...incomprehensible. But to the Elegy even Johnson was obliged to do justice: "Had Gray often written thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him." In another letter she wrote : — To return to our old subject, Gray's poems, — I wish you would...

...admiration for Gray, but he does full justice to his "Elegy," of which he says, " Had Gray often written thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him ;" and on one occasion, in discussing " The Bard," he acknowledged the extraordinary beauty of the...

...its author. The last sentence of all owes some of its weight and dignity to two Subjunctives : — ' Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.' But, whatever becomes of details, the general requisite is that there must be something of elevation....

...stanzas of which he says " the four stanzas beginning ' yet even those bones ' are to me original .... Had Gray written often thus it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him." Tooke's suggestion that the Elegy would be made perfect by the exclusion of the second, the third,...

...for the most part, very scanty justice, had only commendation for the Elegy. ' Had Gray,' said he, ' written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.' 2 Gray was not the founder of a school of poetry in the sense that Cowley, or Dryden and Pope had been....

...agree with this interpretation, or do you find it far-fetched? Johnson finely said of lines 77-92 : ' Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame and useless to praise him.' 93-128. chance — perchance. Contemplation; compare II Penseroso, 51-54. wan may mean either ' pale...

...Johnson reserves his highest praise for such passages as four stanzas in Gray's Elegy which, he says, 'are to me original: I have never seen the notions...here persuades himself that he has always felt them.' " Read completely rather than in selected passages, then, Johnson may be said to locate the highest...

...honours. The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas...persuades himself that he has always felt them. Had Cray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him. Thanks largely to James...

...honours. The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning "Yet e'en these bones" are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that...

...which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. . . . Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame and useless to praise him" (p. 838). 39. Sickels, op. cit., p. 12. Of course there were better and worse expressions of this melancholy:...