THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at
Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother’s brother, then
assistant to Dr. George, and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge. The transition from the school to
the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date
their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have
been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at
Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived
sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer
required. As he intended to profess the common law, he took no degree.
When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose
friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his
companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray’s “Letters”
contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But
unequal friendships are easily dissolved; at Florence they quarrelled and
parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his
fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall
find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the
compliances of servility are apt enough in their association with
superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious
jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention
which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel; and
the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both.
Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own little
fortune, with only an occasional servant. He returned to England in
September, 1741, and in about two months afterwards buried his father,
who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new house, so much
lessened his fortune that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law.
He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he soon after became Bachelor of
Civil Law, and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or
professing to like them, he passed, except a short residence at London,
the rest of his life. About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the
son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a
high value, and who deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in
his “Letters” and in the “Ode to May,” which Mr. Mason has preserved, as
well as by the sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of
_Agrippina_, a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which
probably intercepted the progress of the work, and which the judgment of
every reader will confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage
that _Agrippina_ was never finished. In this year (1742) Gray seems to
have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced
the “Ode to Spring,” his “Prospect of Eton,” and his “Ode to Adversity.”
He began likewise a Latin poem, “De Principiis Cogitandi.”
It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason that his first
ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry; perhaps it were reasonable
to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for though there is at present
some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in his lyric
numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess; and his
lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom practice would have
made skilful. He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what
others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views
without any other purpose than of improving and amusing himself, when Mr.
Mason, being elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall, brought him a companion who
was afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has
kindled in him a zeal of admiration which cannot be reasonably expected
from the neutrality of a stranger and the coldness of a critic. In this
retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the “Death of Mr. Walpole’s Cat;”
and the year afterwards attempted a poem of more importance, on
“Government and Education,” of which the fragments which remain have many
excellent lines. His next production (1750) was his far-famed “Elegy in
the Churchyard,” which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I
believe, made him known to the public.
An invitation from Lady Cobham about this time gave occasion to an odd
composition called “A Long Story,” which adds little to Gray’s character.
Several of his pieces were published (1753) with designs by Mr. Bentley;
and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of
each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended
each other so well that the whole impression was soon bought. This year
he lost his mother. Some time afterwards (1756) some young men of the
college, whose chambers were near his, diverted themselves with
disturbing him by frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by
pranks yet more offensive and contemptuous. This insolence, having
endured it awhile, he represented to the governors of the society, among
whom perhaps he had no friends; and finding his complaint little
regarded, removed himself to Pembroke Hall.
In 1759 he published “The Progress of Poetry” and “The Bard,” two
compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze
in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to
understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as well
as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to
admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions
undertook to rescue them from neglect; and in a short time many were
content to be shown beauties which they could not see.
Gray’s reputation was now so high that, after the death of Cibber, he had
the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr.
Whitehead. His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge
to a lodging near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading
and transcribing, and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected
by two odes on “Oblivion” and “Obscurity,” in which his lyric
performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity. When
the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge died, he was, as he says,
“cockered and spirited up,” till he asked it of Lord Bute, who sent him a
civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the tutor of Sir
James Lowther. His constitution was weak, and, believing that his health
was promoted by exercise and change of place, he undertook (1765) a
journey into Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is
very curious and elegant; for, as his comprehension was ample, his
curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of
nature, and all the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a
friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a
good man. The Mareschal College at Aberdeen offered him a degree of
Doctor of Laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought
it decent to refuse. What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last
given him without solicitation. The Professorship of History became
again vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the Duke of
Grafton. He accepted, and retained, it to his death; always designing
lectures, but never reading them; uneasy at his neglect of duty, and
appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a
resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office
if he found himself unable to discharge it. Ill-health made another
journey necessary, and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland. He
that reads his epistolary narration wishes that, to travel, and to tell
his travels, had been more of his employment; but it is by studying at
home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and
improvement. His travels and his studies were now near their end. The
gout, of which he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach,
and, yielding to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which (July
30, 1771) terminated in death. His character I am willing to adopt, as
Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell by the
Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as
his warmest well-wisher to believe it true:—
“Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally
acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that
not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history,
both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of
England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism,
metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his study;
voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and
he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening.
With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been
equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a
man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some
speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was
an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible
fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science.
He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire
so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly
according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could
not bear to be considered merely as a man of letters; and, though
without birth or fortune or station, his desire was to be looked upon
as a private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement.
Perhaps it may be said, What signifies so much knowledge, when it
produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains to leave no
memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered that Mr. Gray was
to others at least innocently employed; to himself certainly
beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making
some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart
softened, his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown
to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider everything as
trifling and unworthy of the attention of a wise man except the
pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue in that state wherein God
hath placed us.”
To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of Gray’s
skill in zoology. He has remarked that Gray’s effeminacy was affected
most “before those whom he did not wish to please;” and that he is
unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference, as
he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be good.
What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his letters in
which my undertaking has engaged me is, that his mind had a large grasp;
that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; that he
was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he was
fastidious and hard to please. His contempt, however, is often employed,
where I hope it will be approved, upon scepticism and infidelity. His
short account of Shaftesbury (author of the “Characteristics”) I will
insert:—
“You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a
philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord;
secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very
prone to believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will
believe anything at all, provided they are under no obligation to
believe it; fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that
road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems
always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons?
An interval of about forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm.
A dead lord ranks with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in
the matter, for a new road has become an old one.”
Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that though Gray was poor he
was not eager of money, and that out of the little that he had he was
very willing to help the necessitous. As a writer, he had this
peculiarity—that he did not write his pieces first rudely, and then
correct them, but laboured every line as it arose in the train of
composition; and he had a notion, not very peculiar, that he could not
write but at certain times, or at happy moments—a fantastic foppery to
which my kindness for a man of learning and virtue wishes him to have
been superior.
Gray’s poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as
an enemy to his name if I confess that I contemplate it with less
pleasure than his Life. His ode “On Spring” has something poetical, both
in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
the thoughts have nothing new. There has of late arisen a practice of
giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of
participles; such as the _cultured_ plain, the _daisied_ bank; but I was
sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the _honied_ Spring.
The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.
The poem “On the Cat” was doubtless by its author considered as a trifle,
but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza, “the azure flowers
_that_ blow” show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it cannot
easily be found. Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some violence
both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it when it
is done; for of the two lines
“What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?”
the first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat.
The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that “a favourite has no
friend;” but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the
purpose. If _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have
gone into the water; and if she had, would not less have been drowned.
“The Prospect of Eton College” suggests nothing to Gray which every
beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to Father
Thames to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball is useless and
puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His
epithet “buxom health” is not elegant; he seems not to understand the
word. Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from
common use. Finding in Dryden “honey redolent of spring,” an expression
that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little
more beyond common apprehension by making “gales” to be “redolent of joy
and youth.”
Of the “Ode on Adversity,” the hint was at first taken from “O Diva,
gratum quæ regis Antium;” but Gray has excelled his original by the
variety of his sentiments, and by their moral application. Of this
piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by slight objections
violate the dignity.
My process has now brought me to the _wonderful_ “Wonder of Wonders,” the
two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense
at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to
think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be
pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza
of the “Progress of Poetry.” Gray seems in his rapture to confound the
images of spreading sound and running water. A “stream of music” may be
allowed; but where does “music,” however “smooth and strong,” after
having visited the “verdant vales, roll down the steep amain,” so as that
“rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar”? If this be said of
music, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the
purpose. The second stanza, exhibiting Mars’ car and Jove’s eagle, is
unworthy of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to
his common-places. To the third it may likewise be objected that it is
drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to
real life. Idalia’s “velvet green” has something of cant. An epithet or
metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn
from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily
compounded. “Many-twinkling” was formerly censured as not analogical; we
may say “many-spotted,” but scarcely “many-spotting.” This stanza,
however, has something pleasing. Of the second ternary of stanzas, the
first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not
been crossed by Hyperion; the second describes well enough the universal
prevalence of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not rise
from the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are
not the residences of “glory and generous shame.” But that poetry and
virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing that I can forgive
him who resolves to think it true. The third stanza sounds big with
“Delphi,” and “Ægean,” and “Ilissus,” and “Meander,” and “hallowed
fountains,” and “solemn sound;” but in all Gray’s odes there is a kind of
cumbrous splendour which we wish away. His position is at last false.
In the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school
of poetry, Italy was overrun by “tyrant power” and “coward vice;” nor was
our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts. Of the
third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakespeare. What
is said of that mighty genius is true, but it is not said happily; the
real effects of this poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of
machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse
than useless; the counterfeit debases the genuine. His account of
Milton’s blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in the formation of
his poem (a supposition surely allowable), is poetically true, and
happily imagined. But the _car_ of Dryden, with his _two coursers_, has
nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be
placed.
“The Bard” appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others
have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti thinks
it superior to its original; and, if preference depends only on the
imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right. There is
in “The Bard” more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is
less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong
time. The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival
disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. _Incredulus odi_.
To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant’s bulk by fabulous
appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he
that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has
little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as
we find something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that “The
Bard” promotes any truth, moral or political. His stanzas are too long,
especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its
measures, and consequently before it can receive pleasure from their
consonance and recurrence. Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has
been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the
inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his
subject that has read the ballad of “Johnny Armstrong,”
“Is there ever a man in all Scotland—?”
The initial resemblances or alliterations, “ruin, ruthless,” “helm or
hauberk,” are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity.
In the second stanza the Bard is well described, but in the third we have
the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that “Cadwallo
hushed the stormy main,” and that “Modred made huge Plinlimmon bow his
cloud-topped head,” attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that,
even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn. The _weaving_ of the
_winding-sheet_ he borrowed, as he owns, from the Northern Bards, but
their texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as
the act of spinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is
always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a fiction
outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to “Weave the warp
and weave the woof,” perhaps with no great propriety, for it is by
crossing the _woof_ with the _warp_ that men weave the _web_ or piece,
and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched
correspondent, “Give ample room and verge enough.” He has, however, no
other line as bad. The third stanza of the second ternary is commended,
I think, beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct. _Thirst_
and _hunger_ are not alike, and their features, to make the imagery
perfect, should have been discriminated. We are told in the same stanza
how “towers are fed.” But I will no longer look for particular faults;
yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an
action of better example, but suicide is always to be had without expense
of thought.
These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful
ornaments, they strike rather than please; the images are magnified by
affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the
writer seems to work with unnatural violence. “Double, double, toil and
trouble.” He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on
tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too
little appearance of ease and nature. To say that he has no beauties
would be unjust; a man like him, of great learning and great industry,
could not but produce something valuable. When he pleases least, it can
only be said that a good design was ill directed. His translations of
Northern and Welsh poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved,
perhaps often improved, but the language is unlike the language of other
poets. In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common
reader, for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary
prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of
learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The
“Churchyard” abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and
with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas,
beginning “Yet even these bones,” are to me original; I have never seen
the notions in any other place, yet he that reads them here persuades
himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it
had been vain to blame and useless to praise him.