n's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'

and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:

'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread;
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'

[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]

On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.

'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
To knock and give the alarm. But what means
This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
That does its work by halves. Why might you not
Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
Of your society forbid your speaking
Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
A very little time will clear up all,
And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'

Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
win attention by their beauty. For example:

"Look how the fair one weeps! the