William Mason, the poet, and biographer of Gray, ventured to write an imitation, entitled "An Elegy in a Churchyard in South Wales."

Mason said his desire was to describe a day scene, so as to contrast it with the twilight scene of Gray's "Elegy."

But Mason's presumption and self-sufficiency were extreme, not only could he venture to put forth this mawkish elegy, written in a churchyard by day, as a companion-piece to the farfamed twilight scene; but he also had the effrontery to tack a paltry tail-piece to Gray's exquisite fragment on "Vicissitude," and even believed himself capable of improving Gray's epistolary compositions, although Gray was known to be one of the most fastidious, and most correct of writers. Mason's tampering with Gray's letters has been repeatedly exposed, and his imitations of Gray's poetry now rest in merited oblivion. Another author, with almost equal temerity, ventured to publish a

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GRAY'S ELEGY IN A CHURCH YARD.

"The celebrated elegy in a Church Yard, by Gray, is well known, and justly admired by every one who has the least pretensions to taste. But with all its polish, and deep poetic beauty and feeling, it always appeared to me, to be defective, and I have met with a remark in Cecil's Remains, to the same effect. Amid a scene so well calculated to awaken in a pious mind reflection on the sublime truths and inspiring hopes of Christiacity, Gray, with the exception of two or three somewhat equivocal expressions, says scarcely a word which might not have been said by one who believed that "death was an eternal sleep," and who was disposed to regard the humble tenants of these tombs as indeed "Each in his narrow cell for ever laid." With these views I have regretted, that sentiments similar