s, and what was worse, of
French dress;" and the author tried, but tried in vain, to substitute
another. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find a better for the place
in which it stands. There is no ground of censure which a writer should
admit with more caution, than that a particular word or phrase happens
to suggest a ludicrous or unsuitable image to the mind of another
person. Few probably would have thought of French dress on this
occasion: and to some, a passage in our translation of the Bible might
have occurred, where it is said, that "the Lord _garnished_ the
heavens." Another of Gray's criticisms fell on the word "infuriate," as
being a new one, although, as Sir William Forbes remarks, it is found
not only in Thomson's Seasons, but in the Paradise Lost.

The second book of the Minstrel is not so pleasant as it is good. The
stripling wanders to the habitation of a hermit, who has a harp, not a
very usual companion for a hermit, to amuse his solitude; and who
directs him what studies to pursue. The youth is pleased with no
historian except Plutarch. He reads Homer and Virgil, and learns to mend
his song, and the poet would have told us how he learnt to sing still
better, if sorrow for the death of a friend had not put a period to his
own labours. The poem thus comes abruptly to an end; and we are not much
concerned that there is no more of it. His first intention was to have
engaged the Minstrel in some adventure of importance, through which it
may be doubted whether he could well have conducted him; for he has not
shewn much skill in the narrative part of the poem.

The other little piece, called the Hermit, begins with a sweet strain,
which always dwells on the ear, and which makes us expect that something
equally sweet is to follow. This hermit too has his "harp symphonious."
He makes the same complaint, and finds the same comfort for it, as Edwin
had done in the first book of the Minstrel. Both are the Christian's
comment on a well-known passage in the Idyllium of Moschus, on the death
of Bion. Of his Ode on Lord Hay's Birth-day, Gray's opinion, however
favourable, is not much beyond the truth; that the diction is easy and
noble; the texture of the thoughts lyric, and the versification
harmonious; to which he adds, "that the panegyric has nothing mean in
it."

The Ode to Hope looks like one of Blair's Sermons cast into a lyrical
mould.

There is, I believe, no allusion to any particular place that was