Ordinary readers would have innocently supposed the above "pictured" passage beyond all praise or criticism. "At non infelix" Wakefield:
"A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."
I must give his note as it stands, for I question whether the whole range of verbal criticism could produce anything more ludicrous:
"I wish Mr. Gray could have introduced a more poetical expression, than the inactive term _stood_, into this fine passage: as Shakspeare has, for instance, in his description of _Dover cliff_:
'Half way down _Hangs_ one, that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!'
"Which is the same happy picture as that of Virgil:
"'Dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo.'
He might, when his hand was in, have adduced other passages also from Virgil, _e.g._:
"Imminet in rivi præstantis imaginis undam."
However, with all due respect for Mr. Wakefield's "happy pictures," I do not see anything left, but his eyebrows, for the luckless bard to _hang by_! He could not have _hung_ by his _hair_, which "stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air;" nor yet by his _hands_, which "swept the deep sorrows of his lyre." Besides, there can scarcely be more opposite pictures than that of a man gathering samphire, or kids browsing, amongst beetling rocks; and the commanding and awe-inspiring position in which Gray ingeniously places his bard. The expressions chosen by Virgil, Shakspeare, and Gray were each peculiarly suitable to the particular objects in view. If Gray was thinking of Milton, as I intimated in a former letter, he may have still kept him in mind:
"Incens'd with indignation, Satan _stood_ Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war."
"On th' other side, Satan, alarm'd, _Collecting all his might dilated stood_, Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd: His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plum'd; nor wanted in his grasp What seem'd both spear and shield."
It would be easy to adduce similar instances from the ancient sources, but I will only mention from Milton an illustration of the [Greek: systrepsas] of Demosthenes, and of the passionate abruptness with which Gray commences "The Bard:"