It was at this time that he also began his Elegy in a Country Churchyard; which, however, did not appear until seven or eight years later, and which has made him immortal.  The grandeur of its language, the elevation of its sentiments, and the sympathy of its pathos, commend it to all classes and all hearts; and of its kind of composition it stands alone in English literature.

The ode on the progress of poetry appeared in 1755.  Like the Elegy, his poem of The Bard was for several years on the literary easel, and he was accidentally led to finish it by hearing a blind harper performing on a Welsh harp.

On the death of Cibber, Gray was offered the laureate’s crown, which he declined, to avoid its conspicuousness and the envy of his brother poets.  In 1762, he applied for the professorship of modern history at Cambridge, but failed to obtain the position.  He was more fortunate in 1768, when it again became vacant; but he held it as a sinecure, doing none of its duties.  He died in 1770, on the 3d of July, of gout in the stomach.  His habits were those of a recluse; and whether we agree or not, with Adam Smith, in saying that nothing is wanting to render him perhaps the first poet in the English language, but to have written a little more, it is astonishing that so great and permanent a reputation should have been founded on so very little as he wrote.  Gray has been properly called the finest lyric poet in the language; and his lyric power strikes us as intuitive and original; yet he himself, adhering strongly to the artificial school, declared, if there was any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned it wholly from Dryden.  His archaeological tastes are further shown by his enthusiastic study of heraldry, and by his surrounding himself with old armor and other curious relics of the past.  Mr. Mitford, in a curious dissection of the Elegy, has found numerous errors of rhetoric, and even of grammar.

His Bard is founded on a tradition that Edward I., when he conquered Wales, ordered all the bards to be put to death, that they might not, by their songs, excite the Welsh people to revolt.  The last one who figures in his story, sings a lament for his brethren, prophesies the downfall of the usurper, and then throws himself over the cliff: 

    “Be thine despair and sceptered care,
    To triumph and to die are mine!”
    He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height,
    Deep in the roaring tide, he plunged to endless night.

WILLIAM COWPER.—­Next in the catalogue of the transition school occurs the name of one who, like Gray, was a recluse, but with a better reason and a sadder one.  He was a gentle hypochondriac, and, at intervals, a maniac, who literally turned to poetry, like Saul to the harper, for relief from his sufferings.  William Cowper, the eldest son of the Rector of Berkhampsted in Hertfordshire, was born on the 15th of November, 1731.  He was a