Molest her ancient solitary reign.”
It may be argued, indeed, that time does not stand still with the poet; and that, as he lingered in the churchyard, twilight had given way to midnight. But we are afraid that the true answer is simply this—that the ivy-mantled tower, the moon, and the owl, were, at all events, to be introduced as fit accompaniments of the scene; and that no question was ever asked how they would harmonise with the sunset view of distant fields, that we had glanced at just before.
“Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!”
That one who loved mountains, and frequented them, should put a string of unmeaning words like these into the mouth of his Welsh bard! There is absolutely nothing in them. Give your Welsh harper the finest ear imaginable, and put him on what mountain you will, what “desert caves” will he hear sighing in response to giant oaks, and these again to the torrent beneath?
“O’er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe.”
The oaks waving in wrath “their hundred arms,” is a fine frenzy enough; but it is spoilt again by the “hoarser murmurs breathe,”—words in which no man ever thought.
Instances of this artificial manner of building up the rhyme, it would be superfluous to multiply. Let us rather drop a hint against carrying our strictures to an undue degree of severity. There is, especially, a running charge of plagiarism brought against Gray, and all such composite poets, which is altogether unfair. If they have formed their style in the study of other poets, it follows that they must repeat the phrases of their predecessors; but, if they do this in the expression of a new thought of their own, such use of their language must not be described as plagiarism. A critic before us thus comments on some lines in the Elegy:—
“Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;