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Each recited his own, called upon by Sillery; each would rise without being urged, place his chair in front of him, and leaning one hand upon its back, would recite his poem or elegy. Certainly some of them were wanting in genius, some were even ludicrous.
And in the Latin elegy there is more tenderness than in the English. Charles Diodati was much nearer to Milton than had been Edward King. The sorrow in Lycidas is not so much personal as it is the regret of the society of Christ's. King had only been known to Milton as one of the students of the same college; Diodati was the associate of his choice in riper manhood.
He was a man of great industry, and wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; but of these only a few hymns and epigrams have come down to our time. Egypt seems to have been the birthplace of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was the chief of the elegiac poets.
The cook had only Peggy to aid him; but as Peggy is equal to about forty South Carolina Africans, he is very reasonable if he asks only thirty-five, and ought to be indulged. Your maid will make a miserable housekeeper, and be spoiled as femme de chambre, which last character is, I take it, the more important one. The poem or elegy is not sent, and is not forgotten.
Another poet of the period, with a very different purpose, has left an elegy, in which he darkly hints at and bemoans the fate of the ill-starred young person, whose very uncommon calamity Whitelaw, Dunlop, and Milne thought a fitting subject for buffoonery and ribaldry.
For instance, in this elegy, some would have had me give Alexis a servant to carry his bundle, never thinking that all that was poetic and idyllic in the situation would thus have been destroyed." From Alexis and Dora, the conversation then turned to Wilhelm Meister.
Stanzas from GRAY'S "Elegy in a Country Church-yard." Translator. "Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of the fool!" Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall." "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold! Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant." Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens." Translator.
The lamentations for this brave and pious monarch remind us of the universal grief of the Hebrew nation on the death of Samuel. He was buried in a tomb which he had prepared for himself, amid universal mourning. A funeral oration was composed by Jeremiah, or rather an elegy, afterward sung by the nation on the anniversary of the battle.
The lowest point of his fortunes suddenly turned into the highest, for now the path to the throne was open. But the tidings did not move him to joy. His first thought was not for himself, but for Saul and Jonathan, whose old love to him shone out again, glorified by their deaths. Swift vengeance from his hand struck Saul's slayer; the lovely elegy on the great king and his son eased his heart.
Shelley wrote thus: 'I have received the heartrending account of the closing scene of the great genius whom envy and ingratitude scourged out of the world. I do not think that, if I had seen it before, I could have composed my poem. The enthusiasm of the imagination would have overpowered the sentiment. As it is, I have finished my Elegy; and this day I send it to the press at Pisa.
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