Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC02847

Author/Creator: Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)

Place Written: Washington

Type: Autograph letter signed

Date: 1840/03/04

Pagination: 2 p. 26 x 21 cm

Summary of Content: Adams comments at length upon punctuation in Grey’s ”Elegy in a Churchyard” (and the powers of Congress as limited or expanded by a semi-colon in the Constitution. He also writes that ”No land of slavery could ever have produced Grey’s Elegy.”

People: Adams, John Quincy, 1767-1848.

Historical Era: National Expansion and Reform, 1815-1860

Full Transcript: Roscoe G. Greene Esqr. Portland, Maine, Washington 4. March 1840, Sir, Your Letter of the 22d ulto. gave me the first information that a serious question exists in the Court of Poetry and Taste, with regard to the punctuation of the first line of Gray’s Elegy. It is not identically the same, but near akin to the famous question between a comma and a semi-colon in the Constitution of the United States, upon which certain profound grammatical politicians have maintained that the limitation of the Powers of the Congress of the United States entirely depends., Between a comma and a semi-colon in the construction of a sentence whether in prose or verse, there may no doubt be an immense difference of meaning-- And in so exquisitely beautiful a poem as Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, every shade of meaning, which addresses itself to the tenderest and most virtuous sensibilities of our nature has its interest-- One of the highest excellencies of that Poem is the elevation to which it raises ”the short and simple annals of the poor” -- the deeply affecting imagery with which it contrasts their useful toil, their humble joys and destiny obscure, with the [overwritten: boast] of heraldry; the pomp of power attendant upon worldly grandeur and stimulant of ambition. The graveyard is of all other places upon earth, the spot for demonstrating the natural equality of mankind. No Land of Slavery could ever have produced Gray’s Elegy., But as to the various modes of punctuation for the reading of the first line,, The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,, is that which I have always been accustomed, and with or without the comma after the word tolls, the difference of meaning is so slight, that the saving of time and ink to write down the comma would be a sufficient reason with me for omitting it. [2] The cesural [sic] pause mentioned by the English writers on elocution as incident and peculiar to the English decasyllabic verse, falls in this line at the close of the sixth syllable after the word knell., The curfew tolls the knell . . . of parting day, But if you put a comma after the word tolls, the cesural [sic] pause must be there also, and to my ear [inserted: it] gives a stiffness to the whole line, which has otherwise an easy and natural flow., In the Edition of Gray’s works by Matthias, in two large Quarto volumes published in 1814 there is a facsimile of the original manuscript of the Elegy, by Gray himself, in which the line is written, The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,, and so I have no doubt it should always be written., I am very respectfully, Sir, your obed[ien]t serv[an]t, John Quincy Adams

Keywords/Subjects: African American History, US Constitution, Presidents, Literature and Language Arts, Poetry, Government & Civics, Congress, Slavery, Global History and US Foreign Policy

Sub Era: Age of Jackson

LOC Search Terms: slavery