I have retained most of the "parallel passages" from the poets given by the editors, and have added others, without regard to the critics who have sneered at this kind of annotations. Whether Gray borrowed from the others, or the others from him, matters little; very likely, in most instances, neither party was consciously the borrower. Gray, in his own notes, has acknowledged certain debts to other poets, and probably these were all that he was aware of. Some of these he contracted unwittingly (see what he says of one of them in a letter to Walpole, quoted in the note on the _Ode on the Spring_, 31), and the same may have been true of some apparently similar cases pointed out by modern editors. To me, however, the chief interest of these coincidences and resemblances of thought or expression is as studies in the "comparative anatomy" of poetry. The teacher will find them useful as pegs to hang questions upon, or texts for oral instruction. The pupil, or the young reader, who finds out who all these poets were, when they lived, what they wrote, etc., will have learned no small amount of English literary history. If he studies the quotations merely as illustrations of style and expression, or as examples of the poetic diction of various periods, he will have learned some lessons in the history and the use of his mother-tongue. The wood-cuts on pp. 9, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 50, and 61 are from Birket Foster's designs; those on pp. 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, and 38 are from the graceful drawings of "E. V. B." (the Hon. Mrs. Boyle); the rest are from various sources. _Cambridge_, Feb. 29, 1876. CONTENTS. PAGE THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY, BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS . . . . 9 STOKE-POGIS, BY WILLIAM HOWITT . . . . . . . . . . . 16 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD . . . . . . . . 23 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ON THE SPRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT . . . . . . . . . . 48 ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE . . . . . . . 50 THE PROGRESS OF POESY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 THE BARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 HYMN TO ADVERSITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 APPENDIX TO NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 [Illustration: STOKE-POGIS CHURCH.] THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS.