grades nature. As Gray is known to have been learned, that "Science frowned not on his birth," may be said with truth, according to the usual acceptation of the words. But phrases, such as "Fortune smiled on his birth," "Science frown'd not on his birth," are become flat by usage. They were poetical; are now rhetorical; and will soon be prosaic.

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He" who gives to misery all he has," when that all is a tear, may be free from the charge of hard-heartedness; but will be affectedly denominated bountiful; as his giving this kind of all, will be, with quaintness, called giving largely. Recompence" is used improperly. For loss or suffering we make recompence, but for bounty we offer return: and we are not properly said to "disclose" that, which by investigation we discover. "Merits and frailties reposing on the bosom of his Father, and his God,"

is an idea which Apprehension doubts if she has clearly made out: but if “Father" and "God" relate to the same Being, the idea is pious, and the Elegy ends better than it begun. Meditation guides to Morality; Morality inspires Religion; and Religion swells out into Devotion.

It is surprising that a writer like Gray should think the authority of Petrarch necessary for the justification of the expression, "trembling hope;" an expression, which, though it has a little of the concetto in it, has it in less degree than several others he has used without scruple. But Gray was fond of Petrarch, and had no objection that his fondness should be known. In his Notes, he is ostentatious of authorities, in the defence of his expressions. Had it become expedient for him, on any occasion, to use the "joy of grief," he would, no doubt, have referred his reader to the

Pseudo-Gaelic Poems, which, at a particular time, he wrought up his taste to relish, and almost his understanding to believe authentic. On the present occasion, there was no need to travel so far as Petrarch for an authority; for what is the mode of speaking or writing that will not have its authority in the compositions of every language? Pope's

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trembling, hoping," was at hand.— Even the Portefolios of Tate and Brady would have furnished him with "awful mirth."

Of the 'stanza that Gray once published as part of this Elegy, and afterwards saw cause to withdraw, Criticism chooses to decline the examination, unwilling to shew eagerness to condemn

There, scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The Red-breast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

him, who has already condemned himself. For the discontinuance of it in the after-editions, Mason has assigned this cause, that it was thought by its author to be awkwardly parenthetical. But there were other reasons that rendered it expedient that it should be suffered to slip out quietly. The same images, delineated, and assembled, nearly in the same manner, are to be found in some of Collins' Pieces, published about 1746. I am aware that to fix imitation upon Gray, is not to bestow originality upon Collins. Some of Collins' images can be traced to Pope; and some of Pope's, as well as Collins', to ages of high antiquity. By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed," &c. make part of the wailings of Electra in Sophocles, for the supposed death of Orestes: "The turf lying light on the breast,” (to which a ludicrous contrast is on record) standing now so high in the list of

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elegiac common places, occurs in the Alcestis of Euripedes; and Homer has made his Mountain Nymphs (the Fays of those times) plant elms, since supplanted by flowers, around Eetion's grave. Property in fancy is like other property. Priority of appropriation must found the original right; and of that priority our investigation must determine with the record.

Of the writers to whom Gray has done homage for his tenure, I think Pope is not one. Let it not, however, be imagined, that, though nothing is acknowledged, nothing is owing. The "Elegy to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady," has given to the " Elegy written in a Country Church-yard," many things both in the way of sentiment and design.

The "storied urn" of Gray, is the "weeping Loves" of Pope; and "animated bust," is only an obscure expres