Wakefield censures the expression "_torturing hour_," by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, "consistency of figure rather required some _material_ image, like _iron scourge_ and _adamantine chain_." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:-- ----When the SCOURGE Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR Calls us to penance. _Par. Lost_, B. ii. v. 90. Gray, in his "Ode to Adversity," has Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go The SUMMER FRIEND. Fond of this image, he has it again in his "Bard," They SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born, Gone! Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare:-- ---- for men, like BUTTERFLIES, Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER. _Troilus and Cressida_, Act iii. s. 7. And two similar passages in _Timon of Athens_:-- The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship. _Timon_. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such _summer birds_ are men.--Act iii. Again in the same, ----one cloud of winter showers These flies are couch'd.--Act ii. Gray, in his "Progress of Poetry," has In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD. Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:-- Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way; which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the _high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus:-- Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK. Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden, Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way. Gray has in his "Bard," Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart. Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his _Venice Preserved_, makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee. Gray tells us that the image of his "Bard," Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air, was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the _beard_ of Hudibras is also compared to a _meteor_: and the accompanying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode--since his _Bard_ precisely performs what the _beard_ of Hudibras _denounced_. These are the verses:--