The monument itself is plain, not to say hideous, but the simple words inscribed thereon are unspeakably grand when read amongst the surroundings of “wood” and “rugged elm” and “yew-tree’s shade,” unchanged as they are after the lapse of a century and a half.  The place, and more especially the lane, is a fitting abode for the spirit of the poet.  One could almost hear the song of him who, “being dead, yet speaketh”: 

                   “And the birds in the sunshine above
     Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.”

LONGFELLOW.

Gray is a poet for whom, in common with most Englishmen, the present writer has a sincere respect.  It has been said, however, of the “Elegy” by one critic that the subject of the poem gives it an unmerited popularity, and by another—­and that quite recently—­that it is the “high-water mark of mediocrity.”  Although Gray’s own modest dictum was the foundation of the first of these harsh criticisms, we are unable to allow the truth of the one and must strongly protest against the other.  It has been reported that Wolfe, the celebrated general, after reciting the “Elegy” on the eve of the assault on Quebec, declared that he would sooner have written such a poem than win a victory over the French.  This was nearly a century and a half ago.  Yet after so long a lapse of time the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes.  In spite of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that the “Elegy” was not Gray’s masterpiece, yet it was this poem that brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such lasting fame.  From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of Milton’s work, the “Elegy” “is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word.”  Was ever a poem more frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised?  In writing or speaking about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the “Elegy”; it is invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning.  Who can improve on “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,” or “The short and simple annals of the poor”?  If Gray’s “Elegy” is but “a mosaic of the felicities” of those who went before, let it be remembered that had he not laboriously pieced together that mosaic, these “felicities” would have been a sealed book to the majority of Englishmen.  Not one man in a hundred now reads some of the authors from which they were culled.  And as Landor said of Shakespeare, “He is more original than his originals.”  Even that strange individual, Samuel Johnson, who was accustomed whenever Gray’s poetry was mentioned either to “crab” it directly or “damn it with faint praise,” towards the end of his career admitted in his “Lives of the Poets” that “the churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.”  But