The Poems of Mr. Gray: To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings, by W. Mason, M. A. 1 Vol. 4to.

R. Mason very justly dis

Any thing indecent or indelicate, ought not to be exhibited. Any secrets which tend to destroy the repose and the satifaction of private life, ought not to be discovered: whatever would revive for

work with which he has obliged the world. His well-chosen motto, Est adhuc hominibus et cura et officium; sunt qui defunctorum quoque amicos agant; is his praise, as well as his justification. The work does credit both to his friend and to himself.

The lives of learned men are in their writings, and their character is best seen in their private letters. We entirely agree with our author in his censure on Dr. Sprat's ob jection to the publication of private letters, as shewing the souls of men undrest. It is the justest curiosity in the world, to see men as they are, without the parade and incumbrance of the ceremonious formalities that are put on, either to impose on the world, or conform to it: they either make men appear what they are not, or hinder us at least from seeing what they are. This curiosity carries us as strongly to the poet, as to the statesman, the general, or the legislator. The objection to the publication of private letters, in truth, goes no further than to say, that what is not fit to be seen, is not fit to be seen.

disclosed: but we are not to suppose, that the retirement of considerable men, either in an active or speculative sphere, can be wholly consumed and wasted in an unworthy manner: and much is to be known of the secrets of social, and even domestic intercourse, which neither disturbs the living, nor defames the dead. The private thoughts of those, whose public thoughts have attracted our attention, must be worthy, as surely they are natural, objects of an enlightened curiosity, and tend, like every other work of ingenuity, to enlarge and open the mind of the reader.

Mr. Mason professes to make his author his own historian; which Mr. Gray's correspondence with his friends enables him, in a great measure, to perform..

He divides his work into parts, the first concluding with Mr. Gray's going on his travels.

The second comprehends his correspondence on his travels; and of course the account of them. His letters are wrote with great elegance and taste but though the scene of his tour has too often been the

subject

subject of ingenious pens, to allow him the advantage of novelty; yet the intelligent reader cannot miss entertainment and information. A melancholy circumstance attends this stage of Mr. Gray's life. The travels of an ingenious young man, is commonly the pleasantest period of his life but Mr. Gray had the misfortune to have a difference with Mr. Walpole, with whom he tra velled this naturally embittered his satisfaction, and very probably obstructed his road to fortune. Mr. Mason acquaints us with a cir cumstance that does infinite honour to Mr. Walpole, who has, it seems, authorized him to exculpate the friend that is gone, from the blame of this unhappy difference: an act that certainly exempts Mr. Walpole too from any share of censure: and we must, in justice to them both, suppose that the cause, which may divide the best men, could alone have separated them, meer difference of constitutional humour.

The third part begins with his return home, soon after which he had the misfortune (perhaps the greatest our nature is liable to) of losing the friend and companion of his younger days, and earlier studies, Mr. West; whose letters, if we had nothing else of his in this work, shew him to have had a very ingenious and elegant mind. Mr. Mason does not allow him to have been equal to his friend Mr. Gray; but we see that he was a good critic: the little he says upon his friend's Agrippina (p. 136.) is indeed the critic of a friend, who cannot be an Aristarchus; but it shews Mr. West to have been a sound judge.

The third finishes Mr. Gray's ingenious labours. In the re

maining part, the fourth, we find him a recluse, spending his time wholly in reading. He who early professes an abhorrence of a college life, either from a change of senti ment, by narrowness of circumstances, or from disappointment, or merely for the sake of the benefit of large libraries, which Mr. Ma son supposes to be the principal cause, takes a college for his refuge: and we must lament, that so informed and so very ingenious a man, so much and so justly admired, should have been left so long in such a state. Mr. Mason has, by his own works, established a reputation (on the justest ground), for taste, genius, and learning. This work exhibits all the judgement and good sense, that the nature of it admitted, and adds to Mr. Mason's character of a great poet, the better praise of an affectionate friend. We shall just insert one of Mr. Gray's letters to his friend Mr. West.

Florence, July 16, 1740. "YOU do yourself and me justice, in imagining that you me rit, and that I am capable of sincerity. I have not a thought, or even a weakness, I desire to conceal from you; and consequently on my side deserve to be treated with the same openness of heart. My vanity perhaps might make me more reserved towards you, if you were one of the heroic race, superior to all human failings; but as mutual wants are the ties of general society, so are mutual weaknesses of private friendships, supposing them mixt with some proportion of good qualities; for where one may not sometimes blame, one does not much care ever to praise. All this Q 2

