13 NOVEMBER 1886, Page 23

Gray's Elegy. Illustrated by Norman Prescott Davies. (Field and Taer.)—Professor

J. W. Hales contributes an introduction, which says pointedly and well what has to be said about the Elegy, and gives the stanzas which the severe taste of the poet rejected from his work when it was pat finally into shape. The rejection was right ; but we are very glad, nevertheless, to have the stanzas. The illus- trations, reproduced in fac-aimile from the original drawings, are very pleasing. The frontispiece is Stoke Pogis Church, to which Professor Hales attributes the inception of the poem, though, as he says, "there is nothing in the poem that localises it exclusively." Of tho other drawings, we would single out for notice those that bear the mottoes, "The plowman homeward plods his weary way," "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land," and " His listless length at noon- tide would he lay, And pore upon the brook that babbled by."