'
_Contemplation._ London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall, and sold
by M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster-Row, 1753.
The author's name is not on the title-page. In the _Brit. Mus. Cata._
the poem is entered under its title. Mr. Nichols (_Lit. Illus._ v. 183)
says that the author was the Rev. Richard Gifford [not Giffard] of
Balliol College, Oxford. He adds that 'Mr. Gifford mentioned to him with
much satisfaction the fact that Johnson quoted the poem in his
_Dictionary_.' It was there very likely that Boswell had seen the lines.
They are quoted under _wheel_ (with changes made perhaps intentionally
by Johnson), as follows:
'Verse sweetens care however rude the sound;
All at her work the village maiden sings;
Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.'
_Contemplation_, which was published two years after Gray's _Elegy_, was
suggested by it. The rising, not the parting day, is described. The
following verse precedes the one quoted by Johnson:--
'Ev'n from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy
Flows full and frequent, as the village-fair,
Whose little wants the busy hour employ,
Chanting some rural ditty soothes her care.'
Bacon, in his _Essay Of Vicissitude of Things_ (No. 58), says:--'It is
not good to look too long upon these turning _wheels of vicissitude_
lest we become _giddy_' This may have suggested Gifford's last two
lines.
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