These, and many others of like significance, are in everybody's mouth. But, as generally happens, the more beautiful the thought, the more likely it is to have been borrowed. Gray's most remarkable poem, the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," is said to have been picked out, thought by thought, if not word by word, from other poets. The very first line,—

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,"

has been adopted from the following passage in Dante's "Purgatory:"

"Se ode squilla di lontano

Che paja 'l giorno pianger che si muore."

Giannini has translated the Elegy into Italian ; and it is worthy of notice that his version of the first line coincides with Dante's words :

"Piange la squilla 'l giorno, che si muore."

The principal thought in Dante, the "giorno che si muore," is further traceable to Statius's

"Jam moriente die."

One of the finest stanzas in the Elegy is but a free translation of the Latin couplet :

"Plurima gemma latet cæca tellure sepulta;
Plurima neglecto fragrat odore rosa."

Gray's lines are :

"Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

Bishop Hall has a parallel to the first two lines:

"There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a fair pearl in the bosom of the sea, that never was seen, nor ever will be."

The last line occurs in the same words in Churchill:

"Nor waste their sweetness in the desert air.”

"Which else had wasted in the desert air."

Another borrowed stanza in the Elegy is the following:

"For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.”

This is adopted from Lucretius:—

"At jam non domus accipiet te læta; neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati

Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent."

Gray's appropriations are not confined to the Elegy. In his "Ode to Vicissitude," he has the following

"The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastised by sober tints of woe;
And, blended, form with artful strife

The strength and harmony of life."

The last two lines are taken from Pope's "Essay

on Man:"

"The lights and shades whose well-accorded strife

Gives all the strength and colour of our life.”

Then we have the couplet in the "Fatal Sisters:"

"Iron sleet, of arrowy shower,

Hurtles in the darken'd air."

Which is adopted from this passage in "Paradise Regained:"

"How quick they wheel'd, and, flying, behind them shot Sharp sleet of arrowy shower."

Next comes the line in "The Bard :".

"Give ample room and verge enough."

Which is taken from a passage in Dryden's "Don Sebastian :"

"Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me!
I have a soul that, like an ample shield,

Can take in all, and verge enough for more."

In the same poem we have the comparison of the "streaming meteor;" but whether borrowed from Cowley or from Milton, seems uncertain. Cowley, speaking of the Angel Gabriel, says:

"An harmless flaming meteor shone for haire,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.”

And Milton, in "Paradise Lost :"

"Th' imperial ensign, which full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind."

Gray has it :

"With haggard eyes the poet stood;

Loose his beard and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air."

Campbell, in his "Pleasures of Hope," has also borrowed this simile :

"Where Andes, giant of the western star,

With meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd."

Another appropriation in Gray is the wellknown apothegm at the close of the following lines, in his "Ode on a Prospect of Eton College:"

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

And happiness too swiftly flies.

*

where ignorance is bliss

'Tis folly to be wise."

Davenant has the same idea in the lines :

"Then ask not bodies doom'd to die

To what abode they go;

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,

'Tis better not to know."

But it is still more obviously assignable to

Prior :

Seeing aright we see our woes,

Then what avails us to have eyes ?
From ignorance our comfort flows,
The only wretched are the wise."

The true source, after all, of this thought, as indeed of all human wisdom, must be traced to a higher authority than any poet, ancient or modern. Ecclesiastes, i. 18, expresses it in fewer words than any author that has been quoted :

"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

To Milton, Gray is indebted for another of his beautiful images. The former, speaking of the Deity, says :

"Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear."

And Gray, with true poetic feeling, has applied this image to Milton himself, in those forceful lines in the "Progress of Poesy," in which he alludes to the poet's blindness :

"The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night."

Shelley has imitated this in the following lines in "Julian and Maddalo :"_

"The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind,
By gazing on its own exceeding light."

There is a passage in Longinus which appears to have furnished Milton with the germ of this thought. The Greek rhetorician is commenting on the use of figurative language, and after