FOR WHO TO DUMB FORGETFULNESS a prey—
Daniel has, as quoted in Cooper's Muses' Library,
And in himself with sorrow, does complain
The misery of DARK FORGETFULNESS.
A line of Pope's, in his Dunciad, "High-born Howard," echoed in the ear of Gray, when he gave, with all the artifice of alliteration,
High-born Hoel's harp.
Johnson bitterly censures Gray for giving to adjectives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain; the daisied bank: but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the honied spring." Had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. Honied is employed by Milton in more places than one.
Hide me from day's garish eye
While the bee with HONIED thigh
Penseroso, v. 142.
The celebrated stanza in Gray's Elegy seems partly to be borrowed.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd eaves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is torn to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness in the desert air.
Pope had said: