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,* Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, * 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 + 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 Sowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke' Let not Ambition mock her use cil Their homely joys, and festny obscure: 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, Can storied Turn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page 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 : Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast And read their history in a nation's eyes Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse, 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; Large was her bounty, and his soul sincere, 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- 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. |