imself: autobiography is not his object; he takes himself as a
specimen of human nature; he describes, not himself, but a
distillation of himself: he takes such of his moods as are most
characteristic, as most typify certain moods of certain men, or
certain moods of all men; he chooses preponderant feelings of special
sorts of men, or occasional feelings of men of all sorts; but with
whatever other difference and diversity, the essence is that such
self-describing poets describe what is _in_ them, but not _peculiar_
to them,--what is generic, not what is special and individual. Gray's
_Elegy_ describes a mood which Gray felt more than other men, but
which most others, perhaps all others, feel too. It is more popular,
perhaps, than any English poem, because that sort of feeling is the
most diffused of high feelings, and because Gray added to a singular
nicety of fancy an habitual proneness to a _contemplative_--a
discerning but unbiassed--meditation on death and on life. Other poets
cannot hope for such success: a subject, so popular, so grave, so
wise, and yet so suitable to the writer's nature is hardly to be
found. But the same ideal, the same unautobiographical character is to
be found in the writings of meaner men. Take sonnets of Hartley
Coleridge, for example:

I

TO A FRIEND

When we were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:
Our love was nature; and the peace that floated
On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted,
That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find, how dear thou wert to me;
That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;
And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.

II

TO THE SAME

In the great city we are met again,
Where many souls there are, that breathe and die,
Scarce knowing more of nature's potency,
Than what they learn from heat, or cold, or rain;
The sad vicissitude of weary pain;--
For busy man is lord of ear and eye,
And what hath nature, but the vast, void sky,
And the thronged river toiling to the main?
Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part
In every