e, but
his too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery. St.
3 _Hybla_: near Syracuse. _Her whose ... woe_: the nightingale, 'for
which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness';
Collins here refers to the famous chorus in the _Oedipus at Colonus_.
St. 4 _Cephisus_: the stream encircling Athens on the north and west,
passing Colonus. St. 6 _stay'd to sing_: stayed her song when Imperial
tyranny was established at Rome. St. 7 refers to the Italian amourist
poetry of the Renaissance: In Collins' day, Dante was almost unknown
in England. St. 8 _meeting soul_: which moves sympathetically towards
Simplicity as she comes to inspire the poet. St. 9 _Of these_: Taste
and Genius.

_The Bard._ In 1757, when this splendid ode was completed, so very
little had been printed, whether in Wales or in England, in regard to
Welsh poetry, that it is hard to discover whence Gray drew his Cymric
allusions. The fabled massacre of the Bards (shown to be wholly
groundless in Stephens' _Literature of the Kymry_) appears first in
the family history of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (cir. 1600), not
published till 1773; but the story seems to have passed in MS. to
Carte's History, whence it may have been taken by Gray. The references
to _high-born Hoel_ and _soft Llewellyn_; to _Cadwallo_ and _Urien_;
may, similarly, have been derived from the 'Specimens' of early Welsh
poetry, by the Rev. E. Evans:--as, although not published till 1764,
the MS., we learn from a letter to Dr. Wharton, was in Gray's hands by
July 1760, and may have reached him by 1757. It is, however, doubtful
whether Gray (of whose acquaintance with Welsh we have no evidence)
must not have been also aided by some Welsh scholar. He is one of the
poets least likely to scatter epithets at random: 'soft' or gentle is
the epithet emphatically and specially given to Llewelyn in
contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with particular
propriety. Yet, without such assistance as we have suggested, Gray
could hardly have selected the epithet, although applied to the King
(p. 141-3) among a crowd of others, in Llygad Gwr's Ode, printed by
Evans.--After lamenting his comrades (st. 2, 3) the Bard prophesies
the fate of Edward II, and the conquests of Edward III (4): his death
and that of the Black Prince (5): of Richard II, with the wars of York
and Lancaster, the murder of Henry VI (_the meek usurper_), and of
Edward V and his brother (6). He turns to the glo