|AMONG Gray's papers was one inscribed 'Dialogue of Books.' The
handwriting was that of his biographer Mason, but it was believed to be
either by Gray or by West. There is a strong presumption that the author
was Gray; and it is accordingly attributed to him in the Rev. D. C.
Tovey's 'Gray and his Friends,' where for the first time it was printed.
It shows us the little great man (if it is accurately dated 1742, it
must have been in the year of his fullest poetical activity) sitting
tranquilly in his study chair, when he is 'suddenly alarmd with a great
hubbub of Tongues.' He listens; and finds that his books are talking
to one another. Madame de Sévigné is being what Mrs. Gamp would call
'scroudged' by Aristotle, who replies to her compressed expostulations
with all the brutality of a philosopher and a realist. Thereupon she
appeals to her relative, the author of the 'Histoire amoureuse des
Gaules.' But the gallant M. Bussy-Rabutin, himself pining for an
interchange of compliments with a neighbouring Catullus, is hopelessly
penned in by a hulking edition of Strabo, and cannot possibly arrive
to the assistance of his _belle Cousine_. Elsewhere La Bruyère comments
upon the strange companions with whom Fate has acquainted him; and
Locke observes, with a touch of temper, that _he_ is associated with
Ovid,--and Ray the Naturalist! * Virgil placidly quotes a line of
his own poems; More, the Platonist, delivers himself of a neat little
copybook sentiment in praise of theological speculation; and great fat
Dr. Cheyne huskily mutters his own adage, 'Every man after forty is
either a fool or a Physician.'
* Ray's 'Select Remains' with life by Derham, 1740, and many
marginal notes by Gray, was recently in a London
bookseller's catalogue.
In another corner an ill-judged and irrelevant remark by Euclid,
touching the dimensions of a point, brings down upon him the scorn both
of Swift and Boileau, who clamour for the unconditional suppression
of mathematics. (If there be nothing else, this in itself is almost
sufficient to fix the authorship of the paper with Gray, whose hatred
of mathematics was only equalled by that of Goldsmith.) Then a pert
exclamation from a self-sufficient _Vade Mecum_ provokes the owner of
the library to so hearty an outburst of merriment that the startled
tones at once shrink back into 'uncommunicating muteness.' Laughter, it
would seem, is as fatal to books as it was of old to the Coquecigrues.
Whether Gray's library ever again broke silence, his biographers have
not related. But if his books were pressed for space while in his
possession, they have since enjoyed ample opportunities for change
of air and scene. When he died he left them, with his manuscripts, to
Mason, who in turn bequeathed them to the poet's friend Stonehewer,
from whom they passed, in part, to a relative, Mr. Bright of Skeffington
Hall. At Mr. Bright's death, being family property, they were sold by
auction. In August, 1851, they were again offered for sale; and three
years later a number of them, which had apparently been reserved or
bought in, once more came under the hammer at Sotheby and Wilkinson's.
We have before us the catalogue of the second sale, which is naturally
much fuller than that of 1854. What strikes one first is the care with
which the majority of the volumes had been preserved by their later
possessors. Many of the Note-Books were cushioned on velvet in special
cases, while the more precious manuscripts had been skilfully inlaid,
and bound in olive morocco with leather joints and linings of crimson
silk. Like Prior, Gray must have preserved almost everything, 'e'en from
his boyish days.' Among the books is 'Plutarch's Lives,' with Dacier's
notes, and the inscription, 'E libris Thomæ Gray, Scholæ Eton: Alumn.
Januar. 22, 1733'--a year before he left for Cambridge; there is also
his copy of Pope's 'Iliad,' with autograph date a year earlier; there
is a still more youthful (though perhaps more suspicious)
possession--namely, three volumes of Dryden's 'Virgil,' which were
said to have actually belonged to Pope. 'Ex libris A. Pope, 1710,' was
written at the back of the portrait, and the same inscription recurred
in each volume, though in the others some Vandal, probably a classmate,
by adding a tail to the 'P' and an 'r' at the end, had turned the 'Pope'
into 'Roper.' Another of Gray's Eton books was a Waller, acquired in
1729, in which favourite poems and passages were underlined.
Of the classics he must have been a most unwearied and sedulous student.
