beft, is but a negative merit. The abfence of blemish is not perfection: and of that Officer, fmall will be the claim to praife, who, complying with the rule of the fervice, comes out to mount guard in his regimentals.

IV.

Of inaccuracy in the formation of the thought, the fourth quatrain furnishes fome examples. It is more according to truth, as well as convenience, to fuppofe a Church-yard hedged round with trees, than planted with them. A Churchyard is not a thicket. A human body buried at the foot of a large tree, with ftrong spreading roots, is more confonant to poetry, than to practice. It is not true, that in an ordinary affemblage of graves, the "turf heaves in mouldering heaps." If the ground heaves, no doubt the turf will heave with it: but the "heaps," if they are "mouldering heaps," muft heave through the turf, not the turf in them. "Rude forefathers of the hamlet," is equivocal. The forefathers of a hamlet fhould mean other, ancienter hamlets. But of hamlets there are no genealogies. Among them no degrees of confanguinity are reckoned.

V. VI.

The two following ftanzas contain a paraphrafe of the two last lines of the preceding; viz.

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet fleep.

And of this Paraphrafe it may be granted that the language is pleasing; but of the circumstances brought into view, there is no pointed and refpective application to the different orders of dead that are specified. Though the fleepers are fubjected to claffification, and diftinguished into four fets, Reapers, Tillers, Team-drivers, and Wood-cutters; and though the Roufers to morning labour are alfo enumerated as four; yet the departments are not fet off diftinctly, nor are the founds that are to roufe, characteristically appropriated to each. Neither the twittering of the swallow," nor the "clarion of the cock," have reference to one set of fleepers more than to another and the "echoing horn" feems to have nothing to do with any of them. What is meant by the "breezy call of incenfe-breathing morn," as an help to early rifing, is not very plain: though this is one of the lines that it is thought creditable to apprehend and feel.

"

Thom

Thomson, indeed, has afked the following

question:

Falfely luxurious, will not man arise,

And, fpringing from the bed of floth, enjoy The cool, the fragrant, and the filent hour * ? But the motive contained in this expoftulation is not phyfical, but moral; it is directed to thofe that are already awake, but who, from lazinefs, continue a-bed, when they should be ftirring about.

"Twitter," applied to the fwallow, is one of those words whofe measure and articulation are supposed to resemble what they denote. Gray found it in Dryden; and, as Thomson had done before him, took it on truft. But what shall we say of the "clarion of the cock ?" It is no doubt allowed to Poetry to exalt the little, by comparing it to the great; but, funt certi fines. To fwell out an infignificant little animal, by an accumulation of glaring trappings; and to compare his little fhrill pipe to a bold inftrument of martial mufic, is to fubject the animal, as well as the defcription, to contempt. Incredulus odi.

When Cupid, in an Ode of Anacreon, gives the name of winged Dragon to a Bee, and calls

* Summer.

the

the puncture received from his fting a "mortal wound," the levity of the piece, as well as the defign, reconciles us to the hyperbole. In making his grey fly "wind a horn," Milton has gone fully as far as he ought. It is not enough for the juftification of Gray, that his offence is not greater than Milton's; that "clarion" is not more to the cock, than "horn" is to the beetle. The juftnefs of poetical defcription has nothing to do with the doctrine of ratios. Hamlet's advice concerning chaste playing, applies equally to chafte defcription. There may be an "outstepping the modesty of nature" in both.

If ftraw-built fhed" be meant as defcriptive of a swallow's neft, it is an affected expreffion, and adopted in defiance of obfervation. A shed is a roof or covering: the roof or covering has, in the cafe of a swallow's neft, no-. thing to do with ftraw; nor is it built by the fwallow at all.

In the fixth stanza we are told, that the "blazing hearth burns:" although it is obvious, that the hearth neither blazes nor burns; but the fire upon the hearth. But more than this might be forgiven to the picture of domeftic happiness which the ftanza holds out, and which is drawn with great intereft, and much fimplicity.

lar,

Thomson had faid, in a case somewhat fimi,

In vain for him th' officious wife prepares

The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling ftorm, demand their fire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children more fhall he behold,
Nor friends, nor facred home *

The

Here are the fame images. The blazing fire the bufy wife plying her evening care; and the children anxious for their father's return. They occur alfo in nearly the fame order. image of the children, however, Gray has improved by the addition of a tender stroke not in the original;

Nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

VII. VIII.

In the feventh quatrain is contained the difcriminated catalogue of the dead, already alluded to; and in the eighth, the caveat to grandeur and ambition. Of this latter stanza, however, the last two lines ferve little other purpofe than to complete the number to four.

1

* Winter.

The