wo Pindaric odes, which any careful
proof-reader ought to have corrected, have been copied again and
again--as in the Boston (1853) reprint of Pickering, the pretty
little edition of Bickers & Son (London, n. d.), the fac-simile of
the latter printed at our University Press, Cambridge (1866), etc.

Of former editions of Gray, the only one very fully annotated is
Mitford's (Pickering, 1835), already mentioned. I have drawn freely
from that, correcting many errors, and also from Wakefield's and
Mason's editions, and from Hales's notes (_Longer English Poems_,
London, 1872) on the _Elegy_ and the Pindaric odes. To all this
material many original notes and illustrations have been added.

The facts concerning the first publication of the _Elegy_ are not
given correctly by any of the editors, and even the "experts" of
_Notes and Queries_ have not been able to disentangle the snarl of
conflicting evidence. I am not sure that I have settled the question
myself (see p. 74 and foot-note), but I have at least shown that Gray
is a more credible witness in the case than any of his critics. Their
testimony is obviously inconsistent and inconclusive; he may have
confounded the names of two magazines, but that remains to be
proved.[1]

[Footnote 1: Since writing the above to-day, I have found by the
merest chance in my own library another bit of evidence in the case,
which fully confirms my surmise that the _Elegy_ was printed in _The
Magazine of Magazines_ before it appeared in the _Grand Magazine of
Magazines_. _Chambers's Book of Days_ (vol. ii. p. 146), in an
article on "Gray and his Elegy," says:

"It first saw the light in _The Magazine of Magazines_, February,
1751. Some imaginary literary wag is made to rise in a convivial
assembly, and thus announce it: 'Gentlemen, give me leave to soothe
my own melancholy, and amuse you in a most noble manner, with a full
copy of verses by the very ingenious Mr. Gray, of Peterhouse,
Cambridge. They are stanzas written in a country churchyard.' Then
follow the verses. A few days afterwards, Dodsley's edition
appeared," etc.

The same authority gives the four stanzas omitted after the 18th (see
p. 79) as they appear in the _North American Review_, except that the
first line of the third is "Hark how the sacred calm that _reigns_
around," a reading which I have found nowhere else. The stanza "There
scattered oft," etc. (p. 81), is given as in the review. The reading
on p. 82 must be a lat