THOMAS GRAY: 1716—1771.

An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.

Thomas Gray, born in London, was a man of the highest culture and great refinement of taste, but wanting in productive impulse. His life was spent in cultivating tastes and accumulating learning with no effect or visible aim outside himself. His poems, which are very few, are deficient in passion, and extremely artificial in form, but have the merit of being simple, and natural in thought. It is to this last characteristic that the wide popularity (surpassed by no other poem in our tongue) of the "Elegy" must be attributed-for it is not deeply philosophical, nor without many rivals in its sweet low-toned music. It is, in fact, but the musical expression of such thoughts as would naturally occur to a man of culture and feeling, sitting in the twilight amidst the graves of a country churchyard. It is probable that Stoke Pogis, near Slough, rather than Madingley, near Cambridge, holds the churchyard in which Gray wrote.

THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,*
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning + flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.‡

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion,§ or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

* An untilled field or pasture. A.S. leag.

+ Dull humming, like a drone. A.S. dræn.

Realm.

Lat. regnum. § A shrill-sounding trumpet: here the cock's crowing. Fr. clairon.

For them no more he bang hearth sud bun.

Or busy housevie by her evening are
No children runo isp her are's rerum.

+

Ir dimb his knees the envied ass to share.

Oft fid the harvest o feir sicke med,

Their furrow of the subborn gebe has broke:
How (ccandi fd her inve their team 1-feid'

How Sowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke'

Let not Ambition mock her use cil

Their homely joys, and festny obscure:
Nor Grandeur hear with a fisdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable kour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault !
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied Turn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre :

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Kich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll ;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

* Work her spinning-wheel, probably.

4 Sometimes used in O.E. for harrow: A.S. furh. meaning here is "the making of the furrow."

Clod (of ploughed earth). Lat. gleba. arched roof; fretted

|| Vault

bars. O. Fr. freler, to cross.

Perhaps, however, the

§ Joyous.

(lit.) ornamented with open cross-work of small ¶ Engraved with an epitaph.

Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear :
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.*
The applause of listening senates to command,†
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind :

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

* An absurd and ignorant charge. It may be further remarked that it is impossible to imagine a Milton either mute or inglorious; some lesser spirit might have remained so through lack of education and chance.

+ The elder Pitt was just then becoming famous.

Truth that knew itself to be truth.

The do we may path we saw him bore; and pond. Not thou canst read-the lay hikim the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

77 Then i tha peing aneious life as a prey to dumb oblivion.

toph Footy the word was generally used to signify country as opposed

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,

A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,*
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was her bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send :
He gave to Misery all he had—a tear;

He gained from Heaven-'twas all he wished—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.

WILLIAM HAZLITT: 1778-1830.

On Burke. From "The Eloquence of the British Senate."

A tasteful and popular critic-occasionally, as in his Characters of Shakspere's Plays," somewhat superficial, but, on the other hand, a man of wide reading and generally correct judgment. The following extract contains a lucid and fairly sound view of one side of Burke's character.

HE was right in saying that it is no objection to an institution, that it is founded on prejudice, but the contrary, if that principle is natural and right; that is, if it arises from those circumstances which are properly subjects of feeling and association, not from any defect or perversion of the understanding in those things which fall properly under its jurisdiction. On this profound maxim he took his stand. Thus he contended that the prejudice in favour of nobility was natural and proper, and fit to be encouraged by the positive institutions of society; not on account of the real or personal merit of the individual, but because such an institution has a tendency to enlarge and raise the mind; to keep alive the memory of past greatness; to connect the different ages of the world together; to carry back the imagination over a long tract of time, and feed it with the contemplation of remote events; because it is natural to think highly of that which inspires us with high thoughts; which has been connected for many generations

* Gray writes to a certain extent of himself in these lines; though he was rich and fortunate.