choose out a place for writing it, where the conveniences for that operation are wanting, and where even the common implements either exist not at all, or exist by premeditation. Who is there that says, or would be endured to say, "I will “take me pen, ink, and paper, and get

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me out into a church-yard, and there

"write me an Elegy; for I do well to be

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melancholy?" Parnell has carried the matter far enough, when he resolves to get out into a church-yard, and think melancholy thoughts.

If the writers of studied seriousness, and recorders of premeditated griefs, would employ one half of the time spent in preparing their sadnesses for the public eye, in examining into the propriety of introducing them to the public at all, the journals of poetry would be less disgraced than they are with the balance of affectation against nature. The seriousness, which closes upon

the soul, is not the offspring of volition, but of instinct. It is not a purpose, but a frame. The sorrow, that is sorrow indeed, asks for no prompting. It comes without a call. It courts not admiration. It presses not on the general eye; but hastens under covert, and wails its desolation alone. Its strong-hold is the heart. There it remains, close curtained; unseeing; unseen. Delicacy and taste recoil at the publications of internal griefs. They profane, the hallowedness of secret sadness; and suppose selected and decorated expression compatible with the prostration of the soul.

Not only are they indelicate, and out of nature: they are also imprudent. Sadness is a transient feeling. The violence of its effusions produces its expenditure, as the agitation of fluids promotes their evaporation. Of its first unreasonableness, when the expression is only oral, little harm is done; for the language is

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perishable as the feeling: but "Litera scripta manet "-and, when the man whom "melancholy had marked for her own" is found, in violation of his vow, tripping on light fantastic toe," or the inconsolable husband, who was to cherish no second flame, consents to comfort himself in one spouse for the loss of another, they find the public in possession of their written wailings, and not a little out of temper with them, that they have not kept their word. Of the first Lord Littleton, there are many simple men of feeling who have scarcely brought themselves to believe, even on the authority of the Register, that, after the death of his Lucy, he married a second wife. Enough of this.

To the incongruities already specified, may be added another in this Elegy, invested as it is with its present title; and that other yet more flagrant. Gray had originally laid his Meditation, at a time

with which the idea of the operation of writing was incompatible. The " part

ing day;" the " glimmering landscape

fading on the sight;" the " plowman returning home, and leaving the world to darkness;" are images consistent with the situation of a thinking muser, but irreconcileable with the process of writing, or even scrawling. Yet, by a friend of Gray, a serious, and not unintelligent person, who has put together verses himself, and to whom I communicated this observation, have I been called upon to take notice, that the author has described himself, in the Elegy, as carrying on his musing by moon-light!

I. II. III.

Of this Elegy the three first quatrains present what may be termed the preparation. To the serious exercise that is to take place, it is necessary, that the senses be first properly got under; or, at least, that such work be cut out for them, as may prevent them from embroiling the train of pensive thought. With propriety then has the author made them the objects of his first care. With propriety too, are hearing and sight selected; as the most restive, and unfriendly to meditation, and, of course, requiring management the most. Gray has pushed this matter apoint farther. Not contented with their neutrality, he has proceeded to court their assistance; and held out to them such "guerdons fair," as might win them not only not to obstruct mé