LIFE OF GRAY.
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ith no less force in what almost immediately fol-lows, where Johnson attempts to ridicule a passagewhich few other men have read without delight,Gray's beautiful invocation of the Thames, in theOde on Eton College — ' Say, Father Thames,'&c. ' This is useless/ he says, ' and puerile.' FatherThames had no better means of ' knowing thanhimself.' He forgets his own address to the Nilein Rasselas, for a purpose so very similar; and heexpects his readers to forget one of the most affect-ing passages in Virgil. Father Thames might wellknow as much of the sports of boys as the ' greatFather of Waters' knew of the discontents of men,or the Tiber himself of the obsequies of Marcellus." In the autumn of 1742, Gray composed the odeon ' A distant Prospect of Eton College,' and the' Hymn to Adversity.' The ' Elegy in a CountryChurch-yard ' was commenced. An affectionateSonnet in English, and an Apostrophe which opensthe fourth book of his poem i Ife Principiis Cagi-tandiy (his last composition in Latin verse,) bearstrong marks of the sorrow left on 'his mind fromthe death of West; and of the real affection withwhich he honoured the memory of his worth, andof his talents.
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