7 It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason', that his first ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry2: 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 Lyrick numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess, and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom practice would quickly have made skilful 3. 8 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 Pembrokehall 5, 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 critick 6. 9 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 8. you the beginning, not of an Epic Poem, but of a Metaphysic one. Poems and Metaphysics (say you, with your spectacles on) are inconsistent things. A metaphysical poem is a contradiction in terms. It is true; but I will go on. It is Latin too, to increase the absurdity.' Gray's Letters, i. 88. He sent the first fiftythree lines. Mason, i. 273. See also ib. ii. 10. In the first edition :-' It seems to be the opinion of Mr. Mason.' 2 Mason, i. 136, ii. 9. 'I have many scraps and letters of his that show how very early his genius was ripe.' WALPOLE, Letters, v. 336. 'Both Gray and West had abilities marvellously premature.' Ib. vi. 15. 3 Walpole wrote in 1775:-' Faults are found, I hear, at Eton with the Latin poems for false quantities-no matter-they are equal to the English -and can one say more?' Ib. vi. 199. Mason, ii. 25. He wrote in 1747:'I am now in Pindar and Lysias; for I take verse and prose together like bread and cheese.' Gray's Letters, i. 162. 5 In 1747 Mason, 'greatly owing to Gray,' was nominated to the Fellowship. Through the opposition of the Master he was not elected till 1749. Mason, ii. 26. • See Appendix U. 1 Post, GRAY, 29. First printed in Dodsley's Coll. 1748, ii. 267. See also Gray's Letters, i. 156. 8 'I mean to show,' wrote Gray, 'that Education and Government must necessarily concur to produce great and useful men.' 1b. i. 192. 'When I asked him,' writes Nicholls, 'why he had not continued that beautiful fragment, he said because he could not.' Mitford, v. 35. Gibbon, quoting 11. 52-7, continues:-' Instead of compiling tables of chronology and natural history, why did not Mr. Gray apply the powers of his genius to finish the philosophic poem of which he has left such an exquisite specimen?' The Decline and Fall, iii. 332. (In 1. 56 Gibbon changes 'breathing' into His next production (1750) was his far-famed Elegy in the 10 Church-yard, which, finding its way into a Magazine, first, I believe, made him known to the publick. An invitation from lady Cobham about this time gave 11 occasion to an odd composition called A Long Story, which adds little to Gray's character 3. Several of his pieces were published (1753), with designs, by 12 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 5. Some time afterwards (1756) some young men of the college, 18 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 6. This insolence, having endured it a while, he represented to the governors of the society, among whom perhaps he had no friends, and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed himself to Pembrokehall'. 'opening.') He again quotes it (11. 100-end), ib. v. 457, and, referring to a description of the Nile by a French consul at Cairo, continues:-'From a college at Cambridge the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance.' * See Appendix X. * For her father, Edmund Halsey, the brewer, see ante, POPE, 272 n. He had bought the Mansion House at Stoke Pogis. Mason, ii. 74; Gray's Letters, i. 218. 3 In the first edition, 'which, though perhaps it adds little to Gray's character, I am not pleased to find wanting in this Collection. It will therefore be added to this Preface.' To it was added also the Ode for Musick. Both poems are included in Eng. Poets, 1790. Of A Long Story Gray wrote:'It was never meant for the public.' Mitford, iv. 91. On Dec. 18, 1751 he wrote:-'The verses being shew'd about in Town are not liked there at all.' Gray's Letters, i. 220. * See Appendix Y. 5 [Gray's epitaph on her tombstone in Stoke Pogis churchyard thus ends, - 'The careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.' Mathias's Gray, i. 339.] She died on March 11, 1753. Mason, ii. 97. On Sept. 21 Gray wrote to Mason, who had lost his father:-'I know what it is to lose a person that one's eyes and heart have long been used to, and I never desire to part with the remembrance of that loss, nor would wish you should.' Gray's Letters, i. 236. In the first edition the sentence ends at 'noises.' 'Johnson's authority is Mason, ii. 113. Gray wrote on March 25, 1756:-'I have been taken up in quarrelling with Peter-house, and in removing myself from thence to Pembroke.' Letters, i. 292. For the quarrel see ib. n. 3, and p. 291. An incredible account is given in R. Polwhele's Traditions, p. 212. 'Pembroke Hall was Ridley's "own dear College," ...; by Elizabeth 14 In 1757 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 amazement2. 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 admire3. 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 shewn beauties which they could not see 5. 15 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 6. 16 His curiosity not long after drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging near the Museum, where he resided near three apostrophized as "domus antiqua et religiosa." Spenser and Pitt were there.' Macleane's Pembroke College, Oxford, p. 211. I Post, GRAY, 32. Walpole recorded :-'Aug. 8, 1757. I published two Odes by Mr. Gray, the first production of my press.' Walpole's Letters, Preface, p. 68. On July 12 he wrote:-'I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands.' Ib. iii. 89. The title-page is 'Odes by Mr. Gray. Printed at Strawberry-Hill. For R. & J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall. 1757. 'On June 29, 1757, Gray received forty guineas for his two Odes.' Mitford, iii. 169. Of 2,000 copies printed '12 or 1300 were gone,' Gray wrote that same year. Gray's Letters, i. 350. There is no mention of them in Gent. Mag. At the Fraser Library Sale 'the Odes with MS. notes by the poet, extra illustrations, &c., sold for £370.' The Athenaeum, May 4, 1901, p. 567. 2 Aug. 17, 1757. I hear we are not at all popular; the great objection is obscurity. 