his 'Ode to Spring,' which was written there, but which did not arrive in Hertfordshire till after the death of his beloved friend. * West died only twenty days after he had written the Letter to Gray, which concludes with "Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis." So little (says Mr. Mason) was the amiable youth then aware of the short time that he himself would be numbered amongst the living.

I shall here insert a very correct and judicious criticism, on a censure made by Johnson of an expression in Gray's Ode to Spring, by the late

* West was buried in the chancel of Hatfield church, beneath a stone, with the following epitaph: "Here lieth the body of Richard West, esq. only son of the right honourable Richard West, esq. lord chancellor of Ireland, who died the 1st of June, 1742, in the 26th year of his age." West's poems have never been fully collected. There is one, An Ode to Mary Magdalene,' in Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 419 another in Dalrymple's Songs, p. 142. In the European Magazine for January, 1798, p. 45, is a poem said to be written by him, called Damon to Philomel;' and a Copy of Verses on his Death, supposed to be written by his uncle, Judge Burnet. In Walpole's Works, vol. i. p. 204, is a well known epigram which was written by West, • Time and Thomas Hearne,' which was printed by Mr. Walpole in a paper intended for the World,' but not sent, and which is commonly attributed to Swift. It appears also, that part of the tragedy of Pausanias is extant in MS. See the editor's note in Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 458; also his translation of Tibullus. See Mason's Gray, vol. i. p. 22. The collection of his poems by Dr. Anderson, in the edition of the British Poets, is very incomplete and Mr. Alexander Chalmers, in his subsequent edition, has omitted them entirely.

rd Grenville, a criticism which does credit to Lordship's learning and taste.*

There has of late arisen,' says Johnson, in his e of Gray, ' a practice of giving to adjectives deed from substantives, the termination of partiles: such as the cultured plain, the daisied k; but I was sorry to see in the lines of a scholar e Gray, the honied spring.'

'A scholar, like Johnson, might have rememed that mellitus is used by Catullus, Cicero, I Horace, and that honied itself is found both Shakspeare and in Milton. But to say nothing he general principles of all language, how could writer of an English Dictionary be ignorant t the ready conversion of our substantives into bs, participles, and participial adjectives, is of very essence of our own tongue, derived to it n its Saxon origin, and a main source of its rgy and richness?

'1st. in the instances of verbs and participles, is too obvious to be dwelt upon for a moment. h verbs as to plough, to witness, to pity, to ament, together with the participles regularly ned from them are among the commonest words our language. Shakspeare, in a ludicrous but ressive phrase, has converted even a proper ne into a participle of this description: Pechio,' he says, 'is kated.'-The epithet of a

hectoring fellow is a more familiar instance of a participle similarly formed, though strangely distorted in its use to express a meaning almost the opposite of its original.

"2ndly. These participles of verbs thus derived, like all other participles, when used to denote habitual attributes, pass into adjectives. Winged, feathered, thatched, painted, and innumerable others are indiscriminately used in both these forms, according to the construction of the sentence, and its context. And the transition is so easy, that in many passages it may be doubted to which of these two parts of speech such words should properly be referred.

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3rdly. Between these participial adjectives, and those which Johnson condemns, there is the closest analogy. Both are derived from substantives; and both have the termination of participles. The latter, such words for instance, as honied, daisied, tapestried, slippered, and the like, differ from the others only in not being referable to any yet established verb; but so little material is the difference, that there is hardly one of these cases, in which the corresponding verb might not, if it were wanted, be formed and used, in strict conformity with the genius of our language. Sugard is an epithet frequent in our ancient poetry, and its use was properly long anterior to that of the verb, of which it now appears to be a participle. But that verb has since been fully adopted into our language. We now sugar our cups, as

y as our ancestors spiced and drugged them, no reason can be assigned, why, if such were ractice, we might not also honey them, with propriety of speech.

thly. On the same analogy we form another numerous and very valuable class of adjectives, ound epithets, derived like the others, from antives, and like them terminating as parti, but having prefixed to them the signification me additional attribute. Such are in common th, four-footed, open-hearted, short-sighted, -natured, and the like. In poetry we trace from the well-envyned franklin of Chaucer, gh the most brilliant pages of all his sucrs to the present hour. What reader of speare or Milton needs to be reminded of -handed, high-flighted, and trumpet-tongued, full-voiced, flowery-kirtled, and fiery-wheeled? these expressive and beautiful combinations, son's canon would banish from our language. His criticism therefore recoils on himself. The has followed the usage of his native tongue, the example of its best masters. The grammaappears unacquainted both with its practice its principles. The censure serves only to bethe evil passions, which in a very powerful and intentioned, but very ill-regulated mind, the ess of a contemporary had been permitted to

e.

The true spirit indeed of this criticism appears

no less force in what almost immediately

sage

follows, where Johnson attempts to ridicule a paswhich few other men have read without de light, Gray's beautiful invocation of the Thames, in the Ode on Eton College- Say, Father Thames,' &c. 'This is useless,' he says, 'and puerile.' Father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself.' He forgets his own address to the Nile in Rasselas, for a purpose so very similar ; and he expects his readers to forget one of the most affecting passages in Virgil. Father Thames might well know as much of the sports of boys as thegreat Father of Waters' knew of the discontents of men, or the Tiber himself of the obsequies of Marcellus."

In the autumn of 1742, Gray composed the ode on A distant Prospect of Eton College,' and the 'Hymn to Adversity.' The Elegy in a Country Church-yard' was commenced. An affectionate Sonnet in English, and an Apostrophe which opens the fourth book of his poem ' De Principiis Cogitandi,' (his last composition in Latin verse,) bear strong marks of the sorrow left on his mind from the death of West; and of the real affection with which he honoured the memory of his worth, and of his talents.

Mr. Mason thinks that Gray did not finish this poem, on account of the unfavourable reception, or rather neglect, of the Anti-Lucretius* of the Car

* This poem had the honour of being corrected by Boileau, and altered by Louis the XIVth. The author was so