ty, had the author's piety persuaded him to present it thus ; That teach the rustic Christian how to die. Gray had too much devotion about him to be ashamed of the term Christian. His observations on Lord Shaftesbury's character and writings show that he was, himself, a Christian, although a polite man; and that he had sense enough to see, and spirit enough to despise, the duplicity and cowardice of him, who rears up morality as a mole, which he may make use of in battering revelation. Should Criticism be asked, what blemish she has discovered in the two stanzas that follow; "For who to dumb forgetfulness, &c." she has this general objection to propose against them, that they are too diffusive. The thought has been already stated. Of that thought they are meant to be illustrative. But G the illustration is too long. Of correct writing, it is one of the essential laws not to swell out the comment so as to become more momentous than the text. The accessories are proper in their own place; but to overlay the principal, they should never be allowed. What the first of these two stanzas chiefly holds out for censure, is its expression. It is not clear in what view forgetfulness" is pronounced " dumb." That what is not remembered will, of course, not be uttered, is a truth; but of denominatives the selection is better made, by reference to the internal nature of the object, than to circumstances only consequential. "Warm precincts" has been censured; and "precincts of" day." Yet "luminis oras” is said by Virgil; and "aridos fines Libya" by more writers than I can name. "Precinct" is synonymous with "ora" and "fines ;" and signifies not the "outline" only, but al so the enclosed space." In this last sense, with the accent differently placed, it is used by Milton: Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way That Gray, moving, himself, in the precincts of light, and within the pale of an university, claiming to herself a monopoly of that, and other sciences, should have so far unlearned the philosophy of light, as to suppose that the man who is placed in a region where light exists not, may take up the objects of sight, is matter of some surprise. He that has already left the precincts of day, will cast no " lingering look,” either behind or before: he has no look to cast. Visibility and illumination reciprocate; and, from a place to which Paradise Lost, iii. 87. 14 the rays rays from the object extend not, the object is not seen. 66 Of" longing lingering look," the construction, in respect to sound, is in his usual style. High-born Hoel's harp." "Light Llewellyn's lay." What is acquired to the description by the three l's in "longing lingering look," it is not easy to see. But criticism is willing to check the severity of censure for a fault, which critics have in a great measure caused. The lax and solemn dictates that have passed from mouth to mouth, upon the subject of Representative poetry, from the days of Homer to those of his translator Pope, have misled men of greater taste and judgment than Gray. On this occasion, however, he seems to have forgot his accidence; and mistaken what his masters taught. Liquids, according "Soft," not "light," is the epithet, as it stands in Gray. -Editor. to the doctrines of the representative school, are imitative of accelerated motion. Of these doctrines, in the present case, he has made but a froward application, when he marshals his liquids as representative of the motion of the laggard passengers that hang back in their way to death. Of all the elementary constituents of oral articulate sound, there is no one which has had more attention paid to it by the adepts in representative composition, than the semi-vocal incomposite l. It is easy of access, ready to grant, or even proffer, its services; and ever within call. To it, of all the rest, Gray seems to have paid peculiar court. The kindness of Dr Curzon, late of Brazen Nose, now residing in Italy for his health, and to whom I embrace this opportunity of recording my obligation for materials that have been of use to me in the present work, has put me in possession of a |