In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.
Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to
Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:--
Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;
which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be
allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the
_high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was
thus:--
Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK.
Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,
Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.