to stop short. Though the evil temper of the times did enable them to "command the applause of listening senates," which is poetical language, for being well heard in the house; yet, with what propriety, can any of them be said to have "scattered plenty o'er a smiling land ?" Of a land that has its plough-share turned into a sword, the plenty is not great: nor was England drest in smiles in the time of the great rebellion.

In this stanza too, Gray is guilty of an inconsistency. "To despise the threats of pain and ruin," is not of the class of virtues that the poor man's lot forbids, even according to the views of Gray. On his "village Hampden," notwithstanding the meanness of his lot, he forgets that, in the former stanza, he conferred a dauntless breast, in all the forms of investiture. But the disgrace of this inconsistency is due to him; for having, on an occasion like this, suffered his mind

orders, in the first edition, that no distinction of stanzas should be marked." In a Scotch edition, however, of his Poems, which he seems to have thought likely to extend his fame, the natural distinction of stanzas is restored, as it is in many others, particularly in Mr Mason's. The device was but a shallow one, and very properly relinquished. In verse of this alternate structure, the lines form themselves into quaternions: and the bringing out these quaternions separately to the eye, is only a technical contrivance, enabling us to parcel them more readily. Instead of attempting to conceal the fault, Gray should have tried to mend it.

In the sense I find little to blame, that may not be referred to some of the former strictures on this Elegy. "Virtues,"

■ Mason.

in them something of softness, that makes criticism deal censure with reluctance:

Along the cool, sequestered vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet, even here, the idea, as usual, is presented to us in different aspects. Ambition is painted as a hot, and then as a noisy, personage; and to these views of his character are opposed the "cool vale," and the "noiseless tenor," that are thought fit to be associated with the character of the man of content. Gray never could be brought to see when he had said enough.

XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII.

The four stanzas that follow, are to me the most pleasing in the Elegy. The no

tions appear to memory, original; though to belief and feeling, imitations. But, great as is their general merit, in some particulars they are faulty. The sacredness of the critic's trust, imposes on him sometimes the exertion of self-denial ; obliging him to range for blemishes, where his wishes are to find nought but beauties.

In the first of the four, the expression "these bones," where only persons had been spoken of, is awkward. "Their bones," would have been less exceptionable. To "protect from insult," is prosaic; and, if the end of the "memorial" was this protection, there is no necessity that we be put in mind, by the suggestion of the frailness of that memorial, that the end will not be answered. A memorial, protecting from insult, is a mode of expression approaching to nonsense. If protection be ever the result of its erection, it is only in a secondary way.

XVII. XVIII.

Of the two following stanzas, the composition is faulty in respect to their connection with the preceding, and with each other. Even where the composition is in couplets, the fastidious critic is unwilling that the sense should be made out by the couplets' bearing in upon each other. When the stanza exceeds two lines in number, the effect is yet more disagreeable. The plea of necessity is urged with less reason; and the contrast betwixt the completed circumscription of sound, and the yet uncompleted accumulation of sense, becomes more revolting, as it becomes more felt.

With this blemish, the stanzas under consideration are chargeable. Gray was not unaware of it; and, that it might be less perceptible as a blemish, he gave