character, but which was now further deepened by the mortal illness of his beloved friend and contemporary West, who, indeed, died after Gray had sent to him, but before he had received this very poem. The singing of birds is well named

"The untaught harmony of spring; "

And a hot noon is pourtrayed with much truth—

"Still is the toiling hand of care,

The panting herds repose;

Yet hark! how, thro' the peopled air,

The busy murmur glows!

The insect youth are on the wing,

Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon.'

I ought not to omit the moral reflection—

"How vain the ardor of the crowd!

How low, how indigent the proud!
How little are the great!"

I do not feel myself called upon to pause over the next ode, "On the Death of a Favourite Cat, drowned in a tub of Gold Fishes," which, without containing anything which the Muse need stop to censure, is certainly one of the very few pieces of Gray for which I have no wish to claim the attribute of perfection.

I must tell my hearers, that I spent above six years of my life as a boy at Eton School; and so

I

they must excuse me for bursting forth with filial fervour

"Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the watery glade;
Where grateful science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade."

How often to scattered old Etonians, amid the multiplied walks of busy life, and in all quarters of the globe, have these few simple descriptive lines, since they were first written, now above 100 years ago, recalled that well-remembered spot-that sward, green as any in all green England-those venerable elms, that appear, as they probably are, coeval with the grey towers to which their deep green lends its softening contrast-that more than classic stream, our own Father Thames, its clear waters, as yet pure of London sewage, unequalled even among mightier rivers for the beauty of its dimpling ripples-or, immediately above, those royal turrets of Windsor, looking the embodiment of British monarchy, ancient, gentle, strong—the whole scene, with all its accompaniments, tending to make even these early days of education, both in their actual experience and in their abiding retrospect, romantic while they are careless, and conservative while they are expansive.

I may mention, that I felt so strongly the kind of identification which this brief ode gives to the Muse of Gray with the memory of Eton, that upon

a proposal being lately made, that a collection of busts of the principal worthies of Eton should be placed in the large school-room there, most of which were contributed by some of their descendants or connexions, I requested permission to present a bust of Gray, though certainly I could make out no plea of consanguinity, or any other but very sincere and fervent admiration.

I do not think the remainder of the ode altogether free from exception. In the first place, it is not wholly accurate in its representation of Eton school-boy life, which seems singular, as Gray had ample experience of it. It is the normal habit of an Eton boy to be what is termed "out of bounds," and he certainly does not perpetrate that act of nominal lawlessness with any of the timorous feelings attributed to him in the verses,―

"Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run, they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy."

"Rollicking carelessness" would be a far truer designation than "fearful joy."

But even here, on this scene of joyous memories, the persevering melancholy of Gray soon pounces down :

"Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!"