'Aug. 25. All people of condition are agreed not to admire, nor even to understand.' GRAY, Letters, i. 345-6. Walpole, on Aug. 4, described them as 'two amazing Odes of Mr. Gray; they are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime! consequently, I fear, a little obscure.... I could not persuade him to add more notes; he says whatever wants to be explained don't deserve to be.' Walpole's Letters, iii. 94. 'I would not have put another note,' Gray writes, 'to save the souls of all the owls in London.' Letters, i. 348. 3 Ib. i. 366. 4 Gray wrote on Aug. 25:-'I have heard of nobody but a player and a doctor of divinity that profess their esteem for them.' Ib. p. 346. For Garrick's lines in The London Chronicle, Oct. 1, 1757, see ib. p. 366 n. 5 Post, GRAY, 32. 'JOHNSON. The obscurity in which Gray has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 402. Goldsmith wrote in 1770 of 'the misguided innovators' in poetryGray and his school :-' They have adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them are silent, and those who make out their meaning are willing to praise to show they understand.' Works, iv. 141. 6 See Appendix Z. years, reading and transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his Lyrick performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity 2. When the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge died he 17 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 3. His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was 18 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 events5. I Mason, ii. 24. In July, 1759, he took lodgings in Southampton Row. 'I am now settled in my new territories commanding... all the fields as far as Highgate and Hampstead. Here is air, and sunshine, and quiet.' In the reading-room of the Museum they were, he said, five readers in all. Mitford, iii. 219. He visited Cambridge more than once. Ib. p. 253. 2 Colman's Prose on Several Occasions, &c., 1787, ii. 273. 'These Odes,' writes Colman, 'were a piece of boys' play with my schoolfellow Lloyd, with whom they were written in concert.' Ib. Preface, p. II. They are quoted in Gent. Mag. June, 1760, p. 291. According to Steevens Johnson said: 'Colman never produced a luckier thing than his first Ode in ridicule of Gray. A considerable part of it may be numbered among those felicities which no man has twice attained.' John. Misc. ii. 320. See also Boswell's Johnson, ii. 334. Gray wrote in June, 1760:- ' I believe Mr. Colman's Odes sell no more than mine did, for I saw a heap of them lie in a bookseller's window, who recommended them to me as a very pretty thing.' Letters, ii. 147. See also ib. p. 161. 'Gray is said to have been so much hurt by a foolish and impertinent parody of two of his finest odes, that he never afterwards attempted any considerable work.' Adam Smith, Moral Sent. 1801, i. 255. Walpole, in 1796, says of Payne Knight :- He tells a silly falsehood of Gray being terrified from writing by Lloyd's and Colman's trash.' Letters, ix. 462. 'Dr. J. Warton says:-"Colman and Lloyd once said to me that they repented of the attempt."" Gray's Letters, ii. 140 n. 3 Mitford, iii. 301, letter of Dec. 4, 1762. Lowther, a year before, had married Bute's daughter. Burke's Peerage. Later on he was known as 'the bad Lord Lonsdale,' that 'gloomy despot,' among whose victims was Wordsworth's father. He treated Boswell also with brutality. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 179 n., v. 113. Walpole, speaking of the vast succession that fell to him in 1756, says 'it makes him Croesus.' Letters, iii. 5. Nevertheless he was mean enough to pension his tutor at the cost of the University. 4 In his letters. Mitford, iv. 51-65. 5 In 1758 he wrote :-' The drift of my present studies is to know, wherever I am, what lies within reach that may be worth seeing.' Ib. iii. 188. For his Naturalist's Calendar see ib. iii. 216, 224, 276, iv. 13; for his observations on architecture and painting see ib. iv. 70, 225, ν. 325. 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 the degree of Doctor of Laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to refuse 2. 19 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 3. 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. 20 Ill health made another journey necessary 5, 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 I Mitford, iv. 62-5. 'JOHNSON. We all love Beattie. Mrs. Thrale says, if ever she has another husband, she'll have Beattie.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 148. 2 In declining the honour he speaks of Cambridge in a tone different from his ordinary one-'a set of men among whom I have passed so many easy, and, I may say, happy hours of my life.' Mitford, iv. 63. The Duke was Prime Minister. Gray wrote on Aug. 1, 1768, that 'on Sunday se'nnight Brocket died by a fall from his horse, being (as I hear) drunk. On the Wednesday following I received a letter from the D. of Grafton saying he had the King's commands to offer me the vacant Professorship.' 1b. iv. 123. On Oct. 31 he wrote:- ' It is the best thing the Crown has to bestow (on a layman) here; the salary is £400 per ann.' Ib. p. 127. The drunken Brocket was in orders. Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 398. One of Gray's correspondents, Richard Stonehewer, was the Duke's Secretary. 'He is a great favourite of the Duke, and the person that recommended Mr. Gray.' WALPOLE, Letters, v. 117, 128. Gray, a year later, wrote an Ode for Music for the Installation of the Duke as Chancellor of the University. Mitford, iv. 137. Post, GRAY, 48 n. 9. This state of mind Johnson knew only too well. Ante, MALLET, 14 n. Gray wrote to Nicholls on March 20, 1770:-'As to Wales, doubtless I should wish it this summer, but I can answer for nothing; my own employment so sticks in my stomach, and troubles my conscience.' Mitford, v. 104. On May 20, 1771 (a few weeks before his death), he wrote:'The sense of my own duty, which I do not perform, my own low spirits (to which this consideration not a little contributes),' &c. Ib. p. 141. Nicholls replied:-'For God's sake how can you neglect a duty which never existed but in your own imagination? It never yet was performed, nor, I believe, expected.' Ib. For University Professors see Gibbon's Memoirs, p. 53. 5 In his last published letter he wrote:-'Travel I must or cease to exist. Mitford, iv. 200. See also ib. p. 188. 61b. iv. 139-78; Mason, ii. 25592. |