the rays from the object extend not, the object is not seen.

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Of" longing lingering look," the construction, in respect to sound, is in his usual style. High-born Hoel's harp." "Light Llewellyn's lay." What is acquired to the description by the three l's in "longing lingering look," it is not easy to see. But criticism is willing to check the severity of censure for a fault, which critics have in a great measure caused. The lax and solemn dictates that have passed from mouth to mouth, upon the subject of Representative poetry, from the days of Homer to those of his translator Pope, have misled men of greater taste and judgment than Gray. On this occasion, however, he seems to have forgot his accidence; and mistaken what his masters taught. Liquids, according

* "Soft," not "light," is the epithet, as it stands in Gray. Editor.

to the doctrines of the representative school, are imitative of accelerated motion. Of these doctrines, in the present case, he has made but a froward appli-, cation, when he marshals his liquids as representative of the motion of the laggard passengers that hang back in their way to death.

Of all the elementary constituents of oral articulate sound, there is no one which has had more attention paid to it by the adepts in representative composition, than the semi-vocal incomposite l. It is easy of access, ready to grant, or even proffer, its services; and ever within call. To it, of all the rest, Gray seems to have paid peculiar court. The kindness of Dr Curzon, late of Brazen Nose, now residing in Italy for his health, and to whom I embrace this opportunity of recording my obligation for materials that have been of use to me in the present work, has put me in possession of a

little relic of Gray, furnishing a striking illustration of his fondness for this letter, and how much, as the Doctor terms it, it had insensibly gained his ear. Of this relic I do not know that, in any edition of Gray's works, the communication has yet been indulged to the public; not even in that one, in which the author's literary correspondence, and fragments of projected poems, have been printed. I am contented, therefore, to give it to the world, with part of the letter to the Doctor, in which it was inserted, as particularly connected with the present subject, and as illustrative, moreover, of that leading feature in the character of Gray, the love of project; hoping, that I may so without offence; as, in offering this gratification to rational literary curiosity, for which I have the Doctor's permission, I invade no property, nor violate any known right.

do

Of this piece the subject, when mentioned, will convince those that write for the information of mankind at large, what danger attends the enunciation of universal propositions; and how much credit with the public those have risked, who have taken upon them to maintain with pertinacity, that, at no period of his poetical life, Gray ever wrote verses on love. It is a little piece, somewhat of the Namby Pamby kind; wrought up in the manner of a song, and composed (if one may judge, from internal marks, of writings whose dates are purposely concealed) at the particular time of his life at which his enthusiasm for Italian роеtry, and Italian music, raged most. He calls it a POETICAL RONDEAU; a title which probably he would have altered afterwards, had he thought the piece worth avowing. Of the nature of the project (for so he modestly enough calls it,) together with the view which gave

rise to it, he gives the following account; at once tending to shew it to be somewhat singular, and proving the folly of him who, in this aged state of literary communication, shall say to himself, "Go to; I shall sit down, and write me something new."

"I have often wondered," says he, "that the analogies of these sister arts σε (he had been speaking of Poetry and "Music) have not been more keenly tra"ced out, and marked, with a view to "mutual transference. Each has many

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things in her budget, which she might

give out occasionally in loan to the "other, without inconvenience to her"self. Music, for instance, who is the "more sprightly of the two, and more

over the younger and handsomer (but "let that be under the rose,)—having had "a great many different lovers, some of "them far-travelled, and very ton-ish, "of course, has picked up, during the