This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingA AcentsAcentsa A-Acentsa Acentss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of intere

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY textit{The Country Church-Yard? Tomb of Gray ? Stoke-Pogis Church ? textit{Reverie and Reminiscence ? Scenes of Milton ? Waller ? Porter ? Coke ? Denham. visit to the country church-yard where the ashes of Gray repose amid the scenes his muse immortalized is the culmination and the fitting end of a literary pilgrimage westward from London to Windsor and the nearer shrines of Thames-vale. Our way has led us to the sometime homes of Pope, Fielding, Shelley, Garrick, Burke, Richardson; to the birthplaces of Waller and Gibbon, the graves of "Junius," Hogarth, Thomson, and Penn; to the cottage where Jane Porter wrote her wondrous tales, and the ivy- grown church where Tennyson was married. Nearer the scene of the " Elegy" we visit other shrines: the Horton where Milton wrote his earlier works, " Masque of Comus," " Lycidas," " Arcades;" the Hallbarn where Waller composed the panegyric to Cromwell, the " Congratulation," and other once famous poems; the mansion where the Herschels studied and wrote. We have had the gray spire of Stoke-Pogis Church in view during this last day of our ramble. From the summit of the " Cooper's Hill" of Denham's best-known poem, from the battlements of Windsor and the windows of Eton, from the elm-shaded meads that border the Thames and the fields redolent of lime-trees and new-mown hay where we loitered, we have had tempting glimpses of that " ivy-mantled tower" that made us wish the winged hours more swift; for we have purposely deferred our visit to that sacred spot so that the even-tide and the hour the curfew tolled " the knell of parting day" across this peaceful landscape may find us amid the old graves where " the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." As we approach through verdant lanes bordered by fields where the ploughman is yet at h...