THE ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD," apart from its high poetical beauty and charm of sentiment, is unrivalled in the series of pictures it calls up of human life in connection with the sweetest aspects and most tranquillizing influences of Nature. There is, consequently, no poem that might have been expected to tempt more frequently the pencil of the artist or lend itself more readily to the purposes of illustration. Yet, strange to say, the advantages which it offers in this way have been almost wholly neglected. Scanty illustrations, most of them of a very inferior type, are to be found in some editions of Gray's Poetical Works, but so far as modern art is concerned the "Elegy" has hitherto remained virgin soil. It is, therefore, with the hope of supplying a great and longfelt deficiency that the publishers issue an edition in the preparation of which they have enlisted the co-operation of many of the best American designers and engravers of the present day. COPYRIGHT, 1883, BY J. B. Lippincott & Co. [J.B.LIPPINCOTT 4 STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS COMPANY THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 7 |