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18
GRAY'S POEMS.
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour[N 1][N 2]
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain, 5
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd, 10

Notes [N 3]

    is said by Homer to be the daughter of Jupiter: Il. τ. 91. Πρέσβα διός θυγάτηρ Ατη, ἣ πάντας ἀᾶται. Perhaps, however, Gray only alluded to the passage of Æschylus which he quoted, and which describes Affliction as sent by Jupiter for the benefit of man. Potter in his translation has had an eye on Gray. See his Transl. p. 19.

  1. ↑ V. 3. "Affliction's iron flail." Fletcher. Purp. Isl. ix. 28.
  2. ↑ Ibid. In Wakefield's note, he remarks an impropriety in the poet joining to a material image, the "torturing hour." If there be an impropriety in this, it must rest with Milton, from whom Gray borrowed the verse:
    Inexorably"———when the scourge
    Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
    Calls us to penance."Par. Lost, ii. 90.

    But this mode of speech is authorized by ancient and modern poets. In Virgil's description of the lightning which the Cyclopes wrought for Jupiter, Æn. viii. 429.
    "Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
    Addiderant, rutili tres ignis, et alitis Austri:
    Fulgores nunc horrifices, sonitumque, metumque
    Miscebant," &c.

    In Par. Lost, x. 297, as the original punctuation stood:
    "Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move,
    And with Asphaltic slime."[S 1]
  3. ↑ V.2. "Then he, great tamer of all human art," Pope. Dun. i. 163.

Footnotes to Footnotes

  1. ↑ This punctuation is now altered in most of the editions. The new reading was proposed by Dr. Pearce.
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