love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.

[Illustration: BERKELEY CASTLE.

"Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall reecho with affright
The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!"
_The Bard_, 53.]

NOTES.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.

A. S., Anglo-Saxon.

Arc., Milton's _Arcades_.

C. T., Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_.

Cf. (_confer_), compare.

D. V., Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_.

Ep., Epistle, Epode.

Foll., following.

F. Q., Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

H., Haven's _Rhetoric_ (Harper's edition).

Hales, _Longer English Poems_, edited by Rev. J. W. Hales (London,
1872).

Il Pens., Milton's _Il Penseroso_.

L'All., Milton's _L'Allegro_.

Ol., Pindar's _Olympian Odes_.

P. L., Milton's _Paradise Lost_.

P. R., Milton's _Paradise Regained_.

S. A., Milton's _Samson Agonistes_.

Shakes. Gr., Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_ (the references are to
_sections_, not pages).

Shep. Kal., Spenser's _Shepherd's Kalendar_.

st., stanza.

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto edition).

Worc., Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition).

Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of
Shakespeare, works of Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, etc.) need no
explanation.

NOTES.

[Illustration]

ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until
1750, when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12,
1750) in which he says: "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where
I shall continue good part of the summer), and having put an end to a
thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it
you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an
end to it: a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like
to want." It was shown in manuscript to some of the author's friends,
and was published in 1751 only because it was about to be printed
surreptitiously.

February 11, 1751, Gray wrote to Walpole that the proprietors of "the
Magazine of Magazines" were about to publish his _Elegy_, and added,
"I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict
upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley
print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time)
from your copy, but