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