any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades
himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it
had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.

-----

[Footnote 197: We shall, in comparison with this criticism, quote a
passage from Rasselas, and deduce no inference: "As they were sitting
together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before
her: answer, said she, great father of waters, thou that rollest thy
floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy
native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single
habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint." Ed.]

[Footnote 198:
I have a soul, that like an _ample_ shield
Can take in all; and _verge enough_ for more.
Dryden's Sebastian.]

[Footnote 199: Lord Orford used to assert, that Gray "never wrote any
thing easily, but things of humour;" and added, that humour was his
natural and original turn.

For a full examination of Johnson's strange and capricious strictures on
the poetry of Gray, we, with much satisfaction, refer our readers to the
life prefixed to, and the notes that accompany, an elegant edition of
Gray's works, 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1825. Much that is both elegant and
useful will be found in that publication. ED.]

LYTTELTON.

George Lyttelton, the son of sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in
Worcestershire, was born in 1709. He was educated at Eton, where he was
so much distinguished, that his exercises were recommended as models to
his schoolfellows.

From Eton he went to Christ-church, where he retained the same
reputation of superiority, and displayed his abilities to the publick in
a Poem on Blenheim.

He was a very early writer, both in verse and prose. His Progress of
Love, and his Persian Letters, were both written when he was very young;
and, indeed, the character of a young man is very visible in both. The
verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers;
and the letters have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour
for liberty, which a man of genius always catches when he enters the
world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.

He staid not long at Oxford; for, in 1728, he began his travels, and saw
France and Italy. When he returned, he obtained a seat in parliament,
and soon distinguished himself among the most eager opponents of sir
Robert Walpole, though his father, wh