PROGRESS OF POESY, The. 'The Progress of Poesy,' by Thomas Gray, was published, together with 'The Bard,' in a volume entitled (Pindaric Odes,' printed at Horace Walpole's famous Strawberry Hill Press in 1757. Both poems are odes in the strict Pindaric form, consisting of strophe or turn, antistrophe or counterturn, and epode or stand, twice repeated. Gray has made the three corresponding parts of each of •the three divisions identical in metrical form, thus giving the poems a symmetrical though complicated verse structure. In the piece under discussion Gray sings in exalted language first of the various sources of poetry, then of the power of harmony to lull the fiercer passions, to impart all graces of motion to the body, to compensate for the ills of life, and to arouse the mind to virtue. He then traces In scholarly fashion but always with the rapt 'enthusiasm* of the ode, the progress of poetry from Greece to Italy and from Italy to England. describing
in picturesque and suggestive language the three greatest English poets, who were his predecessors, viz.: Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden, alluding modestly to his own effort to wake the loftier tones of verse which have long been silent The Pindarics were censured in their own time for their obscurity, and Gray was compelled to add explanatory notes. Even so they fell upon deaf ears. To-day they are recognized as indubitable classics, the carefully wrought work of a true poetic genius in whom learning and critical judgment go hand in hand with inspiration. Consult 'Selections from Gray' (edited by W. L. Phelps, The Athenaeum Press Series) ; 'English Poems of Gray) (edi ted by D. C. Tovey) ; essay on Gray by Mat thew Arnold, 'Essays in Criticism' (2d series).