Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 | Page 9

out of, and which,
if not in Spring Gardens, "may be found in Bury Street. It was used
when Billy was ill." From the familiarity of the word "Billy," he must
be speaking of his son. These facts are certainly corroborative of the
old dowager's statement.
M(2).
* * * * *
QUERIES.
GRAY'S ELEGY AND DODSLEY POEMS.
I have here, in the country, few editions of Gray's works by me, and
those not the best; for instance, I have neither of those by the Rev. J.
Mitford (excepting his Aldine edition, in one small volume), which,
perhaps, would render my present Query needless. It relates to a line, or
rather a word in the _Elegy_, which is of some importance. In the
second stanza, as the poem is usually divided (though Mason does not
give it in stanzas, because it was not so originally written), occurs,
"Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight."
And thus the line stands in all the copies (five) I am able at this
moment to consult. But referring to Dodsley's _Collection of Poems_,

vol. iv., where it comes first, the epithet applied to "flight" is not
"droning," but _drony_--
"Save where the beetle wheels his drony flight."
Has anybody observed upon this difference, which surely is worthy of a
Note? I cannot find that the circumstance has been remarked upon, but,
as I said, I am here without the means of consulting the best authorities.
The _Elegy_, I presume, must have been first separately printed, and
from thence transferred to Dodsley's _Collection_; and I wish to be
informed by some person who has the earliest impression, how the line
is there given? I do not know any one to whom I can appeal on such a
point with greater confidence than to MR. PETER CUNNINGHAM,
who, I know, has a large assemblage of the first editions of our most
celebrated poets from the reign of Anne downwards, and is so well able
to make use of them. It would be extraordinary, if drony were the
epithet first adopted by Gray, and subsequently altered by him to
"droning," that no notice should have been taken of the substitution by
any of the poet's editors. I presume, therefore, that it has been
mentioned, and I wish to know where?
Now, a word or two on Dodsley's _Collection of Poems_, in the fourth
volume of which, as I have {265} stated, Gray's-Elegy comes first.
Dodsley's is a popular and well-known work, and yet I cannot find that
anybody has given the dates connected with it accurately. If Gray's
Elegy appeared in it for the first time (which I do not suppose), it came
out in 1755 which is the date of vol. iv. of Dodsley's _Collection_, and
not in 1757, which is the date of the Strawberry Hill edition of Gray's
Odes. The Rev. J. Mitford (Aldine edit. xxxiii.) informs us that
"Dodsley published three volumes of this Collection in 1752; the fourth
volume was published in 1755 and the fifth and sixth volumes, which
completed the _Collection_, in 1758." I am writing with the title-pages
of the work open before me, and I find that the first three volumes were
published, not in 1752, but in 1748, and that even this was the second
edition so that there must have been an edition of the first three
volumes, either anterior to 1748, or earlier in that year. The sale of the
work encouraged Dodsley to add a fourth volume in 1755, and two

others in 1758 and the plate of Apollo and the Muses was re-engraved
for vols. v. and vi., because the original copper, which had served for
vols. i., ii., iii., and iv., was so much worn.
This matter will not seem of such trifling importance to those who bear
in mind, that if Gray's Elegy did not originally come out in this
Collection in 1755, various other poems of great merit and considerable
popularity did then make their earliest appearance.
THE HERMIT OF HOLYPORT.
Sept. 1850.
P.S. My attention has been directed to the subject of Gray's _Poems_,
and particularly to his _Elegy_, by a recent pilgrimage I made to Stoke
Poges, which is only five or six miles from this neighbourhood. The
church and the poet's monument to his mother are worth a much longer
walk; but the mausoleum to Gray, in the immediate vicinity, is a
preposterous edifice. The residence of Lady Cobham has been
lamentably modernised.
* * * * *
HUGH HOLLAND AND HIS WORKS.
The name of Hugh Holland has been handed down to posterity in
connexion with that of our immortal bard; but few know anything of
him beyond his commendatory verses prefixed to the first folio of
Shakspeare.
He was born at Denbigh in 1558, and educated