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.

The "strewing of the holy texts," too, is graphical.

That some schooling is necessary to induce resignation to death, in general position, is just; though not requiring the quantity of dilatation he has given it in the two following stanzas. Of the word "moralist," the application is incorrect, and provincial. A moralist is "one who "teaches the duties of life." It is the unlettered Muse that is the moralist, not the rustic; who only takes the lesson which his teacher offers to give. Should we even stretch the compass of the word, so as to make it comprehend both the teacher and the taught, the term would be still improper in this place. The lessons are not in morality, but religion. They are not arguments, but authorities. I do not know that the verse would have suffered much, either in strength or beau

ty, had the author's piety persuaded him. to present it thus ;

That teach the rustic Christian how to die.

Gray had too much devotion about him to be ashamed of the term Christian. His observations on Lord Shaftesbury's character and writings show that he was, himself, a Christian, although a polite man; and that he had sense enough to see, and spirit enough to despise, the duplicity and cowardice of him, who rears up morality as a mole, which he may make use of in battering revelation.

Should Criticism be asked, what blemish she has discovered in the two stanzas that follow; "For who to dumb forgetfulness, &c." she has this general objection to propose against them, that they are too diffusive. The thought has been already stated. Of that thought they are meant to be illustrative. But

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the illustration is too long. Of correct writing, it is one of the essential laws not to swell out the comment so as to become more momentous than the text. The accessories are proper in their own place; but to overlay the principal, they should never be allowed.

What the first of these two stanzas chiefly holds out for censure, is its expression. It is not clear in what view

forgetfulness" is pronounced "dumb.” That what is not remembered will, of course, not be uttered, is a truth; but of denominatives the selection is better made, by reference to the internal nature of the object, than to circumstances only consequential. "Warm precincts" has been censured; and "precincts of day." Yet "luminis oras" is said by Virgil; and "aridos fines Libya" by more writers than I can name. "Precinct" is synonymous with "ora" and "fines ;" and signifies not the "outline" only, but al

so the " enclosed space." In this last sense, with the accent differently placed, it is used by Milton:*

Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way
Not far off heaven, in the precincts of light,
Directly towards the new-created world.

That Gray, moving, himself, in the precincts of light, and within the pale of an university, claiming to herself a monopoly of that, and other sciences, should have so far unlearned the philosophy of light, as to suppose that the man who is placed in a region where light exists not, may take up the objects of sight, is matter of some surprise. He that has already left the precincts of day, will cast no lingering look," either behind or before: he has no look to cast. Visibility and illumination reciprocate; and, from a place to which

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! Paradise Lost, iii. 87.