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 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. 66 and Crimes" are ideas too particular for the author's view in this place, which is meant to extend to the circumscription, from causes extrinsic, of the range of natural, as well as moral, action.." Hiding the struggling pangs of conscious truth," and "quenching the blushes of ingenuous shame," are only different descriptions of the same action, viz. the checking the dictates of Conscience." 66 Quenching blushes," is an idea scarcely correct; though, by the quenching of heat, blushes may be made to disappear. That the poor man's lot forbids the bearing down the suggestions of conscience, is only relatively true. Profligacy is free of all corporations. XIX. In the nineteenth stanza is described, in a manner that is pleasing, the calm and contented state of an unaspiring and meek mind. But what description can there be, in which such a picture will not please? The two first lines are, from the arrangement, equivocal: but we know what the author ought to mean. It is not, that "their wishes never strayed far from the strife of the crowd;" but that, 66 naturally retired from that strife, they formed no wish to stray from such retirement." Yet the words "crowd," and 66 ignoble," are not happily selected, to be brought forward in a description of the contentions of the " mighty," and great." The two closing lines have the " in them something of softness, that makes criticism deal censure with reluctance: Along the cool, sequestered vale of life, 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 |