This, then, was the spot associated with some of Watts’ earliest, happiest days, and was the scene of their quiet close. His friendship with Thomas Gunston was evidently founded on moral and intellectual relationship, and when he died, he poured out his grief in a long elegy, published in the Lyrics. It is noticeable in the poetry of Watts, and of that day, that so many of the subjects are devoted to the memory of friends. If a friend died, or if any other circumstance happened in life, it seemed necessary to embody the impressions in verse, and we need not, perhaps, regard this as altogether artificial and unnatural; in Watts’ instance, we may be sure it was not so, although many of the expressions sound extravagant; those to which most exception is taken have scarcely more of this characteristic than some of the similar poems of Milton; we may, for instance, remember Lycidas: Mourn, ye young gardens, ye unfinished gates, Ye green enclosures and ye growing sweets Lament; for ye our midnight hours have known, And watched us walking by the silent moon In conference divine, while heavenly fire, Kindling our breasts, did all our thoughts inspire With joys almost immortal. And again— Oft have I laid the awful Calvin by, And the sweet Cowley, with impatient eye To see these walls, pay the sad visit here, And drop the tribute of an hourly tear. Still I behold some melancholy scene, With many a pensive thought and many a sigh between. Two days ago we took the evening air, I and my grief. Amidst the exaggerations, however, which a prosaic age may fancy it detects, there is no reason for including expressions which it would certainly be impossible to appropriately use now; the poet calls upon the dusky woods and echoing hills, the flowery vales overgrown with thorns, the brook that runs warbling by, the lowing herd, and the moaning turtle, the curling vine with its amorous folds, and the stately elms, the reverent growth of ancient years, standing tall and naked to the blustering rage of the mad winds. These are images which must have been simply natural and appropriate when the piece was written; all is changed, entirely changed now, unless some exception be made for the elms which are, or were, recently standing. The death of this amiable, excellent, and promising young man stands out as probably the most intense grief of Watts’ life. As there was a community of taste, leisure for the indulgence of the pursuits of the intellect and the heart, and the strong wish to gratify the instincts of a noble nature, it is not wonderful that Watts poured out his feelings in so lengthy a poem.