Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their sweetness on the desert race.

Dr. Young's Universal Passion.-Sat. 5.

A passage to which Mr. Gray had two distinct obligations within the compass of three lines. It may be doubted whether Dr. Johnson would have quarrelled with Young for velvet green.'

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.'-Mason's Ed. p. 67.
Even in our ashen cold is fire ywreken.'

Chauc. Reve's Tale. Ed. Tyrwhitt, L. 3180.

"(There they alike in trembling hope repose.')-Mason's Ed. p. 69. for which Mr. Gray refers to the 'paventosa speme' of Petrarch, of which his own words are a literal version; but he was probably not aware that Hooker, whose sublimities sometimes touch on the confines of very noble poetry, had defined' Hope' to be a trembling expectation of things far removed.'-Eccles. Pol. B. 1. Many more allusions or resemblances like these we could produce, but a few specimens may suffice to stimulate future investigation, and to prove that a learned editor of Gray might have been more profitably occupied in illustrating his best works than in the heavy task of correcting fifty sheets of uninteresting and tedious prose, which afford scarcely a subject for criticism. On this painful topic our opinion has now been sufficiently declared. It remains that we consider Mr. Mathias as an author.

The Postscript to the second volume, excepting a brief but in

adequate apology for the insertion of so much new matter, is, in point of information, extremely valuable. From the recollections of Mr. Gray's surviving friend Mr. Nichols, the editor has gathered several amusing and instructive anecdotes. Gray, as is well known, preserved the dignity of genius to the full; he was in mixed companies reserved and fastidious, difficult in the choice of his friends, and though communicative and affectionate to the select few, yet even to them, with the exception perhaps of Dr. Hurd and Mr. Mason, he appears to have maintained a port sufficiently lofty. His opinions were delivered in terms short and decisive. On some persons and some subjects, his sagacity appears to have been next to oracular. The great object of his detestation was Voltaire: he said, almost prophetically, (considering the time when he said it,) that no one could even conjecture the extent of the public mischief (that was his term) which

Hould occasion.

His aversion was constant and unmitigated. He once made it a particular request to a friend of his, who was going to the Continent, that he would not pay a visit to Voltaire; and when his friend replied, What can a visit from a person like me, to him, signify? he rejoined, with peculiar earnestness, and with a decision ex

tremely like the tone of Johnson, Sir, every tribute to such a man signifies.' The predominant bias of his mind was a strong attachment to virtue, and hence, even if his papers had fallen into theb

hands of some mercenary and unprincipled editor, nothing could have been produced to blight his memory; no ribaldry, no scepticism, no profaneness. Happy would it have been for the noble companion of his travels, had he copied the fair example of his friend, or had the editors of his posthumous works recollected that the fairest fame may be blasted by copying the miserable trash of that school which Mr. Gray so much abhorred!

Mr. Gray had a similar aversion to Mr. Hume, and for the same reasons: nor could he ever be reconciled to any deliberate enemy of religion, as he always asserted that such men, whether in writing or in libertine conversation, took away the best consolation of man, without pretending to substitute any consideration of value in its place.'

It has been expressed,' says the editor without due reflection, that he had a contempt or disdain of his inferiors in science. Of this spirit, however, his letters afford abundant proof. From his earliest, almost to his latest residence at Cambridge, the University, its usages, its studies, its principal members, were the theme of his persevering raillery: neither could all the pride they felt in the presence of such an inmate, prevent, on every occasion, a spirit of retaliation. Among the elder and more dignified members of that body, out of the narrow circle (and very narrow that circle was) of his resident academical friends, he was not, if the truth must be spoken, regarded with great personal respect. The primness and precision of his deportment, the nice adjustment of every part of his dress when he came abroad,

Candentesque comæ et splendentis gratia vestis, excited many a smile and produced many a witticism; nay, even a stanza in the Minstrel, as it stood in the first edition, has been supposed to have undergone a revision prompted by the tenderness of friendship, in consequence of the strong though undesigned resemblance which it struck out of the Cambridge bard.

Fret not thyself, thou man of modern song,

Nor violate the plaster of thine hair,
Nor to that dainty coat do aught of wrong,

Else, how mayst thou to Cæsar's hall repair,
For sure no damaged coat may enter there, &c.

In his later days, however, and when he seldom appeared in public, an homage was paid to the author of the Bard by the younger members of the university, which deserves to be commemorated. Whenever Mr. Gray appeared upon the walks, intelligence ran from college to college, and the tables in the different halls, if it hap

pened to be the hour of dinner, were thinned by the desertion of young men thronging to behold him. The comparative seclusion of the last part of his life accounts for the editor's assertion'nunquam se vidisse Virgilium,' though he was contemporary and resident with him in Cambridge more than twelve months.

Mr. Gray was a systematic as well as a severe student-he drew not from the fountain of literature only, but from the purest, the most copious, and the most remote. His habits and his opinions were at the greatest possible distance from those of the being who, in the present general diffusion of knowledge, is styled a well-informed man.'

un

Mr. Gray always considered that Encyclopædias and Universal Dictionaries, with which the world now abounds, afforded a very favourable symptom of the age in regard to literature. Dictionaries like these, he thought, only served to supply a fund for the vanity or for the affectation of general knowledge, or for the demands of company and conversation.'

This was perfectly right-profound and original knowledge on any subject can scarcely be produced in society, unless it be selected for the purpose.

