l. 3. -----
"his sweetly-moral lay". Cf. 'The Hermit', the 'Hymn to
Contentment', the 'Night Piece on Death' -- which Goldsmith
certainly recalled in his own 'City Night-Piece'. Of the
last-named Goldsmith says ('Life of Parnell', 1770, p. xxxii),
not without an obvious side-stroke at Gray's too-popular
'Elegy', that it 'deserves every praise, and I should suppose
with very little amendment, might be made to surpass all those
night pieces and church yard scenes that have since appeared.'
This is certainly (as Longfellow sings) to
.....rustling hear in every breeze
The laurels of Miltiades.
Of Parnell, Hume wrote ('Essays', 1770, i. 244) that 'after the
fiftieth reading; [he] is as fresh as at the first.' But Gray
(speaking -- it should be explained -- of a dubious volume of
his posthumous works) said: 'Parnell is the dung-hill of Irish
Grub Street' (Gosse's Gray's 'Works', 1884, ii.
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