the store
of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale."
Let me premise that these notices (the wrecks of a large collection of
passages I had once formed merely as exercises to form my taste) are not
given with the petty malignant delight of detecting the unacknowledged
imitations of our best writers, but merely to habituate the young
student to an instructive amusement, and to exhibit that beautiful
variety which the same image is capable of exhibiting when retouched
with all the art of genius.

Gray, in his "Ode to Spring," has

The Attic warbler POURS HER THROAT.

Wakefield in his "Commentary" has a copious passage on this poetical
diction. He conceives it to be "an admirable improvement of the Greek
and Roman classics:"

--keen auden: HES. Scut. Her. 396.
--Suaves ex ore _loquelas_
_Funde_. LUCRET. i. 40.

This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, as he
proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is
evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a
brother at home.

Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT?
_Essay on Man_, Ep. iii, v. 33.

Gray, in the "Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,

Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR
The bad affright, afflict the best.

Wakefield censures the expression "_torturing hour_," by discovering an
impropriety and incongruity. He says, "consistency of figure rather
required some _material_ image, like _iron scourge_ and _adamantine
chain_." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as
Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of
excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this
minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:--

----When the SCOURGE
Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR
Calls us to penance.
_Par. Lost_, B. ii. v. 90.

Gray, in his "Ode to Adversity," has

Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go
The SUMMER FRIEND.

Fond of this image, he has it again in his "Bard,"

They SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born,
Gone!

Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare:--

---- for men, like BUTTERFLIES,
Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER.
_Troilus and Cressi