The subjects of his pursuits, as well as the authors from whom he sought them, were selected with that fastidious exactness, which marked every habit of his life.

'Mr. Gray was accustomed to say that he well knew from experience, how much might be done by a person who would have recourse to great original writers only; who would read in a method, and would never fling away his time on middling or inferior authors.'

In the present state of dissipated and superficial reading, the importance of this sentiment is daily increasing. Those who read only to talk of books, and are wont to estimate their own attainments or those of others by the number rather than the character of the volumes they have turned over, may learn from such examples, that it requires a process the very reverse of their own to attain to clearness or solidity of knowledge, to impregnate genius with the seeds of future excellence, and to brace the understanding by habits of rigorous and athletic exercise, through the united powers of which great original works can alone be produced, and great eminence be attained in the narrow compass of human life. Constituted as the literary world is at present, there is fortitude as well as dignity in remaining ignorant of the art and the subject of literary small-talk.

Mr. Gray's profound acquaintance with the higher Tuscan poets,' whose genius partakes so largely of the lofty character of the Grecian muse, has drawn some excellent t observations from the editor, whose influence we trust will not be unavailing in reviving

that noble school, to which, however neglected by the tame spirit of our poets and critics in the Augustan age of Addison,' Spenser,

, and Gray, have been so deeply indebted. On this subject

living writer is better qualified to speak with authority and decision than Mr. Mathias. Let every young aspirant to the character of a critic or a man of taste read and receive with respect the following admirable stricture.

'From disingenuous hints, from attempts to resolve the character, the merits of the language of Italy into opera airs, and from the perpetual ridicule with which the English Spectator so unworthily and indeed so ignorantly abounds on this subject, an effect has been produced which has hitherto been fatal to its credit and its cultivation in Great Britain. But it must be remembered that at that period the star of French literature was lord of the ascendant, and that all the bolder and more invigorating influences which had descended on Spenser and on Milton from the luminaries of Italy were now no more. We are now once more called upon, as in the name of an august triumvirate, by Spenser, by Milton, and by Gray, to turn from the unpoctical genius of France, and after we have paid our primal homage to the bards of Greece and of ancient Latium, we are invited to contemplate the literary and poetical dignity of modern Italy. If the influence of their persuasion and of their example should prevail, a strong and steady light may be relumined and diffused amongst us, a light which may once again conduct the powers of our rising poets from wild whirling words, from crude, rapid, and uncorrected productions, from an overweening presumption, and from the delusive conceit of a pre-established reputation, to the labour of thought, to patient and repeated revision of what they write, to a reverence for themselves and for an enlightened public, and to the fixed unbending principles of legitimate composition."

With this golden sentence, which unites the glow and energy of Longinus, with the depth and precision of Aristotle, we dismiss the present article, earnestly commending so seasonable an admonition to the attention of those who fondly imagine that genius without taste, wildness without judgment, and invention without care and without caution, will ever produce a work, destined like those of Gray, of Spenser, and of Milton, to survive the cheap applause of modern and capricious fashion.

ART. IV. Elements of Agricultural Chymistry, in a Course of Lectures for the Board of Agriculture. By Sir Humphry Davy, LL.D. F.R.S.L. & E. V.P.R.I. &c. &c. Second edition, 8vo. London. 1814. pp. 500; with 10 plates.

UCH has been said by the learned and the unlearned for and against the advantages of the theoretical cultivation of agricul ture, as an object of national encouragement. The benefits of expe

rimental improvements of all kinds are very likely to be outweighed at first by their inconveniencies, whatever may be the skill and caution of the persons concerned in them; and it is natural that an ignorant or prejudiced observer should be at least as strongly impressed by the instances of failure as by those of success, and should be encouraged by the supposed accuracy of his own observations on the progress of others, to persevere in inveterate errors of various kinds, which more candour and more humility might possibly have enabled him to correct. The enlightened author of the present work has very truly observed, that the frequent failure of experiments, conducted after the most refined theoretical views, is far from proving the inutility of such trials; one happy result, which can generally improve the methods of cultivation, is worth the labour of a whole life; and an unsuccessful experiment, well observed, must establish some truth, or tend to remove some prejudice.'

On the other hand, it has been frequently remarked, that the public of Great Britain not immediately connected with the landed interest, has felt no other effect from the magnificent scale, on which the modern improvements of agriculture have been conducted, than the limitation of the supply of the table by an extravagant enhancement of the price of provisions, the curtailment of the enjoyment of rustic scenery by the progress of enclosure, the depression of gentlemen and noblemen into swineherds, and the elevation of a new order of uneducated beings into comparative opulence.co

But that partial evils may have arisen from widely extended improvements, is no proof that the benefits on the whole have not preponderated. If our population has increased, it is of urgent necessity that a greater supply of food should be procured for its consumption; and if the improvements in agriculture have rendered it possible to obtain a greater quantity of food independently of foreign supply, it is natural and just that the farmers concerned in raising it should be enriched! if enriched, they must be less dependent on the immediate demand of a purchaser, and the prices must be somewhat advanced; unless indeed the apparent increase of prices is to be attributed to the depreciation of the value of the circulating medium, which is by no means an impossible supposition. We do not profess any very high respect for the intellectual dignity of the mechanical and servile pursuits inseparable from the occupation of the mere agriculturist, however they may be combined with superiority of talents and ele gance of manners; but it is happy for many that such a combination is practicable; that without any degradation of their rank and consideration, the idle may find some amusing employment,