reciting
the "Elegy" on the eve of the assault on Quebec, declared that he would
sooner have written such a poem than win a victory over the French. This
was nearly a century and a half ago. Yet after so long a lapse of time
the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes. In spite
of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that
the "Elegy" was not Gray's masterpiece, yet it was this poem that
brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such
lasting fame. From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of
Milton's work, the "Elegy" "is crowded with examples of felicitous and
exquisite meaning given to the infallible word." Was ever a poem more
frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised? In writing or speaking
about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as
concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is
invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who
can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The
short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic
of the felicities" of those who went before, let it be remembered that
had he not laboriously pieced together that mosaic, these "felicities"
would have been a sealed book to the majority of Englishmen. Not one man
in a hundred now reads some of the authors from which they were culled.
And as Landor said of Shakespeare, "He is more original than his
originals." Even that strange individual, Samuel Johnson, who was
accustomed whenever Gray's poetry was mentioned either to "crab" it
directly or "damn it with faint praise," towards the end of his career
admitted in his "Lives of the Poets" that "the churchyard abounds with
images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which
every bosom returns an echo." But the chief value of the work seems
really to lie in this: it has dignified the rural scenes and the honest
rustics of England. It has invested every hoary-headed swain, every busy
housewife, and every little churchyard in the country with a special
dignity and a lasting charm. The traveller cannot look upon these scenes
and faces without unconsciously connecting them with the lines he knows
so well. Gray's "Elegy" will never be forgotten; for it has struck its
roots deep in the national language and far down into the
national heart.

Very similar to the quiet and leafy lane at Stoke Po