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something more that might be mentioned, were it not needless to go deep "into the character of a dead man"is all the information we draw from it; information not momentous enough to make us regret the want of more.

The manner in which the character is "made out," though in particular instances fortunate, is not without faults. The hastiness of his steps in mounting "the upland lawn," and the purpose for which he mounts it, are circumstances more associable with the Allegro character, than with the Penseroso. So thought the great discriminator of these characters. His man of cheerfulness is eager to observe the glory of the rising sun; his pensive man's morning is not bright; but kerchief'd in a comely

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cloud." So also Thomson, to whose au

meditating a great structure; taking it for granted, that it may stand in all places alike. From all quarters he fatigues himself in collecting ponderous and bulky materials, which he encourages himself to pile up, till they shall have reached the Empyreum; without considering the incongruities in the design, or the obstacles that may ruin its execution: like the commemorated projectors of a tower that was to reach to heaven, which they began to build in a plain, and without considering that the very laws of matter, on which the operation of building proceeds, entailed impracticability. The epithet φιλοπονώτατος, bestowed by an ancient critic on Euripides, may, with propriety, be transferred to Gray; as may also the critic's description of the strained and laboured elevation of

Longin. de Sublim.

that poet's tragical imagery, in which he is ludicrously compared to Homer's Lion," lashing his hips with his tail, and forcing himself forward to fight."

XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX.

Nor is much of the poet's character unfolded by the rustic; though many words are used. "That he was a man given to musing; that he loved to "meet the sun in the morning, and to

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repose in the shade at noon; that he "walked by the side of a wood, and

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lounged on the bank of a brook; and

that, after having been two days missing, he was decently buried, on the

third, at the foot of an old thorn"-is all that the hoary-headed swain can say about him: for the rest he refers to the Epitaph, or, as he calls it, the Lay, en

graved upon his tombstone; and which lay, from the kindred spirit's knowing him by this Elegy, he doubts not he is qualified to read. Here is little gratification to curiosity: and, as to the original question about his fate, we are left almost as much in the dark as before. That he is now dead and buried, is all of his fate we know: though the shortness of the interval between his burial, and the time when he was last seen, with his loitering so much by the side of the water, furnishes, in the case of so melancholy a man, matter for further conjecture, and wakes suspicion of suicide.

Of the three-stanza'd Epitaph, which the rustic terms a Lay, the supplemental information is not great. "That he

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was poor, obscure, pensive, not unlearned, sympathising, and blessed with "a friend (I suppose of his own sex) with

something more that might be men❝tioned, were it not needless to go deep "into the character of a dead man”. is all the information we draw from it; information not momentous enough to make us regret the want of more.

The manner in which the character is "made out," though in particular instances fortunate, is not without faults. The hastiness of his steps in mounting "the upland lawn," and the purpose for which he mounts it, are circumstances more associable with the Allegro character, than with the Penseroso. So thought the great discriminator of these characters. His man of cheerfulness is eager to observe the glory of the rising sun; his pensive man's morning is not bright; but “kerchief'd in a comely cloud." So also Thomson, to whose au