Excerpt from Elegy Written in Country Churchyard: And Other Poems Among the most finished and classical compositions in English poetry, we must certainly rank the Poems of thomas gray. Few as they are, the mere triflings of a man of letters, who prided himself less on being a scholar, than on sustaining the easy, des ultory character of a gentleman, they have sufficed to place his fame above all danger from either the petulance of criticism, or the caprices of taste. What Dr. Johnson admitted with regard to the Elegy in a Country Churchyard may, without any restric tion, be applied to his works: the merit of their author is now so generally appreciated, the public suffrages concurring with the competent decision of criticism, that it has become vain to blame, if not useless to praise him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.