Books: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

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His other poems are now to be considered; but a short consideration
will despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself
so diligently to lyric poetry, having neither the ease and airiness
of the lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode.
When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp his former powers seem
to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression or
variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant.
Yet such was his love of lyrics that, having written with great
vigour and poignancy his "Epistle to Curio," he transformed it
afterwards into an ode disgraceful only to its author.

Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly
want force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and
uncouth, the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes
dissonant or unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or
arranged with too little regard to established use, and therefore
perplexing to the ear, which in a short composition has not time to
grow familiar with an innovation. To examine such compositions
singly cannot be required; they have doubtless brighter and darker
parts; but, when they are once found to be generally dull, all
further labour may be spared, for to what use can the work be
criticised that will not be read?

GRAY.

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 quae 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 "AEgean," 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.

LYTTELTON.

George Lyttelton, the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley, in
Worcestershire, was born in 1709. He was educated at Eton, where he
was so much distinguished that his exercises were recommended as
models to his schoolfellows. From Eton he went to Christchurch,
where he retained the same reputation of superiority, and displayed
his abilities to the public in a poem on "Blenheim." He was a very
early writer both in verse and prose. His "Progress of Love" and
his "Persian Letters" were both written when he was very young, and,
indeed, the character of a young man is very visible in both. The
verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with
flowers; and the letters have something of that indistinct and
headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches
when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes
forward. He stayed not long in Oxford, for in 1728 he began his
travels, and saw France and Italy. When he returned he obtained a
seat in Parliament, and soon distinguished himself among the most
eager opponents of Sir Robert Walpole, though his father, who was
Commissioner of the Admiralty, always voted with the Court. For
many years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of
every debate in the House of Commons. He opposed the standing army;
he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the
king to remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers
not only as violent but as acrimonious and malignant, and when
Walpole was at last hunted from his places, every effort was made by
his friends, and many friends he had, to exclude Lyttelton from the
secret committee.

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