the Elegy, he had drawn illustrations from earlier
times of English history, he would have found but few people in his
day likely to understand him....

"The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an
improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general
improvement in taste. He wrote first according to the vicious taste
of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his own
better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet
to others. Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's
eyes to the fact that they were Englishmen, and that on them, as
Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to
them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. But
there is another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who
would have regretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Caesar to
Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, those who perhaps really did think
that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a
degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly
not those who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Caesar.
The 'classic' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us was a taste
which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Pardonable perhaps in the
first heat of the Renaissance, when 'classic' studies and objects had
the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly
fashion."]

In 18th stanza, "Or _crown_ the shrine," etc.

After this stanza, the MS. has the following four stanzas, now
omitted:

"The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave, and idolize success;
But more to innocence their safety owe
Than Pow'r, or Genius, e'er conspir'd to bless.

"And thou who, mindful of the unhonour'd Dead,
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate,
By night and lonely contemplation led
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate:

"Hark! how the sacred Calm, that breathes around,
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease;
In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.

"No more, with reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool sequester'd vale of life
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom."[5]

[Footnote 5: We follow Mason (ed. 1778) in the text of these stanzas.
The _North American Review_ has "Power _and_ Genius" in the first,
and "_