"I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As, waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring."

Dr Johnson makes a peculiarly poor and unworthy objection to the next
stanza of the poem. Speaking of the address to the Thames--

"Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race;"

he says, "Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself."
He should have left this objection to those wretched _mechanical_
critics who abound in the present day. He forgot that in his own
"Rasselas" he had invoked the Nile, as the great "Father of waters,"
to tell, if, in any of the provinces through which he rolled, he did
not hear the language of distress. Critics, like liars, should have
good memories.

His remark that the "Prospect of Eton College" suggests nothing to
Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel, is, in
reality, a compliment to the simplicity and naturalness of the strain.
Common thought and feeling crystalised, is the staple of much of our
best poetry. Gray says in a poetical way, what every one might have
thought and felt, but no one but he could have so beautifully
expressed. To the spirited translations from the Norse and Welsh, the
only objection urged by Dr Johnson is, that their "language is unlike
the language of other poets"--an objection which would tell still more