In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.) when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be 'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's White Devil). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral reasons gave no choice" (Hales).

17. Cf. Milton, Arcades, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" P. L. ix. 192:

18. Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, Æn. viii. 455:

19. The cock's shrill clarion. Cf. Philips, Cyder, i. 753:

Milton, P. L. vii. 443:

Hamlet, i. 1:

Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia:

and Thomas Kyd, England's Parnassus:

20. Their lowly bed. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter."

21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894:

and Horace, Epod. ii. 39:

Mitford quotes Thomson, Winter, 311:

Wakefield cites The Idler, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last."

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