[Illustration] ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT. This ode first appeared in Dodsley's _Collection_, vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the ode for an inscription. In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the subject of the ode in the following jocose strain: "As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. I knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima?), or rather I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your handsome Cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in the survivor; oh no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not begin to cry, Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris. "... Heigh ho! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I have very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for it; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feuë Mademoiselle Selime, whom I am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows: [the Ode follows, which we need not reprint here]. "There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph." 2. Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, _Town Eclogues_: "Where the tall jar erects its stately pride, With antic shapes in China's azure dyed." 3. _The azure flowers that blow_. Johnson and Wakefield find fault with this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usage allows. In the _Progress of Poesy_, i. 1, we have again: "The laughing flowers that round them blow." Cf. _Comus_, 992: "Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew." 4. _Tabby_. For the derivation of this word from the French _tabis_, a kind of silk, see Wb. In the first ed. the 5th line preceded the 4th. 6. _The lake_. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the whole poem. 11. _Jet_. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town in Lycia, where the mineral was first obtained. 14. _Two angel forms_. In the first ed. "two beauteous forms," which Mitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of _angel_ and _genii_ interfere with each other, and bring different associations to the mind."