nified in the apprehension of its author, who persuaded himself to think "Elegy" a finer name. He should, however, have considered that, in adopting the new title, he subjected himself to severer rules of criticism than before; and shut himself out from many pleas, in defence or palliation of its desultory style, which would have been open to him from its old title of "Reflections ;"-a title in which, little unity being promised, there was little right to expect it.. Being completely put together too, before the change of title took place, and being suffered, after the change, to remain in a great measure as before, it became charged with incongruities too obvious to escape observation. Though an Elegy may be written in a church-yard, as well as in a closet, and in a country churchyard even better than in a town one; yet courtesy itself must pronounce it fantastical, if an Elegy is to be written, to

choose out a place for writing it, where the conveniences for that operation are wanting, and where even the common implements either exist not at all, or exist by premeditation. Who is there that says, or would be endured to say, "I will "take me pen, ink, and paper, and get

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me out into a church-yard, and there "write me an Elegy; for I do well to be "melancholy?" Parnell has carried the matter far enough, when he resolves to get out into a church-yard, and think melancholy thoughts.

If the writers of studied seriousness, and recorders of premeditated griefs, would employ one half of the time spent in preparing their sadnesses for the public eye, in examining into the propriety of introducing them to the public at all, the journals of poetry would be less disgraced than they are with the balance of affectation against nature. The seriousness, which closes upon

the soul, is not the offspring of volition, but of instinct. It is not a purpose, but a frame. The sorrow, that is sorrow indeed, asks for no prompting. It comes without a call. It courts not admiration. It presses not on the general eye; but hastens under covert, and wails its desolation alone. Its strong-hold is the heart. There it remains, close curtained; unseeing; unseen. Delicacy and taste recoil at the publications of internal griefs. They profane the hallowedness of secret sadness; and suppose selected and decorated expression compatible with the prostration of the soul.

Not only are they indelicate, and out of nature: they are also imprudent. Sadness is a transient feeling. The violence of its effusions produces its expenditure, as the agitation of fluids promotes their evaporation. Of its first unreasonableness, when the expression is only oral, little harm is done; for the language is

perishable as the feeling: but "Litera scripta manet ;"-and, when the man whom "melancholy had marked for her own" is found, in violation of his vow,

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tripping on light fantastic toe," or the inconsolable husband, who was to cherish no second flame, consents to comfort himself in one spouse for the loss of another, they find the public in possession of their written wailings, and not a little out of temper with them, that they have not kept their word. Of the first Lord Littleton, there are many simple men of feeling who have scarcely brought themselves to believe, even on the authority. of the Register, that, after the death of his Lucy, he married a second wife. Enough of this.

To the incongruities already specified, may be added another in this Elegy, invested as it is with its present title; and that other yet more flagrant. Gray had originally laid his Meditation, at a time

with which the idea of the operation of writing was incompatible. The " parting day;" the " glimmering landscape

fading on the sight;" the "plowman returning home, and leaving the world to darkness;" are images consistent with the situation of a thinking muser, but irreconcileable with the process of writing, or even scrawling. Yet, by a friend of Gray, a serious, and not unintelligent person, who has put together verses himself, and to whom I communicated this observation, have I been called upon to take notice, that the author has described himself, in the Elegy, as carrying on his musing by moon-light!