out a few days ahead." If so, it must have been the _March_ number;
or the _February_ one, if it was published, like the _London_, at the
end of the month. Gray calls it "the Magazine of Magazines," and we
shall take his word for it until we have reason for doubting it. What
else was included in his "more magazines than one" we cannot even
guess.

We have not been able to find the _Magazine of Magazines_ or the
_Grand Magazine of Magazines_ in the libraries, and know nothing
about either "of our own knowledge." The _London Magazine_ is in the
Harvard College Library, and the statements concerning that we can
personally vouch for.]

The author's name is not given with the _Elegy_ as printed in the
_London Magazine_. The poem is sandwiched between an "Epilogue to
_Alfred, a Masque_" and some coarse rhymes entitled "Strip-Me-Naked,
or Royal Gin for ever." There is not even a printer's "rule" or
"dash" to separate the title of the latter from the last line of the
_Elegy_. The poem is more correctly printed than in Dodsley's
authorized edition; though, queerly enough, it has "winds" in the
second line and the parenthesis "(all he had)" in the Epitaph. Of
Dodsley's misprints noted above it has only "Their _harrow_ oft" and
"shapeless _culture_." These four errors, indeed, are the only ones
worth noting, except "Or _wake_ to extasy the living lyre."

The "Magazine of Magazines" (as the writer in the _North American
Review_ tells us) printed the _Elegy_ with the author's name. The
authorized though anonymous edition was thus briefly noticed by _The
Monthly Review_, the critical Rhadamanthus of the day: "_An Elegy in
a Country Churchyard_. 4to. Dodsley's. Seven pages.--The excellence
of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity."

"Soon after its publication," says Mason, "I remember, sitting with
Mr. Gray in his College apartment, he expressed to me his surprise at
the rapidity of its sale. I replied:

'Sunt lacrymae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.'

He paused awhile, and taking his pen, wrote the line on a printed
copy of it lying on his table. 'This,' said he, 'shall be its future
motto.' 'Pity,' cried I, 'that Dr. Young's Night Thoughts have
preoccupied it.' 'So,' replied he, 'indeed it is.'" Gray himself
tells the story of its success on the margin of the manuscript copy
of the _Elegy_ preserved at Cambridge among his papers, and
reproduced in _fac-simile_ in Mathias's elegant edition of the p