ditation, but to act as auxiliaries in promoting it. When these guerdons are brought forward in exposure; for the ear we have "the sound of the curfew;" "the lowing of the herds, returning to their stalls ;" "the tinkling (I suppose) of wether-bells;" "the droning of the beetle ;" and "the screeching of the owl;" sounds not improper, when taken singly, but destructive, when taken in the total, to that solemn stillness which is spoken of. We are tempted to think of Hogarth's "enraged Musician," whose rapture is destroyed by an agglomeration of sounds, each of which, taken separately, might have been, by an effort of patience, endured. 66 For the eye we are presented with " the slow winding off of the cattle;"" the plodding pace of the returning plowman;" "the fading of the landscape;" and "the moon, discovering, by her light, a tower mantled with ivy." Of these images, criticism is content to admit the propriety, whilst she denies their originality, reserving to herself the righ of stricture, on the plan according to which they are assembled, and the style in which they are drawn. If the images above recited are traced to the poets from whom they are taken, we shall not always perceive them to have found their way into the Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, in an improved state. Of the curfew, as heard by a man of meditation, we have the following circumstantiation in Milton's "Penseroso:" Oft, on a plat of rising ground, To this characteristical figuring, Gray has thought proper to substitute the conceit of Dante; according to which the cur few is made to toll requiems to the day newly deceased: a fancy more subtle than solid, and to which the judgment, if reconciled at all, is reconciled by ef fort. Of evening the approach is described in the Elegy, as a prose-muser would have described it: "The glimmering landscape fades on the sight;" let us hear Thomson : A faint erroneous ray, Glanc'd from th' imperfect surfaces of things, Or, more compressed in the thought, and invested with the sweetness of rhime; But chief, when evening shades decay, Summer. 2 Ode to Solitude. And Collins : Be mine the hut that views -Hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires, The gradual dusky veil.' The idea of making sounds of a certain kind give a relief (to speak in the language of artists) to silence, is not new. Thus wrote Collins in 1746: Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat, His small, but sullen horn.2 The beetle of Collins and Gray is the "grey fly" of Milton, that, in the pensive man's ear, "winds his sultry horn." Collins has changed the epithet into sullen, by a happy misremembrance. 66 In Parnell, in place of " ivy mantling 1 Ode to Evening. 2 Ibid. a tower," we have "yew bathing a charnel-house with dew." The ivy and the tower might stand any where as well as in a church-yard; but the charnel-house is characteristic, and the yew is funereal. Of Parnell's image, however, candour must acknowledge the strength to be so great as to render it almost offensive. In Gray, the introduction of the owl is proper. Parnell's ravens might have found another place to croak in than a church-yard, and another time than night. But the part the owl acts in the Elegy is impertinent, as well as foolish; and exhibits an example of a writer spoiling a good image, by piecing it. On some fine evening, Gray had seen the moon shining on a tower such as is here described. An owl might be peeping out from the ivy with which it was clad: Of the observer, the station might be such, that the owl, now emerged from the "mantling," presented itself to his eye in profile, skirt |