PRACTICAL METHOD OF READING AND RECITING ENGLISH POETRY ELE-GY. THE Elegy being a plaintive, mournful Poem, in general, ought, of courfe, to be read with a gravity of look, and a folemnity of tone, fuitable to the fober melancholy of the fubject. A low key of voice is the most appropriate; for if we begin in a lofty tone, the mournful effect, intended by the Poet, is at once deftroyed. We fhall elucidate what we mean, by giving a few extracts out of that inimitable poem of the elegiac kind, written by the late Mr. Gray. The curfew tolls the knell of farting day, This is the general way that the line is pointed in the feveral books in which it has been introduced, but we think very erroneously; for when we attend to the proper method of reading it, we fhall find that there ought to be a comma placed at the end of the word tolls. The late Mr. Henderson ufed to read it in the following manner: The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day, The words "the knell of parting day” he delivered as if they were placed between a parenthesis, and if the scholar will repeat the line in the manner it is generally printed, and afterwards in the method adopted by that gentleman, we are convinced his own judgment will at once fee the great fuperiority of the latter. Let us now proceed with the Poem: The lowing herd winds flowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, The word weary to be founded long and beavy, as if bearing an echo to the sense. And leaves the world to darkness, and to me. Our reader must take care to read all this verfe in the folemn fober manner we first mentioned, or else the whole effect of it will be entirely loft. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the fight, 3 The The words folemn fillness to be marked by a peculiar folemnity of utterance, which will be found to give a confiderable beauty to the line. Save where the beetle wheels his drony flight, Drony pronounced long, and with apparent heaviness. And drowfy tinklings lull the distant folds. Lull to be particularly marked. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r, The moping owl does to the moon complain Solitary to be delivered in a flow and folemn manner. The two next verses we need not infert, as we have nothing to remark upon them. The next is For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, The word bousewife founds rather clumfily on the ear, and Mr. Sheridan used in confequence to pronounce it as if fpelt buff, which has a much better effect than the other, and we therefore recommend the use of it to the fcholar. We fhall go to the two last lines of the next verse. How jocund did they drive their team afield ! Sheridan and Henderson pronounced jocund as if it were fpelt with two cc-jeccundi How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy ftroke! Sturdy-with ftrength, and energy. 9TH VERSE. The boaft of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,. Te. Many found this word as if it were spelt you. If memory to these no trophies raise, The pealing anthem fells the notes of praife. Swells with a kind of fwelling utterance. Can ftoried urn or animated buft Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Çan honour's voice provoke the filent duft, Or flatt'ry footh the dull cold ear of death? It Dull |