The ninety-ninth and one hundredth lines stand in the Fraser manuscript-- "With hasty footsteps brush the dews away On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn." The following stanza is noticeable for the inversions so frequent in Gray, and which he had, perhaps, unconsciously adopted from his familiarity with the classics. He afterward omitted it:-- "Him have we seen the greenwood side along, While o'er the heath we hied, our labors done. Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song, With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun." In the manuscript the word is spelled "whistful." In line 101, "hoary beech" is corrected to "spreading beech," and afterward to "nodding beech." Line 113--"Dirges meet" was changed to "dirges dire;" and after 116 came the beautiful stanza, afterward omitted by Gray as being _de trop_ in this place:-- "There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground." Even in this verse there were two corrections. "Robin" was altered in the Fraser manuscript into "redbreast," and "frequent violets" into "showers of violets." One of the most curious accidents to which this famous poem has been subjected was an erroneous change made in the early editions, which has been propagated almost to our time. In the stanza beginning-- "The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power," Gray wrote "Awaits alike the inevitable Hour." And so it stands in all three manuscripts, and in the printed edition which he himself superintended. His meaning was, "The inevitable Hour awaits everything. It stands there, waiting the boast of Heraldry," etc. But his editors, misled by his inverted style, supposed that it was the gifts of Heraldry, Power, Beauty, etc., that were waiting, and therefore corrected what they thought Gray's bad grammar, and printed the word "await." But so they destroyed the meaning. These things were not waiting at all for the dread hour; they were enjoying themselves, careless of its approach. But "the hour" was waiting for them. Gray's original reading has been restored in the last editions. In tracing the development of this fine poem, we see it gradually improving under his careful touch, till it becomes a work of high art. In some poets--Wordsworth, for example--inspiration is at its maximum, and art at its minimum. In Gray, I think, inspiration was at its minimum, and art at its maximum. RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL AFFINITIES OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY[5]