A key to
the names of those appearing in the picture was published in the 'Army
and Navy Gazette' of January 20, 1893.
*[footnote] He repeats this sentiment, in different words, in the later
'History of England' of 1771, iv. 400.
AN ELEGY ON MRS. MARY BLAIZE.
The publication in February, 1751, of Gray's 'Elegy Wrote in a Country
Church Yard' had set a fashion in poetry which long continued.
Goldsmith, who considered that work 'a very fine poem, but overloaded
with epithet' ('Beauties of English Poesy', 1767, i. 53), and once
proposed to amend it 'by leaving out an idle word in every line' [!]
(Cradock's 'Memoirs', 1826, i. 230), resented these endless imitations,
and his antipathy to them frequently reveals itself. Only a few months
before the appearance of Mrs. Blaize in 'The Bee' for October 27, 1759,
he had written in the 'Critical Review', vii. 263, when noticing
Langhorne's 'Death of Adonis', as follows:--'It is not thus that many of
our moderns have composed what they call elegies; they seem scarcely to
have known its real character.
Pages:
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327