Yet Francis and Chatham both “died and left no sign:” the question is therefore still open to discussion, and, as a late writer has remarked, it is not a mere question of curiosity. He recommends it to the study of every barrister who wishes to make himself acquainted with the Theory of Evidence. There is scarcely a claim that has been put forward as yet, which he will not find worthy of his attention, especially when he considers the remarkable coincidences which have generally been the occasion of their being brought forward. He adds that he has during the last thirty years successively admitted the claims of five or six of the candidates, but that now he does not believe in one of them.
GRAY’S ELEGY.
Never the verse approve and hold as good
Till many a day and many a blot has wrought
The polished work, and chastened every thought
By tenfold labor to perfection brought.—Horace.
The original MS. of this immortal poem was lately sold at auction in London. At a former sale (1845) it was purchased, together with the “Odes,” by a Mr. Penn. He gave $500 for the Elegy alone. He was proud, says the London Athenæum, of his purchase,—so proud, indeed, that binders were employed to inlay them on fine paper, bind them up in volumes of richly-tooled olive morocco with silk linings, and finally enclose each volume in a case of plain purple morocco. The order was carefully carried out, and the volumes were deposited at Stoke Pogis, in the great house adjoining the grave of Gray. The MS. of the Elegy is full of verbal alterations: it is the only copy known to exist, and is evidently Gray’s first grouping together of the stanzas as a whole. As the Elegy is known and admired by almost every one conversant with the English language, we select some of the verses, to show the alterations made by the author. The established text is printed in Roman type, the MS. readings as originally written, in Italics:—
Of such as wandering near her secret bower
stray too
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep