It is hard to say what Mr. Saintsbury means in speaking of the _Annus Mirabilis_ as the best poem ever written in the heroic quatrain, when we remember that it is the quatrain of Gray's _Elegy_. On the possible sources of his use of it, see Gosse's _Life of Gray_, in the Men of Letters Series, p. 98 (also his _From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 140). Mr. Gosse refers to the use of the quatrain by Sir John Davies in the _Nosce Teipsum_ (1599), with which Gray was familiar, and (in addition to Davenant, Dryden, and Hobbes's _Homer_) to the _Love Elegies_ of James Hammond, published 1743. "It is believed that the printing of Hammond's verses incited Gray to begin his _Churchyard Elegy_, and to make the four-line stanza the basis of most of his harmonies.... The measure itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac; and Gray gave his poem, when he first published it, an outward resemblance to the text of Tibullus by printing it without any stanzaic pauses." Mr. Gosse neglects the elegies of William Shenstone, which were also in the quatrain, and some of which had apparently been published before the _Churchyard Elegy_. On this matter see Beers's _Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_, p. 137, where Shenstone is said to have borrowed the stanza from Hammond, and Gray from Shenstone. Shenstone, in his _Prefatory Essay on Elegy_, defended the metrical form and referred to the elegies of Hammond. "Heroic metre, with alternate rhyme, seems well enough adapted to this species of poetry; and, however exceptionable upon other occasions, its inconveniencies appear to lose their weight in shorter elegies, and its advantages seem to acquire an additional importance. The world has an admirable example of its beauty in a collection of elegies not long since published." (Chalmers's _English Poets_, vol. xiii. p. 264.) For there was Milton like a seraph strong, Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild; And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song, And somewhat grimly smiled. (TENNYSON: _The Palace of Art._ 1833.) _abba_ Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling, Do invite a stealing Kiss. Now will I but venture this; Who will read, must first learn spelling. (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, Song ii. ab. 1580.) Let the bird of loudest lay, On the sole Arabian tree, Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. (SHAKSPERE: _The Phœnix and the Turtle_, 1601.) Though beauty be the mark of praise, And yours of whom I sing, be such As not the world can praise too much, Yet is't your virtue now I raise. (BEN JONSON: _Elegy_, in _Underwoods_. 1616.)