his advice, Gray was prevailed on to use the quatrain, that the merit and eminence of this poem might secure to elegy the exclusive and undisturbed possession of that measure.

Such was the idea of Mr Mason, of whose sagacity in foreseeing events, the reader, from his success in this, may form no unfavourable idea. Yet of this measure it may be said with truth, that it brings with it no momentous accession to the powers of English versification. It possesses all the imperfections of blank verse, acquired with all the labour of rhyme. The coincidences of terminating sound, by being alternate, admit of an interruption by which they are either lost, or found at the expence of a labour greater than the gratification they bring: and the stanza, by being limited to a certain definite compass, either forces the poet to end his thought abruptly, or to eke it out with supplemental and exple

tive matter, always weakening expression, and rarely concealing distress. It is somewhat surprising that blank verse, improper in almost all other subjects, should not have been generally thought of as a vehicle for that species of excursive thinking which prevails so much in the elegiac strain. Young has used it with success in his great work, which, in diffusion and desultoriness, approaches to the nature of the Elegy.

Criticism never feels herself more keenly affected, under the sense of humiliation, than when she is laid under the necessity of extending her strictures to margins and title-pages. Yet circumstances will, at times, occur, to make such degradation indispensable. Of the poem now under consideration, the title might have escaped censure, had it not been originally different from what it now is; and had not the author persuaded himself to suppose, that, when he altered it, he mend

ed it of course. It is seldom that the change of a title is a happy change. If it has had a seat in the imagination previous to the operation of composing, or even during its progress, it has considerably influenced the execution. It has so led and regulated the train of thinking, and the mutual dependencies, that the slightest after-deviation from it is in danger of creating inconsistency. It introduces a species of confusion and inconsequence, like that which was introduced into the Dunciad, when Pope, at the instigation of Warburton,' changed the hero of that piece; and which, the poet and his Mentor, who kept botching it during the whole of their lives,"

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

2

Pope did not long survive the change. In the private corrections of Warburton, I find little that can create re

were not able to remove; though the labour of Procrustes was doubled, and both the tortured and instruments 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 reason does not appear, he' newnamed it an "Ode on Spring." Noontide, however, was in his imagination, when he wrote it; and it is an Ode on Noon-tide still.

2

"Reflections in a Country Churchyard" was the title by which this piece was first known; a title plain, sober, and expressive of its nature; but too undig

gret for that precaution of the poet, which prevented them from being made public.

nified in the apprehension of its author, who persuaded himself to think “ Elegy” a finer name. He should, however, have considered that, in adopting the new title, he subjected himself to severer rules of criticism than before; and shut himself out from many pleas, in defence or palliation of its desultory style, which would have been open to him from its old title of "Reflections ;"-a title in which, little unity being promised, there was little right to expect it. Being completely put together too, before the change of title took place, and being suffered, after the change, to remain in great measure as before, it became charged with incongruities too obvious to escape observation. Though an Elegy may be written in a church-yard, as well as in a closet, and in a country churchyard even better than in a town one; yet courtesy itself must pronounce it fantastical, if an Elegy is to be written, to

.