da_, Act iii. s. 7.

And two similar passages in _Timon of Athens_:--

The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship.

_Timon_. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such _summer birds_ are
men.--Act iii.

Again in the same,

----one cloud of winter showers
These flies are couch'd.--Act ii.

Gray, in his "Progress of Poetry," has

In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.

Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to
Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:--

Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;

which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be
allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the
_high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was
thus:--

Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK.

Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,

Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.

Gray has in his "Bard,"

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image;
but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his _Venice Preserved_,
makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is

Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,
Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee.

Gray tells us that the image of his "Bard,"

Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air,

was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is,
however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the _beard_ of
Hudibras is also compared to a _meteor_: and the accompanying
observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from
it the whole plan of that sublime Ode--since his _Bard_ precisely
performs what the _beard_ of Hudibras _denounced_. These are the
verses:--

This HAIRY METEOR did denounce
_The fall of sceptres and of crowns_.
_Hudibras_, c. 1.

I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that "the _meteor
beard_" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "_Bard_" of Gray? I
reply, that the _burlesque_ and the _sublime_ are extremes, and extremes
meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on
our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque! A ve