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"One morn
I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he:

"The next, with dirges due in sad array,

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne :-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."L

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown:
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,

He gain'd from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God,2

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.3

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,4
That cr n the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores

Her Henry's holy shade;

1 "Between this line and the Epitaph, Mr. Gray originally inserted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some of the first editions, but afterwards omitted, because he thought (and in my opinion very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines, however, are, in themselves, exquisitely fine, and demand preservation.”—Mason.

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

? This epitaph has been commented on, and translated into different languages, by various men of eminence, most of them divines. Did it never occur to any of these, that there was an impropriety in making the "bosom” of Almighty God an abode for human frailty to repose in Unless, therefore, the author meant by the word "bosom" only remembrance, there is certainly a great inconsistency in the expression.

3 “Gray has, in his ode on Eton College, whether we consider the sweetness of the versification or its delicious train of plaintive tenderness, rivalled every lyric effort of ancient or of modern date."-Drake's Literary Hours, ii. 84.

4 These spires and towers are addressed by the poet without any use or intention; for nothing is afterwards asserted of them, and they are introduced only to be dismissed in silence, and without further notice. The Towers of London, in the second epode of the "Bard," are not apostrophilzed with so little meaning.

6 King Henry the Sixth, founder of the College. So in the Bard, 11. 3:

"And spare the meek usurper's holy head," Shakspeare, in Richard the Third, twice applies the same epithet; and in the Installation Ode our author's expression, murdered saint, is applicable enough (notwithstanding Henry was never actually canonized) to the monarch who, as has been well said, would have adorned a cloister, though he disgraced a crown.

And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among1
Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way.

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!3
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow

A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing;
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,4
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen5
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green,
The paths of pleasure trace;
Who foremost now delight to cleave,
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave?

The captive linnet which enthral?
What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

1 "That is, the turf of whose lawn, the shade of whose grove, the flowers of whose mead. So in Shak speare:-The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword; that is, 'The courtier's eye, the soldier's sword, the scholar's tongue.' This singularity often occurs in Mr. Pope."-Wakefield.

2 Mr. Wakefield has a complaint against this compound epithet. The silver-shedding tears of Shak speare, Two Gent. of Ver. Act. iii. sc. 1, and the silver-quivering rills of Pope, might perhaps have recon ciled him to it, if he had recollected them. Both these expressions, as well as one from Dart's "West minster Abbey,"

"Where Thames in silver-currents winds his way,"

are cited in this place by Mr. Mitford.

3 Mr. Wakefield here quotes from the "Odyssey," O. 397. And it may be remarked, that the an elents were by no means unacquainted with that species of pathos which is derived from the melancholy delight of early remembrance. The feeling which induces us to dress up the past in a fancied superiority of enjoyment, is natural and universal; nor can the indulgence of it be pernicious, 80 ong as it does not interfere with the necessary energies of the present hour.

4 "And bees their honey redolent of spring."

Dryden's Pythag. System.

As Gray refers this expression to Dryden, it is probable that he was not acquainted with any ear Ber authority. Dr. Johnson is highly offended at it, as passing beyond the utmost limits of our lan guage, and of common apprehension. The critic, perhaps, never in his life partook of the feeling here described, or possibly he would not have objected to the expression.

5 The ill-natured criticism of Dr. Johnson on this line cannot be refuted better than it has been by Mr. Mitford. "His supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop, or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself."-Are we by this rule of criticism to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of Rasselas! "As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before her: Abswer, said she, great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the Invocation of the daughter of tny native aing. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation, from waicn tnou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."

While some, on earnest business bent,
Their murmuring labors ply

'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty:

Some bold adventurers disdain

The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,'
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer, of vigor born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly the approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;

No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around them wait2

The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah, show them where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murtherous band!
Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,3
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

Then whirl the wretch from high

To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

1 "This is at once poetical and just: and yet there seems to be an impropriety in the next verse:Less pleasing when possest:

for though the object of hope may truly be said to be less pleasing in possession than in the fancy; yet Hope in person cannot possibly be possessed."-Wakefield.

2 "This representation of the ministers of Fate, and the two succeeding stanzas, which exhibit the variety of human passions, with their several attributes, blends moral instruction with all the anlmation and sublimity of poetry."--Wakefield.

a "I do not know that any poet, ancient or modern, has given so complete a picture of the pannone in so short a compass."-Wakefield.

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The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye,

That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath!
A griesly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every laboring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:

Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

SONG.

Thyrsis, when we parted, swore
Ere the spring he would return-
Ah! what means yon violet flower,

And the bud that decks the thorn?
"Twas the lark that upward sprung!
'Twas the nightingale that sung!

1 A most happy idea; and the whole stanza is exquisitely beautiful, and will not be disgraced by appearing in the same view with a passage in "Paradise Lost," where description is carried to its highest pitch of excellence:

"Immediately a place

Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisome, dark;

A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased; all maladies

of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac phrensy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: Despair

Tended the sick, busied from couch to couch;
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook."

Book xi. ver. 477.

Idle notes! untimely green!
Why this unavailing haste?
Western gales and skies serene
Prove not always winter past.

Cease, my doubts, my fears to move-
Spare the nonor of my love.

The chief prose compositions of Gray are his letters, which are among the best in the language, full of just remarks, beautiful criticisms, and descriptions of natural scenery, "which a painter might study, and which a poet alone could have conceived;" and occasionally exhibit a genial humor which mark the author of the "Ode to a Favorite Cat." In 1798, before the letters of Cowper were published, Dr. Beattie thus writes to a friend: "I am acquainted with many parts of your excursion through the north of England, and very glad that you had my old friend Mr. Gray's 'Letters' with you, which are indeed so well written, that I have no scruple to pronounce them the best letters that have been printed in our language. Lady Montagu's are not without merit, but are too artificial and affected to be confided in as true, and Lord Chesterfield's have much greater faults; indeed, some of the greatest that letters can have: but Gray's letters are always sensible, and of classical conciseness and perspicuity. They very much resemble what his conversa. tion was."

HOW HE SPENDS HIS TIME IN THE COUNTRY. To MR. WALPOLE.

I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach-wheels have so often honored, it would be needless to give you; suffice it, I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids his galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mightily cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have, at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest, (the vulgar call it a common,) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do, may venture to climb; and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds,

And, as they bow their hoary tops, relate,

In murmuring sounds, the dark decrees of fate;

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