Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . ^ pecuniarydifficulties ; he lived comfortably if not merrily at Cambridge forthe best part of his life of fifty-five years (1716-7]), and hebecame a master of ancient and modern learning. He, too, had LITERATURE. 351 1784] tliG true Eomantic feeling, and he indulged it. But the cursedspite of his birth-year still refused him the Romantic organ, andhe is in the twilight. He has lelt exceedingly little ; the
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . ^ pecuniarydifficulties ; he lived comfortably if not merrily at Cambridge forthe best part of his life of fifty-five years (1716-7]), and hebecame a master of ancient and modern learning. He, too, had LITERATURE. 351 1784] tliG true Eomantic feeling, and he indulged it. But the cursedspite of his birth-year still refused him the Romantic organ, andhe is in the twilight. He has lelt exceedingly little ; the truthbeing, as I at least have no doubt, that he early found the hope-less divorce between his desires of conception and his powers ofexpression. What he has left, though not so exquisite asCollins, suffers a little less from the war between the law withiuand the law without: but as there is less internal genius, it is. THOMAS GRAY, BY WILSON. {IemhraUe College, Camhrklge.) less interesting. The great Elegy is fine, no doubt, but thecurse of Lamartine is on it; it is tepid, Laodicean, neither thisnor that. Grays great learning and his fine taste saved him,in The Bard and The Fatal Sisters, from the tawdiypastiche of MacjDherson and the juvenile immaturity of Cliat-terton. But still, blasphemy as it may seem, I do not knowthat he is not at his best in purely light verse—like the epitaphof the pensive Selima, and the Long Story —a style whereall his century is good, and in which delightful things ma_y befound in unread pages of Smart and Whitehead. 352 ^.V J-JRA OF XEW DEPAPxTUBES. [1742 Percys Reliqnes of English Poetr}, the publication ofwhich in 17()5 may be said to have dealt a fatal, though notan immediately fatal, blow, both to the classical and the semi-classical schools, may also be said to account for a certain Availof partition which stands between the poets just mentionedon th
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