lsewhere quoted says of the _Elegy_: "It is upon this that Gray's
fame as a poet must chiefly rest. By this he will be known forever
alike to the lettered and the unlettered. Many, in future ages, who
may never have heard of his classic Odes, his various learning, or
his sparkling letters, will revere him only as the author of the
_Elegy_. For this he will be enshrined through all time in the hearts
of the myriads who shall speak our English tongue. For this his name
will be held in glad remembrance in the far-off summer isles of the
Pacific, and amidst the waste of polar snows. If he had written
nothing else, his place as a leading poet in our language would still
be assured. Many have asserted, with Johnson, that he was a mere
mechanical poet--one who brought from without, but never found
within; that the gift of inspiration was not native to him; that his
imagination was borrowed finery, his fancy tinsel, and his invention
the world's well-worn jewels; that whatever in his verse was poetic
was not new, and what was new was not poetic; that he was only an
unworldly dyspeptic, living amid many books, and laboriously delving
for a lifetime between musty covers, picking out now and then
another's gems and bits of ore, and fashioning them into
ill-compacted mosaics, which he wrongly called his own. To all this
the _Elegy_ is a sufficient answer. It is not old--it is not bookish;
it is new and human. Books could not make its maker: he was born of
the divine breath alone. Consider all the commentators, the
scholiasts, the interpreters, the annotators, and other like
book-worms, from Aristarchus down to Doderlein; and may it not be
said that, among them all, 'Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum?'

"Gray wrote but little, yet he wrote that little well. He might have
done far more for us; the same is true of most men, even of the
greatest. The possibilities of a life are always in advance of its
performance. But we cannot say that his life was a wasted one. Even
this little _Elegy_ alone should go for much. For, suppose that he
had never written this, but instead had done much else in other ways,
according to his powers: that he had written many learned treatises;
that he had, with keen criticism, expounded and reconstructed Greek
classics; that he had, perchance, sat upon the woolsack, and laid
rich offerings at the feet of blind Justice;--taking the years
together, would it have been, on the whole, better for him or for u