sagacity might easily have foreseen its success. Meditation upon death is, and ever has been, the occasional business, or pastime, of mankind; and, though, like devotion, it cannot admit of the sublimer flights of poetry, yet, when the mind has fairly clung to the subject, with its sensibilities awakened, and their expressions within call, nothing that is thus produced will be totally void of interest. The views, if not striking from novelty, will be commanding from seriousness and even mediocrity in the sentiment will be a passport to general correspondence.

The delusion too under which Gray laboured, that his character was a pensive one, and which, though not permanent, was periodical, seems to have lent its aid towards fitting him for compositions of this kind. The frequent recurrence of any propensity leads, by sure steps, to the final adjustment of the cha

racter; and even when the propensity is ideal, the repetition of the fits will, in the end, invest fancy with the habitudes of nature. Whatever part self-deception or affectation may have originally had in the matter, Gray became, at length, bona fide, a melancholy man. The features of his mind plied gradually to the cast of the mould his imagination had formed for it. Of the language of the feeling he became possessed of a competent portion, as well as of its modes, to which, on several occasions, he gave expression; and on none more remarkably, than in composing the Elegy under consideration.

If, in establishing the fortune of literary productions, popularity established also their worth, criticism would find herself rid of one of the most unpleasing, as well as unprofitable, of her tasks. But this is not the case. The maxim "Vox Populi, &c." taken in its full range, is

not more destructive to good government, than hurtful to sound criticism. To examine the Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, so as to rest its merits upon firm ground, its popularity should be kept out of view. Of such an examination the object is not to discover what has been said, but what may be said justly. Criticism acts not in the character of Recorder, but of Judge. It is not her business to ENGROSS decisions, but to DICTATE them.

Of this Elegy I find little in the "General Design," either to praise or to blame. It differs in nothing material from the general design of all Meditations on Death, from Boyle to Hervey inclusive. The subject has the advantage of being interesting, but the disadvantage of being common. The reader attends to it from motives of duty as well as of interest. So does also the writer; though he soon finds that piety confers not poetic in

spiration, and that sublimity is not the necessary offspring of a serious frame. The paucity of the topics precludes circumvagation; and the innovelty of the views represses effusion. The subject is already as great as it can be made: and of decoration the execution would be difficult, and the experiment attended with danger.

Of the "Particular Plan," criticism withholds the censure, until she shall have ascertained the conception. Perhaps the author had no particular plan at all. A number of different views of the subject, all of them serious, most of them common, and many of them interesting, are collected from different quarters, and thrown together in that inconsecutive train, in which men meditate, when they meditate for themselves. “Ibi hæc incondita solus." Like Virgil's Corydon (who is deprived of our sympathy from the baseness of his passion, as the poet

is of his praise, from degrading his soliloquy into a pastoral) the Meditator in the Country Church-yard is supposed to touch on the different topics as they arise to his mind, not prescribing the law of succession, but receiving it.

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Of poets who had wrought on the subject before him, either incidentally or from purpose, he seems to have followed no one completely as a model, but to have gathered occasionally from all. Parnell's Night-Piece" seems to have been most in his eye: though of Parnell the scheme is, in much, different from that of Gray. From Milton's "Penseroso" too he has taken several hints; and, what may appear surprising, some even from his “Allegro." From Thomson and Collins he has been furnished with many images; and some thoughts are borrowed from Pope. Materials, brought together from so many different quarters, may be expected to form an heterogeneous whole.