own day enveloping the great republican leader, still lay thick
and heavy over him. His wise statesmanship, his unceasing
earnestness, his high-minded purpose, were not yet seen."

After this stanza Thomas Edwards, the author of the _Canons of
Criticism_, would add the following, to supply what he deemed a
defect in the poem:

"Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms
Shone with attraction to herself alone;
Whose beauty might have bless'd a monarch's arms,
Whose virtue cast a lustre on a throne.

"That humble beauty warm'd an honest heart,
And cheer'd the labours of a faithful spouse;
That virtue form'd for every decent part
The healthful offspring that adorn'd their house."

Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet.

63. Mitford quotes Tickell:

"To scatter blessings o'er the British land;"

and Mrs. Behn:

"Is scattering plenty over all the land."

66. _Their growing virtues_. That is, the growth of their virtues.

67. _To wade through slaughter_, etc. Cf. Pope, _Temp. of Fame_, 347:

"And swam to empire through the purple flood."

68. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. V._ iii. 3:

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up."

70. _To quench the blushes_, etc. Cf. Shakes. _W. T._ iv. 3:

"Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself."

73. _Far from the madding crowd's_, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond:

"Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords."

Mitford points out "the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives
a sense exactly contrary to that intended; to avoid which one must
break the grammatical construction." The poet's meaning is, however,
clear enough.

75. Wakefield quotes Pope, _Epitaph on Fenton_:

"Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease,
Content with science in the vale of peace."

77. _These bones_. "The bones of these. So _is_ is often used in
Latin, especially by Livy, as in v. 22: '_Ea_ sola pecunia,' the
money derived from that sale, etc." (Hales).

84. _That teach_. Mitford censures _teach_ as ungrammatical; but it
may be justified as a "construction according to sense."

85. Hales remarks: "At the first glance it might seem that _to dumb
Forgetfulness a prey_ was in apposition to _who_, and the meaning
was, 'Who that now lies forgotten,' etc.; in which case the second
line of the stanza must be closely connected with the fourth; for the
question of the passage is not 'Who ever died?' but 'Who eve