ELEGY (Gr. elegeia), according to its derivation, signifies, exclusively, a song of lamentation, but the term was employed at an early period by the Greeks to designate any poem written in distiehes. The alternation, peculiar to this measure, of the hex ameter, or strictly narrative verse, with the more fiery pentameter, gives to this whole species of poetry its individual character, which consists in the connection of subjective feelings and emotions with external incidents or objects. The E., therefore, can often be chiefly, but never altogether narrative. The effect of the measure is further shown in the circumstance, that earnest, long-sustained feelings, rarely violent passions, are expressed in the elegy. Of the numerous elegies of the Greeks, few have come down to us. Those still extant consist partly of encouragements to patriotism, as in Callinus and Tyrtus, and partly of lessons of practical wisdom, as in Solon and Theognis.
Sometimes also it expressed yearning desire or mild sorrow, or amorous complaints. This was especially the case at Alexandria. Among the Romans, Catullus was the first good elegiac writer; after him caine Proper tius, Tibullus, and Ovid. Tibiilus, in par ticular, brought the erotic E. to its highest perfection. All are marked by the absence of political or moral feeling. They lived at a time when it was dangerous to express the one, and unfashionable to express the other—viz., the Augustan age. In modern times, the term E. is applied in England to any serious piece where a tone of melan choly pervades the sentiments, whether grief is actually expressed or not; as, for exam ple, Gray's " Elegy, written in a country church-yard.'