Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,

9

And new-born pleasure brings to happier men: The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;

To warm their little loves the birds complain: I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.

EPITAPH ON MRS. JANE CLERKE.

[See Woty's Poetical Calendar, part viii. p. 121. Nicoll's Select Poems, vol. vii. p. 331.]

This lady, the wife of Dr. John Clerke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757; and was buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.

Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful virtues lov'd to dwell.

"So we must weep, because we weep in vain."

"Solon, when he wept for his son's death, on one saying to him, Weeping will not help,' answered: Ai avrò dè TOUTO δακρύω, ὅτι οὐδὲν ἀνύττω· I weep for that very cause, that weeping will not avail."" See Diog. Laert. vol. i. p. 39. ed. Meibomii. It is also told of Augustus. See also Fitzgeffry's Life and Death of Sir Francis Drake, B. 99.

"Oh! therefore do we plaine,

And therefore weepe, because we weepe in vaine." See also Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. x. p. 139, and Bamfylde's Sonnets, p. 6. ed. Park.

V. 1. "This weeping marble had not ask'd a tear." Pope. Epitaph on Ed. D. of Buckingham. And Winds. For. "There o'er the martyr-king the marble weeps," 313. "Orat te flebile Saxum." Burn. Anthol. Lat. vol. ii. p. 282.

Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death resign'd,

She felt the wound she left behind.
Her infant image, here below,

Sits smiling on a father's woe:

Whom what awaits, while yet he strays
Along the lonely vale of days?

A

pang, to secret sorrow dear;

A sigh; an unavailing tear;

Till time shall every grief remove,

With life, with memory, and with love.

Var. V 7-10. In agony, &c.]

"To hide her cares her only art,
Her pleasure, pleasures to impart,
In ling'ring pain, in death resign'd,
Her latest agony of mind

Was felt for him who could not save
His all from an untimely grave." MS.

5

10

15

V. 6. "And soft humanity that from rebellion fled," Dryden. Thr. Aug. s. xii. "Bred to the rules of soft humanity," ditto All for Love, act. ii. sc. i. "Oh! soft humanity in age beloved," Pope. Epitaph ix. "The soft virtue of humanity," A. Smith. Mor. Sent. v. i. p. 310.

EPITAPH ON SIR WILLIAM WILLIAMS.*

This Epitaph was written at the request of Mr. Frederick Montagu, who intended to have inscribed it on a monument at Bellisle, at the siege of which Sir W. Williams was killed, 1761. See Mason's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 73; and vol. iv. p. 76; and H. Walpole's Lett. to G. Montagu, p. 244. See account of Sir W. P. Williams, in Brydges. Restituta, vol. iii. p. 53; and in Clubs of London, vol. ii. p. 13. "In the recklessness of a desponding mind, he approached too near the enemy's sentinels, and was shot through the body."

"Valiant in arms, courteous and gay in peace,
See Williams snatch'd to an untimely tomb."
Hall Stevenson's Poems, ii.

p. 49.

HERE, foremost in the dangerous paths of fame, Young Williams fought for England's fair re

nown;

His mind each Muse, each Grace adorn'd his frame,

Nor envy dar'd to view him with a frown.

* Sir William Peere Williams, bart. a captain in Burgoyne's dragoons.

V. 3. Εἵνεκεν εὐεπίης πινυτόφρονος, ἣν ὁ μελιχρὸς

ἤσκησεν Μουσῶν, ἄμμιγα καὶ Χαρίτων.

Sophoc. Epit. ed. Brunck. vol. i. p. 10. Τὸν Μώσαις φίλον ἄνδρα, τὸν οὐ Νυμφαίοιν ἀπέχθη.

Theocr. Idyll. a. 141,

I recollect also the same expression in Gregory Nazianzen's
Epitaph on Euphomius. όντος ὅν ἁι χάριτες μουσαις δόσαν.
"A thousand Graces round her person play,
And all the Muses mark'd her fancy's way."

A. Hill. Poems, vol. iii. p. 60.

At Aix, his voluntary sword he drew,

There first in blood his infant honour seal'd; From fortune, pleasure, science, love, he flew, And scorn'd repose when Britain took the field.

10

With eyes of flame, and cool undaunted breast,
Victor he stood on Bellisle's rocky steeps-
Ah, gallant youth! this marble tells the rest,
Where melancholy friendship bends, and weeps.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCH-YARD.

The manuscript variations in this poem, in the Wharton papers, agree generally with those published by Mr. Mathias, vol. i. p. 65, in his edition of Gray's Works. See Barrington on the Statutes, p. 154. British Bibliog. vol. iii. p. viii.

THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

V. 5. Sir William Williams, in the expedition to Aix, was on board the Magnanime with Lord Howe; and was deputed to receive the capitulation. This expression has been adopted by Scott:

V. 1.

"Since riding side by side, our hand
First drew the voluntary brand."

-66

Marmion, Introd. to Cant. iv. squilla di lontano

Che paia 'I giorno pianger, che si muore."

Dante, Purgat. 1. 8.

Gray.

6

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Var. V. 8. And] Or. мs. M. and W.

"The curfew tolls! -

the knell of parting day."

So I read, says Dr. Warton, Notes on Pope, vol. i. p. 82. Dryden has a line resembling this:

"That tolls the knell of their departed sense."

See Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, ver. 22.

is Shakes. Henry IV. pt. ii. act i. sc. 2:

-" a sullen bell

And not dissimilar

Remember'd knolling a departed friend."

V. 2. In the Diosem. of Aratus, this picture is drawn similar to that of the English poet, ver. 387:

Η δ' ὅτε μυκηθμοῖο περίπλειοι ἀγέρωνται
Ερχόμεναι σταθμόνδε βοές βουλύσιον ὥρην,
Σκυθραὶ λειμωνὸς πόριες καὶ βουβοσίοιο.

And so Dionys. in his Perieg. ver. 190:

Κείνοις δ' ὄυποτε τερπνὸς ἀκούεται ὁλκὸς ἁμάξης,
Οὐ δὲ βοῶν μυκηθμὸς ἐς αὔλιον ἐρχομενάων.

See also Hom. Odyss. xvii. 170, pointed out by Wakefield. Add Petrarch, "Veggio la sera, i buoi tornare sciolte, de le campagne e de solcate colli."

V. 3. Spens. F. Q. b. vi. st. 7. c. 39:

"And now she was upon the weary way." Luke. V. 4. A similar expression occurs in Petrarch, p. 124: 66 Quando 'l sol bagna in mar l' aurato cerco, E'l aer nostro, e la mia mente imbruna."

"Has paid his debt to justice and to me." Dryd. Ovid.

"E lascia il Mundo al Foscombra." Ariosto. Rogers.

"Ere the bat hath flown

Rogers.

V. 7.
His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons,
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hum

Hath rung night's yawning peal." Macb. act iii. sc. 2.

And so Collins, in his Ode to Evening:

"Or where the beetle winds

His small, but sullen horn;