The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 5 And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

which find a mirrour in every mind; and with sentiments, to which every bosom returns an echo."-WAKEFIeld.

Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the cornerstone of his glory."-LORD BYRON.

Ver. 1. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.]

"

Squilla di lontano

Che paia l' giorno pianger, che si muore."

Dante Purg. 1. 8.-GRAY.

Dr. Warton would spoil the tranquil simplicity of this line, by introducing a pause with a note of admiration after the word iolls. That affectation of solemnity and suddenness in his musing, which is so offensive in Young, is no where to be found in our Author.

Mr. Wakefield cites from the Night Thoughts the following: "It is the knell of my departed hours."

Ver. 2. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea.]

Παντοθεν εξ αγρων.”

Hom. Od. xvii. 170.

Ver. 3. The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.] It has been observed that there is a slight error, one, however, which the general reader will readily pardon, in the introduction of the returning ploughman into the evening landscape, as the labour of the plough is, in this country, always over by three o'clock in the afternoon.

Ver. 4. And leaves the world to darkness and to me.] Mr. Mitford cites a similar expression from Petrarch:

Quando 'l sol bagna in mar 'l aurato cerco,

E'l aer nostro, e la mia mente imbruna."

Ver. 5. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.]

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain

10

An admirable description of twilight in few words.—But nobody has excelled Mr. Mason upon this topic :

"While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners grey." WAKEFIELD.

Ver. 7. Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight.]
"Ere the bat hath flown

His cloystered flight; ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums

Hath rung night's yawning peal."

Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2.

Here is another of Dr. Johnson's modern words, as he would have us to believe them-CLOYSTERED flight.

"What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn."

Lycidas.

Collins has imitated these passages in his Ode to Evening.

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shrieks flits by on leathern wing;

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises midst the twilight path

Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum." WAakefield. Ver. 10. The moping owl does to the moon complain.] Shakspeare, in Julius Cæsar, act. iv. sc. 3. speaks of a dog baying the moon; and Philips, in his Winter-piece at Copenhagen, says of the wolves:

"Or to the moon in icy vallies howl."

Which is from Shakspeare:

"And the wolf behowls the moon."

Mids. Night's Dream.-WAKEFIEld.

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

15

Ver. 12. Molest her ancient solitary reign.]

"Desertaque regna

Pastorum." Virg. Georg. iii. 476.-WAKEFIELD. Ver. 13. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade.] Mr. Mitford has extracted the following imitation of this passage from "Les Jardins" of the Abbè De Lille :

"Voyez sous ces vieux ifs la tombe, où vont se rendre,
Ceux qui, courbés pour vous sur des sillons ingrats,
Au sein de la misère espèrent le trépas.
Rougiriez-vous d'orner leurs humbles sépultures?
Vous n'y pouvez graver d'illustres aventures.
Sans doute. Depuis l'aube, où le coq matinal
Des rustiques travaux leur donne le signal,
Jusques à la veillée, où leur jeune famille
Environne avec eux le sarment qui pétille,
Dans les mêmes travaux roulent en paix leurs jours.
Des guerres, des traités n'en marquent point le cours.
Naître, souffrir, mourir, c'est toute leur histoire;

Mais leur cœur n'est point sourd au bruit de leur mémoire.
Quel homme vers la vie, au moment du départ;

Ne se tourne, et ne jette un triste et long regard?

A l'espoir d'un regret ne sent pas quelque charme,

Et des yeux d'un ami n'attend pas une larme?" C. iv. p. 86. Ver. 14. Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.] Those graves with bending ozier bound, That nameless heave the crumbled ground."

Parnell's Night Piece, 29.-WAkefield.

h

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20

Ver. 17. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn.]

66

Αυρη δ' εκ ποταμου ψυχρη πνεει ηωθι προ.”

Odyss. v. 469. "The liver-breezes whisper morn's approach." Mr. Wakefield, who quotes the above line, appeals for confirmation to a learned Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius. But surely it was not necessary to send us so far to learn what must have been felt by every one who has ever been out of bed by day-break.

Comus, 56.

"And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves."
"Now when as sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed
Their morning incense."-

Par. Lost, ix. 192.-WAKEFIeld. Ver. 18. The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed.] The swallow-people- there

They twitter cheerful." Thomson's Autumn.

And Anacreon reproves the loquacious swallow for breaking his dreams with her early twitterings.

The following couplet from Ausonius is cited in this place by Mr. Mitford :

"Mane jam clarum reserat fenestras,

Jam strepit nidis vigilax hirundo."

Auson. p. 94, ed. Tollii.

Ver. 19. The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn.]

"The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,

Doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat
Awake the God of day."

Hamlet.

"While the cock with lively din

Scatters the rear of darkness thin." L'Allegro.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

"The crested cock, whose clarion sounds
Par. Lost, viii. 443.

The silent hours."

"Oft listening, how the hounds and horn

Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,

From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill."

L'Allegro.-Wakefield, Ver. 20. No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.] Some readers, keeping in mind the narrow cell above mentioned, have mistaken the lowly bed in this verse for the grave; as, if I rightly recollect, Lloyd has done in his Latin translation of the Elegy: a most puerile and ridiculous blunder.-Wakefield.

Ver. 21. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn.] This stanza, which is tenderness itself, owes some obligations to former poets. Similar circumstances of domestic assiduity and love are thus depicted by Lucretius:

At jam non domus accipiet te læta; neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.'
"Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati."

"" iv. 907.

Virg. Georg. ii. 523.

Of the man perishing in the snow, Thomson says:
“In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm:
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home."

Winter, 311.

Horace has given us a few touches of the same picture:

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Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvans

Domum atque dulces liberos,

h.