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-all which topics are handled with tolerable plausibility, and at decent length.

X.

It is in the tenth stanza, that this train of thought commences. But the introduction is not clear of incumbrance. "Impute not to these the fault," is an affected and inadequate expression for * don't treat them with scorn." The two last lines are the most majestic in the whole Elegy. But they contain an appeal to feelings, which none but those who are so happy as to have been bred up in a veneration for the solemn forms and service of the National Church, can expect to possess. The palate of a sectary, accustomed to the reception of

E

slender foods, will nauseate the full meal set before him in these lines;

Where, through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Of this last line, however, criticism must remark, that either the composition of the thought is faulty, or the arrangement of the expression is inverted. It is not the anthem that swells the note, but the agglomeration of notes that swells the anthem. I am content to suppose this to have been his meaning; communicated in a mode of arrangement, unpleasing to an English reader in his own language, but of which he admits the propriety in Latin compositions. I have seen this line most correctly transferred into that language in many different modes, all of them meritorious, in a selection from Exercises written by the Boys of the first form in Merchant Taylor's School, and sent to me, with a view, of

which I will not gratify my vanity with the publication; though justice requires that of the worthy master I should solace the labours, by recording the unwearied diligence, and by bearing testimony to those abilities that are sedulously exerted in forming the rising hopes of another age.

XI.

Fault has already been found with Gray for conforming to the affected use of participles in place of adjectives. "Honied spring;" madding crowd, &c." "Storied urn," is of the same family, and even more exceptionable, because liable to misapprehension. The intended meaning of the epithet is, "having stories figured upon it." In the Pense

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roso of Milton, it is to be found as an epithet applied to windows, of which the panes are of painted glass. It is also used by Pope. Flattery, soothing the ear of death," is characteristical. What is said of" Honour's voice" is not said happily. There is a want of appropriation. "Silent dust," is one of these expressions, which Voltaire used to denominate des Suisses; always ready at a call, and willing to engage in any service.

XII. XIII.

In the two following quatrains, is well described the depression of genius under ignorance and poverty. But, here too, allowance must be made for a little of

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the old leaven. Hands are, metaphorically, said to" sway the rod of empire," and literally to bring forth sounds from the lyre. Living lyre" is from Cowley; and, of his obligation to the royal poet of Judah, for the application of the idea" awake" to the eliciting of sounds from the harp or lyre, he has thought the acknowledgment deserving commemoration. In the whole of the Elegy, criticism has not been able to find two more happy lines than the following:

Chill penury repress'd their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Here are really two ideas. Penury, in the character of frost, deprives the current of its heat, and checks its onward motion. I am unwilling to suppose the metaphor to be an incoherent one; and that Gray jumbled into one, the images of horsemanship, and watery motion, as

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