Euripides he read in the great folio of Joshua Barnes (Cantab. 1694),
which is marked throughout by a special system of stars, inverted
commas, and lines in red crayon; and his note-books bristle with
extracts, neatly 'arranged and digested,' from all the best Greek
authors--Sophocles, Thucydides, Xenophon, and even that Isocrates
whom Goldsmith, from the critical altitudes of the 'Monthly Review,'
recommended him to study. At other 'classics' he worked with equal
diligence. His 'Decameron'--the London _quarto_ of 1725--was filled
with _marginalia_ identifying Boccaccio's sources of inspiration and
principal imitators, while his Milton--the two-volume _duodecimo_ of
1730-8--was interleaved,and annotated profusely with parallel passages
drawn from the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, and 'the ancients.'' He had
crowded Dugdale's 'Baronage' with corrections and additions; he had
largely 'commented' the four folio volumes of Clarendon's 'Rebellion;'
and he had followed everywhere, with remorseless rectifications, the
vagrant utterances of gossiping Gilbert Burnet. His patience, accuracy,
research, were not less extraordinary than his odd, out-of-the-way
knowledge. In the 'Voyages de Bergeron' (quarto) that author says:
'Mango Cham fut noie.' No, comments Gray, decisively, 'Muncacâ or
Mangu-Khanw was not drowned, but in reality slain in China at the siege
of Hochew in 1258.' Which of us could oblige an inquisitive examiner
with the biography of this Eastern potentate! Which of us would not be
reduced to 'combining our information' (like the ingenious writer on
Chinese Metaphysics) as to 'mangoes' and 'great Chams'!
But the two most interesting items of the Catalogue are yet unmentioned.
One is the laborious collection of Manuscript Music that Gray compiled
in Italy while frivolous Horace Walpole was eating iced fruits in
a domino to the sound of a guitar. Zamperelli, Pergolesi, Arrigoni,
Galuppi--he has ransacked them all, noting the school of the composer
and the source of the piece selected--copying out religiously even the
'Regole per l'Accompagnamento.' The other, which we who write have seen,
is the famous Linnaeus exhibited at Cambridge in 1885 by Mr. Ruskin. It
is an interleaved copy of the 'Systema Naturae,' two volumes in three,
covered as to their margins and added pages with wonderful minute notes
in Latin, and illustrated by Gray himself with delicately finished
pen-and-ink drawings of birds and insects. During the later part of his
life these volumes, we are told, were continually on his table, and
his absorbing love for natural history is everywhere manifested in his
journals and pocket-books. When he is in the country, he classes the
plants; when in town, he notes the skins of birds in shops; and when he
eats whitebait at Greenwich, he straightway describes that dainty in
the language of Tacitus. _Nullus odor nisi Piscis; farina respersus,
frixusque editur_.
Among the manuscripts proper of this collection, the place of honour
belongs to one which Mason had labelled 'Original Copy of the Elegy in
a Country Church Yard.' In addition to other variations from the printed
text, erased words in this MS. showed that Cato stood originally for
Hampden, and Tully and Cæsar for Milton and Cromwell:=
``'Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest,
```Some Cæsar guiltless of his country's blood.'=
Here, too, were found those well-known but rejected 'additional'
stanzas:=
```'The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow,
````Exalt the brave, and idolize Success;
```But more to Innocence their Safety owe
````Than Pow'r and Genius e'er conspir'd to bless.=
```'And thou, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead,
````Dost in these Notes their artless Tale relate,
```By Night and lonely Contemplation led
````To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate:=
```'Hark! how the sacred Calm that broods around,
````Bids ev'ry fierce tumultuous Passion cease;
```In still small Accents whisp'ring from the Ground,
````A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.=
```'No more, with Reason and thyself at Strife,
````Give anxious Cares and endless Wishes room;
```But thro' the cool sequester'd Vale of Life
````Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom.' *=
* Another additional stanza, perhaps better known than the above, does
not occur in the 'Original Copy' of the Elegy, but in a later MS. at
Pembroke College:--=
```'There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the Year,
```By Hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found:
```The Red-breast loves to build, & warble there,
```And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground.'=
```His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green,
````His high-crown'd hat, and sattin-doublet,
```Mov'd the stout heart of England's Queen,
````Tho' Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.'=