an hyperbole, which is out-hyperboled in the fourth: Even from the grave the voice of Nature cries: -a position at which Experience revolts, Credulity hesitates, and even Fancy stares. He who can bring himself to believe, that he has heard the voice of Nature crying from the grave of a dead man, is in train to assent, in time, to the proposition, that" even in our ashes live their wonted fires:" though Friendship should caution him to stop short, and Pleasantry suggest to him that surface-views are oft delusive; and that he may find himself, on this occasion, if he goes farther on, incedere per IGNES suppositos cineri DOLOSO. But I am ashamed of the expenditure of precious time, incurred by the examination of a proposition contrary to all truth, abstract or poetical; which Madness cannot shape itself to the conviction of; nor elongations, more than Pindaric, bring imagination in contact with, even for a moment. What makes this conceit (if by the name conceit may be called that which cannot be conceived) the more unpardonable in Gray is, that, (by a process of judgment the reverse of that formerly commemorated, with regard to the closing line of a stanza in his Ode on Spring) he introduced the line, in which it is conveyed, in place of another; and as an improvement of the original thought. The stanza, in its first state, concluded with this line, "Awake and faithful to her wonted fires;" which, if we chasten still farther, upon the suggestion of Mr Mason, into Awake and faithful to her first desires; we shall then, instead of two hyperboles, have only one, lengthened by the addition of a trail. I think Mason has informed us, that he advised him to alter the line. But Gray could not afford to want it for here, it is probable, he once intended to conclude the Elegy; and this mode of "twirling off the thought into an apophthegm," he thought the most imposing he was likely to find. Gray has, in a note on this line, endeavoured to justify the thought by a reference to a passage in Petrarch. But no authority can give dignity to nonsense, or transmute false taste into true. As to the writings of Petrarch, it may be allowed that, in them, as in most of the Italian poetry, many instances of conceit occur. Yet more have been fancied than found. A poet who possesses this vein in himself, imagines that he meets with it wherever he goes. Thoughts apparelled in the simplest garb, appear to him drest out in point. The ideas, that pass in review before him, partake of the colour of his mind; and his fancy, like Shakespear's green-eyed monster, "makes the food it feeds on." Ovid abounds in conceits, and quaintnesses; but the eyes of Cowley multiplied them, as they did those of Petrarch, to infinity. After reference thus soberly made to the authority of Petrarch, Curiosity will, no doubt, prick up his ears when he is told, that the passage, quoted from that poet, contains not the sentiment in question. Mason, whose taste was too good to make him admit the authority of Petrarch in defence of an unnatural thought, seems not, however, to have doubted that the thought was really Petrarch's. And, indeed, if, of the sonnet referred to, the three lines quoted by Gray be taken, detached from the rest, they may, though somewhat awkwardly, be forced into the expression of that thought. Taken along with the context, and in connection with its design, the wildness of the idea vanishes, and propriety and nature in vest it. The poet is complaining of the hopelessness of his love." The flame I che"rish," says he, "how intense! yet how "unrewarded! and even unperceived! 66 unperceived by her, whom alone I wish "to recognise it, though marked by all "besides! Ah, distrustful fair-one! in "whom much beauty is mixed with lit"tle faith, look at my love-lorn eye, and "doubt my passion, if you can. No, you 66 66 cannot, you do not, doubt it; but my "luckless star hardens your heart against my ardent love. Yet not altogether "unrewarded shall be my passion, although unrewarded by you. The tune 66 * Petr. Son. 170. |