of verfification. Mr. Mason thought more favourably of his friend's authority; and by his advice Gray was prevailed on to use the quatrain, that the merit and eminence of this poem might fecure to Elegy the exclufive and undifturbed poffeffion of that measure.

Such was the idea of Mr. Mason, of whofe fagacity in foreseeing events, the reader, from his fuccess in this, may form no unfavourable idea. Yet of this measure it may be faid with truth, that it brings with it no momentous acceffion to the powers of English verfification. It poffeffes all the imperfections of blank verfe, acquired with all the labour of rhime. The coincidences of terminating found, by being alternate, admit of an interruption by which they are either loft, or found at the expence of a labour greater than the gratification they bring and the stanza, by being limited to a certain definite compafs, either forces the poet to end his thought abruptly, or to eke it out with fupplemental and expletive matter, always weakening expreffion, and rarely concealing diftrefs. It is fomewhat furprising that blank verfe, improper in almost all other fubjects, should never have been thought of as a vehicle for that species of excurfive thinking which prevails fo much in the elegiac ftrain. Young has used it with fuccefs in his great work,

1

which, in diffufion and defultorinefs, approaches to the nature of the Elegy.

It is

Criticism never feels herself more keenly actuated with the sense of humiliation, than when she is laid under the neceffity of extending her ftrictures to margins and title-pages. Yet circumstances will, at times, occur, to make fuch degradation indifpenfable. Of the poem now under confideration, the title might have escaped cenfure, had it not been originally different from what it now is; and had not the author perfuaded himself to suppose, that when he altered it he mended it of courfe. feldom that the change of a title is a happy change. If it has had a feat in the imagination previous to the operation of compofing, or even during its progrefs, it has confiderably influenced the execution. It has fo led and regulated the train of thinking, and the mutual dependencies, that the flightest after-deviation from it is in danger of creating inconfiftency. It introduces a species of confufion and inconfequence like that which was introduced into the Dunciad, when Pope, at the inftigation of Warburton †, changed the hero of that piece; and which, tho' both the poet and his Mentor kept botching at it during the whole of their

† Bowyer. It is to be hoped that the executors of this gentleman will take fome method of preventing from perishing the much curious information which his profeffion and industry enabled him to collect.

lives,

lives, they were not able to remove; thought the labour of Procruftes was doubled, and both the tortured and inftruments of torture were racked to produce accommodation.

Gray has more than once been unfortunate in his fancy of changing his titles. He had composed an Ode, to which he gave the title of Noon-Tide. Falling out of humour with this title afterwards, for what reafon does not appear, he new-chriftened it an "Ode on Spring." Noon-tide, however, was in his imagination, when he wrote it, and it is an Ode on Noon-tide ftill.

"Reflexions in a Country Church-Yard" was the title by which this piece was first known; a title plain, fober, and expreffive of its nature; but too undignified in the apprehenfion of its Author, who perfuaded himself to think "Elegy" a nicer name. He fhould, however, have confidered that, in adopting the new title, he fubjected himself to feverer rules of criticism than before; and fhut himfelf out from many pleas in defence or palliation of its defultory style, which would have been open to him from its old title of "Reflexions ;" a

Pope did not long furvive the change. In the private correction of Warburton, I find little that can create regret for that precaution of the Poet, which prevented them from being made publick.

+ Mafon.

1 Mafon.

C

title

title in which little unity being promised, there is little right to expect it. Being completely put together too, before the change of titletook place, and fuffered, after the change, to remain in a great measure as before, it became charged with incongruities too obvious to escape obfervation. Though an Elegy may be written in a Church-yard, as well as in a closet, and in a Country Church-yard even better than in a Town one; yet courtesy itself must pronounce it fantastical, if an Elegy is to be written, to chufe out a place for writing it, where the conveniencies for that operation are a wanting, and where even the common implements either exift not at all, or exift by premeditation. Who is there that fays, or would be endured to fay, "I will take me pen, ink and

paper, and get me out into a church-yard, " and there write me an elegy; for I do well to "be melancholy?" Parnell has carried the matter far enough, when he refolves to get out into a church-yard, and think melancholy thoughts. ? If the writers of ftudied seriousness, and recorders of premeditated griefs, would employ one half of the time spent in preparing their fadneffes for the public eye, in examining into the propriety of introducing them to the public at all, the journals of poetry would be lefs difgraced than they are with the balance of of affectation against nature. The seriousness,

which embraces the heart, is not the offspring of volition, but of inftinct. It is not a purpose, but a frame. The forrow, that is forrow indeed, asks for no prompting. It comes without a call. It courts not admiration. It' preffes not on the general eye; but haftens under covert, and wails its widowhood alone. Its ftrong-hold is the heart. There it remains clofe curtained; unfeeing, unfeen. Delicacy and taste recoil at the publications of internal griefs. They profane the hallowedness of fecret fadnefs; and suppose selected and decorated expreffion compatible with the proftration of the foul.

Not only are they indelicate, and out of nature they are alfo imprudent. Sadnefs is a tranfient feeling. The violence of its effufions. produces its expenditure, as the agitation of fluids promotes their evaporation. Of its first unreasonableness, when the expreffion is only oral, little harm is done; for the language is perishable as the feeling: but litera fcripta. manet;" and when the man whom "melancholy had marked for his own" is found, in violation of his vow, " tripping on light fantastic toe," or the inconfolable hufband who was to cherish no fecond flame, confents to comfort himself in one wife for the lofs of another, they find the public in poffeflion of their Ç 2 written