds,"
first of all stood not nearly so well--" And now the
air," &c. Turning, however, to the indications that
may be found of larger changes than those intro-
duced by Gray into his eventually matchless Elegy,
we find that in this original draught of the
" Stanzas," immediately after the one ending—
" Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,"
the Elegy, in its crude shape, here continues—
" For ever sleep—the breezy call of morn,
Or swallow twittering from his clay-built shed,
Or chanticleer so shrill, or echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."
A feeble version enough of what ultimately ripened
into certainly one of the most exquisite and melli-
fluous passages in the whole of this incomparable
poem. " Familiar in our mouths as household
words" though they are, we still love ever to repeat
them—we can never by any chance tire of repeating
them : "a thing of beauty," here again, "is a joy
for ever :" and so—the perfected stanza echoes back
tatithrough our memory now by y
" The breezy call of incense breathing
breathing morn,
crowning quo-
morn,
Thoeomcs wok
r, aes
shalllsohwr rill
twitteringlro clarion,ue th eafmnr odfmr
tohmi tes
echoingt shter l straw-built iyol tr
bns
eh,
de
.du,
The
r
c
Examining the poem as it at length appeared when
printed—examining
it now by the light of this
original draught of it in the poet's autograph—a
draught in which, by the way, Cato takes the place
of Hampden, Tully of Milton, and Cmsar of Crom-
well in that noble stanza that has since thrilled
through the hearts of so many generations of Eng-
lishmen in harmonious accents such as these—
" Some villa Hampden, who with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his' fields withstood,
Somo mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."
—Scanning by the light of this Facsimile the Elegy
as it ultimately grew to be, out of the budding gems
of these Stanzas, one can hardly wonder at a reward

even so immense as its unrivalled popularity being
won by such a wondrous exercise of a taste so intense! y
refined and of a care so exquisitely fastidious. For
Placing within the reach of so very many a literary
curiosity that a less unselfish man than its present
possessor would have continued sedulously to hoard
up for his own enjoyment, the students of English
Literature are indeed beholden to Mr. R. C.
Wrightson—whose name every purchaser of this
charming Facsimile of Grey's Elegy will henceforth
hold in most agreeable and grateful remembrance.