[Impromptus]
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[Impromptus]
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[Impromptus]Metrical foot type: anapaestic (--+)
Metrical foot number: tetrameter (4 feet), dimeter (2 feet)
Rhyme scheme: aa
Rhyme (stanza position): pair (aabb)
Stanza: quatrain (4 lines), couplet (2 lines)
Notation symbols: | (foot boundary), || (caesura), / (metrical line boundary), + (metrically prominent), - (metrically non-prominent)
Expanding the poem lines () shows notes and queries taken from various critical editions of Gray's works, as well as those contributed by users of the Archive. There are 0 textual and 1 explanatory notes/queries.
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[Impromptus]Title/Paratext] "Edmund Keene (1714-81), Bishop successively [...]" H.W. Starr/J.R. Hendrickson, 1966.
"Edmund Keene (1714-81), Bishop successively of Chester and Ely and a supporter of Lord Sandwich [...], was not a favourite of Gray and his friends. The date of the verses on him and his wife is uncertain, but obviously they were composed after his accession to the see of Chester in 1752 and his marriage in 1753 and before he became Bishop of Ely on 9 Jan. 1771. Since there are several references to him in Gray's letters during the years 1769 and 1770 and comparatively few during the earlier years of his bishopric, it seems likely that these verses were composed in the late 1760's.
Mrs. Keene's attraction for her husband, if one may judge by Walpole's remarks [...], seems to have been based more securely on her considerable private fortune than on her physical charms.
Raby Castle, in Co. Durham, was the seat of Henry Vane (c. 1705-58), Lord Barnard, created first Earl of Darlington. A similar view of his abilities is reflected in a poem sent by Walpole to Gray [...]:
ON LD DARL[INGTON]'S BEING MADE JOINT PAYMASTER [OF THE FORCES, 1755]The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin and Greek. Edited by Herbert W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966, 240.
Wonders, Newcastle, mark thy ev'ry hour;
But this last Act's a plenitude of pow'r:
Nought but the force of an almighty reign
Could make a Paymaster of Harry V[ane]."
Works cited
- The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin and Greek. Edited by Herbert W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.
Spelling has been modernized throughout, except in case of conscious archaisms. Contractions, italics and initial capitalization have been largely eliminated, except where of real import. Obvious errors have been silently corrected, punctuation has been supplied. The editor would like to express his gratitude to the library staff of the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen) for their invaluable assistance.