22 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; 



men. It was a great era and formative. They were 

 pure in art, what the great masters were to later men ; 

 Titian, Angelo, Raphael, to the derivative artists who 

 succeeded them. Since the beginning of the century all 

 is aftermath. Genius then leaped from its scabbard, 

 nature was laid bare, a volcanic flame shot from the 

 central heart. 



Gray with his Elegy captivated us and with his Bard 

 spoiled us. He was a model. He brought the old world 

 and every tender and poetic association to our door in a 

 rough and colorless time. The inspiration of the Elegy 

 and what makes it memorable in English literature and in 

 all literature are the hour and the scene. Like old 

 Italian painting, Perugino or Lo Spagna, it sanctifies 

 the time. He has made the subject his own and written 

 of it as no other poet has done, with a wealth of sentiment 

 and a beauty of illustration that redeem the last century, 

 barren as it was in sensibility. The Elegy would make 

 it memorable if nothing else were left. Especially does 

 it affect the English race who love nature and are near 

 to her, and our people who must borrow their sentiment 

 for we have created none of our own. 



Burke did for the prose what Gray did for the poetry, 

 gave the perfected model, but Dr. Johnson's sesquipeda- 

 lians took us more. He became the parent of the prolific 

 American rhetoric. Gray came near to us through asso- 

 ciation with the sweetest rural things, the twilight hour, 

 the old world, which we nqyer saw but read of in books, 

 from the primer to the bible. Johnson with his didacti- 

 cism struck a responsive chord, and shaped American 

 taste. 



Gray has one burst, the only one I know in him. He 

 is the hinge, the pivot, the half-way house, the sign-post 

 between old and new. Deriving through Pope, Dryden, 



