The Elegy again
Sir: Mr Watson-Smyth's suggestion of the early date of the composition of Gray's Elegy, is perhaps given some support by a previously unnoticed passage in an obscure poem, The Oeconomy of Love by Dr John Armstrong. Armstrong is best known as the author of The Art of Preserving Health, and as the friend of James Thomson, of The Seasons.
The Oeconomy of Love, a poem of some 750 lines in blank verse, was published in 1736. It is usually referred to by Victorian critics as 'scurrilous,' or even 'nauseous' (Chambers). It consists in fact of unusually frank advice to the growing youth on the sexual difficulties he will have to face.
One passage of some fifteen lines deals with the question of masturbation. It begins: ". . . banish from thy shades Th' ungenerous, selfish, solitary Joy. Hold, Parricide, thy hand!" And concludes with the lines: " Impious, forbear To shed thy Blossoms through the desert air."
This is such a close parallel to the line in the Elegy ("And waste its sweetness on the desert air ") that the possibility cannot be dismissed that Gray had read the poem, and if he was writing the Elegy only a year or so later the phrase could well have stuck in his memory. It is much less likely that this would have been so if he had been writing twelve years later.
Edward Gathorne Hardy Odos Democharous 53, Athens, Greece
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