208 Poetry. 



with admiration and delight, as possessing beauties 

 of the most rich and exquisite kind, as long as taste 

 and sensibility shall exist/ Another distinguished 

 name, entitled to an honourable place in this list, is 

 that of Shenstone, who produced at least one 

 Elegy which will ever command admiration. Nor 

 would it be just to pass in silence the name of Miss 

 Seward, who, in this department of poetry, has 

 displayed powers in the pathetic, the elegant, and 

 the beautiful, which bid fair long to render her 

 character conspicuous in the annals of English 

 literature. 



The best elegiac poetry of the last age is dis-* 

 tinguished above that of all preceding periods, by 

 the union of a number of qualities which never 

 before so conspicuously met in this species of com- 

 position. These qualities are regularity, correct- 

 ness, pathos, elevation of sentiment, and purity of 



d Thomas Gray was born in London in 1716, and died in 1771. His 

 character, as drawn by a friend, is as follows : " Perhaps he was the most 

 learned man in Europe. He was equally acquainted with the elegant 

 and the profound parts of science ; and that not superficially, but thoroughly. 

 He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the 

 original historians of England, France, and Italy ; and was a great antiqua- 

 rian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of 

 his study. Voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements ; 

 and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. 

 With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally 

 instructing and entertaining ; but he was also a good man, a man of vir- 

 tue and humanity." Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, is generally 

 supposed not to have done justice to this celebrated writer. From his 

 Elegy in the Church Yard, indeed, that great Critic could not withhold the 

 warmest praise. " In the character of this Elegy" says he, " I rejoice to 

 concur with the common reader. It abounds with images which find a 

 mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns 

 an echo. Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and 

 useless to praise him." After all, it must be acknowledged, that he wrote 

 but little ; that only a part of that little is in the style of exquisite excel- 

 lence; and that his Elegy is so greatly superior to every other production 

 of his pen, as to excite a suspicion that it was the result of unwearied polish 

 and elaboration, rather than the spontaneous effusion of a mighty genius. 

 If this view of the subject be admissible, though Gray will still hold a 

 place in the first rank of lyric and elegiac poets ; yet some of the praise 

 which has been bestowed on his genius will be pronounced excessive; and 

 the judgment of Da-. Johnjon less liable to exception than is commonly 

 supposcd. 





