is left to be supposed that it spreads; but we are expressly told that it nods and that it "wreathes its old fantastic roots high." What is meant by a tree wreathing its roots high? Vegetation seems here inverted, and age endowed with the pliancy of youth. Theory can, in no other way, account for the strange form in which this beech appears, than by supposing it to have been an image, not of fancy, but of fact. A mind strongly irritable upon the approximation of external forms, treasures up the grotesque images both of living and still nature, as they present themselves, and brings them forth, afterwards, as the effects of inspiration. Gray had casually come in the way of some lusus nature of the beech tribe, of whose fantastic form the outline had continued upon his mind, and imprest his fancy with a vivid picture. Of Gray's inspirations, it is known, that many derived their origin from casual impressions, made on the organs of sense. The sight of the Welch harper, Parry,' and the rapture he felt at his execution, animated him to the finishing his "Bard," after it had lain by, for two years, hopeless: and the "loose beard" and "hoary hair streaming to the wind," with which he has invested his tuneful Cambrian, were derived from a representation, by Raphael, of the Supreme Being, in the vision of Ezekiel.❜ The beech seems literally to have been Gray's "favourite tree;" and, in the contemplation of it, in all its varieties, he seems to have passed many poetical hours. In the year 1737, he met with beeches, in grounds belonging to his uncle, of so singular a character, that I am willing to indulge the reader with the description of them, in the poet's own words.' And, as they bow their hoary tops, relate, In murmuring sounds, the dark decrees of fate; Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. On such beeches it was his fortune again to stumble in Italy, after an interval of three years; and them also he has celebrated, though in the ancient language of their country." Hærent sub omni nam folio nigri 3 Of visions in fieri, latent on the leaves of trees, till poetic eyes shall look them into form, the conception, unless borrowed from the Norse, may be new: though it was the opinion of Dr Blake, that the Fancy of Gray was secretly led, in the formation of it, by the obscure recollection of the Legend of Sir John Mandeville, according to which, in certain very cold latitudes, articulate sounds were arrested by the frost, at the moment of their emission from the mouth of the speaker, and continued in that torpid The thorn in Glastonbury Church-yard is known to have suggested to 'Gray, in the Elegy, the idea of that thorn, under which he fancies himself as buried. What particular beech he had in his eye, there is now no means of knowing. Chronology forbids us to suppose it to have been the beech which he found in the Highlands of Scotland, and which, to the astonishment of less fortunate travellers, he reports, upon his own mensuration, to have been upwards of sixteen feet in the girth, and no less than eighty feet high.' Why the pensive man should lie rather under the shade of a beech, than under any other shady tree, save Gray's predilection for the beech, no reason can be assigned. In a situation nearly simi state, until they were again thawed into vocality, by the return of the warm season! I Mason. lar, Thomson stretches himself under an oak. The general idea is the same. Let me haste into the mid-wood shade, XXX. XXXI. XXXII. Of the Epitaph much more need not be said. The head of him who is immersed in the earth, can with little propriety be said to "rest on her lap.” The transference of the word lap, is not happy. It is "velvet green" over again. The ground of the objection is the same. A metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art. A metaphor drawn from art de • Summer. |