True enough, not for the dead--but Gray then felt as if it were for the dying--and chose to say so--the parting day. Was it quick and "merry as a marriage-bell?" I can't think it--nor did Milton, "swinging _slow_ with sullen roar." Gray was Il Penseroso. Prospero calls it the "solemn curfew." Toll is right. NORTH. But, says my friend Mitford, "there is another error, a confusion of time. The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and 'the glimmering landscape' has 'long ceased to fade' before the curfew. The 'parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the word Curfew is taken simply for 'the Evening Bell,' then also is the time incorrect--and a _knell_ is not tolled for the parting, but for the parted--'and leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incidents, instead of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and inharmonious; especially as it appears soon after that it was _not_ dark. For 'the moping owl does to the moon complain.'" SEWARD. Pardon me, sir, I cannot venture to answer all that--but if Mitford be right, Gray must be very wrong indeed. Let me see--give us it over again--sentence by sentence-- BULLER. No--no--no. Once is enough--and enough is as good as a feast. NORTH. Talboys? TALBOYS. Since you have a great respect for Mr Mitford, sir, so have I. But hitherto I have been a stranger to his merits. SEWARD. The best of you Scottishers are intolerably ignorant about England. TALBOYS. In the first place, Mr North, when does the Curfew toll, or ring?--for hang me if I remember--or rather ever knew. And in the second place, when does the Evening Bell give tongue?--for hang me if I am much better informed as to his motions. Yet I should know something of the family of the Bells. Say--_eight_ o'clock. Well. It is summer-time, I suppose; for you cannot believe that so dainty a person in health and habits, as the Poet Gray, would write an Elegy in a Country churchyard in winter, and well on towards night. True, that is a way of speaking; he did not write it with his crow-quill, in his neat hand, on his neat vellum, on the only horizontal tomb-stone. But in the Churchyard he assumes to sit--probably under a Plane-tree, for sake of the congenial Gloom. Season of the year ascertained--Summer--time of Curfew--eight--then I can find no fault with the Ploughman. He comes in well--either as an image or a man. He must have been an honest, hard-working fellow, and worth the highest wages going between the years 1745 and 1750. At what hour do ploughmen leave the stilts in Cambridgeshire? We must not say at six. Different hours in different counties, Buller. BULLER. Go on--all's right, Talboys. TALBOYS.