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has the air of an introduction, designed to soften a very harsh reproof that is to follow; but it is no such matter: I only meant to ask, Why did you change your lodging? Was the air bad, or the situation melancholy? If so, you are quite in the right. Only, is it not putting yourself a little out of the way of a people, with whom it seems necessary to keep up some sort of intercourse and conversation, though but little for your pleasure or entertainment, (yet there are, I believe, such among them as might give you both) at least for your information in that study, which, when I left you, you thought of applying to for that there is a certain study necessary to be followed, if we mean to be of any use in the world, I take for granted disagreeable enough (as most necessities are) but, I am afraid, unavoidable. Into how many branches these studies are divided in England, every body knows; and between that which you and I had pitched upon, and the other two, it was impossible to balance long. Examples shew ene that it is not absolutely necessary to be a blockhead to succeed in this profession. The labour is long, and the elements dry and unentertaining; nor was ever any body (especially those that afterwards made a figure in it) amused, or even not disgusted in the beginning; yet, upon a further acquaintance, there is surely matter for curiosity and reflection. It is strange if, among all that huge mass of words, there be not somewhat intermixed for thought. Laws have been the result of long deliberation, and that not of dull men, but the contrary; and have so close a connection with history,

nay, with philosophy itself, that they must partake a little of what they are related to so nearly. Be sides, tell me, Have you ever made the attempt? Was not you frighted merely with the distant prospect? Had the Gothic character and bulkiness of those volumes (a tenth part of which perhaps it will be no further necessary to contult, than as one does a dictionary) no ill effect upon your eye? Are you sure, if Coke had been printed by Elzivir, and bound in twenty neat pocket volumes, instead of one folio, you should never have taken him up for an hour, as you would a Tully, or drank your tea over him? I know how great an obstacle ill spirits are to resolution. Do you really think, if you rid ten miles every morning, in a weck's time you should not entertain much stronger hopes of the Chancellorship, and think it a much more probable thing than you do at present? The advantages you mention are not nothing; our inclinations are more than we imagine in our own power; reason and resolution determine them, and support under many difficulties. To me ther hardly appears to be any medium between a public life and a private one; he who prefers the first, must put himself in a way of being serviceable to the rest of mankind, if he has a mind to be of any consequence among them: nay, he must not refuse being, in a certain degree, even dependent upon some men, who already are so. If he has the good fortune to light on such as will make no ill use of his humility, there is no shame in this: if not, his ambition ought to give place to a reasonable pride, and he should apply to the cultivation of

his own mind those abilities which he has not been permitted to use for others' service. Such a private happiness (supposing a small competence of fortune) is almost always in one's power, and the proper enjoyment of age, as the other is the employment of youth. You are yet young, have some advantages and opportunities, and an undoubted capacity, which you have never yet put to the trial. Set apart a few hours, see how the first year. will agree with you, at the end of it you are still the master; if you change your mind, you will only have got the knowledge of a little somewhat that can do no hurt, or give you cause of repentance. If your inclination be not fixed upon any thing else, it is a symptom that you are not absolutely determined against this, and warns you not to mistake mere indolence for inability. I am sensible there is nothing stronger against what I would persuade you to, than my own practice; which may make you imagine I think not as I speak. Alas! it is not so; but I do not act what I think, and I had rather be the object of your pity, than that you should be that of mine; and, be assured, the advantage I

city, as its environs are the most deliciously fertile country, of all Italy. We sailed in the bay of Baie, sweated in the Solfatara, and dined in the grotta del Cane, as all strangers do; saw the Corpus Christi procession, and the king and the queen, and the city under ground, (which is a wonder I reserve to tell you of another time) and so returned to Rome for another fortnight; left it (left Rome!) and came hither for the summer. You have seen an epistle to Mr. Ashton, that seems to me full of spirit and thought, and a good deal of poetic fire. I would know your opinion. Now, I talk of verses, Mr. Walpole and I have frequently wondered you should never mention a certain imitation of Spencer, published last year by a † namesake of yours, with which we are all enraptured and enmarvailed."

*

An Essay on the original Genius and Writings of Homer: with a comparative View of the ancient and present Stute of the Troade. Illustrated with engravings. By the late Robert Wood, Esq. 1 Vol.

4to.

taste and ingenuity, in his publication of the Ruins of Palmyra. The same classical enthusiasm is his conductor in the present work. He read the Iliad and Odyssey in the countries where Achilles fought, where Ulysses travelled, and where

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Homer sung. The researches of a person of an ingenious and enlightened mind, making such journey upon such a principle, cannot but engage the attention of the world of curiosity and erudition.

Our author undoubtedly studied Homer with great care and attention, and with no less sagacity. We must do him the justice to say, that with all the fondness that it is natural for an author to bear to his subject, and which is so justly due to such a subject as Homer, he does not seem to be blinded by his zeal, or hurried in that unlimited admiration, which has carried others to the excess of imagining that the origin of all knowledge, and all science, was to be found in Hoiner. Mr. Wood may, perhaps, be thought by some to trespass on the other side; he does not conceive, that the learning of Homer could, from the age he lived in, by any possibility have been very extensive neither does he allow that the Egyptians, from the state of their own knowledge, could have furnished Homer with that extensive fund of information that has been imagined. The section of this work on Homer's religion and mythology, where this discussion of Egyptian learning falls in, is very worthy of the ingenious reader's

attention,

The author has so divided his work, as to fix a distinct consideration to each of the several points that have, from the days of Aristotle down to our own, engaged the curiosity of the learned world.

We are sorry that the limits of our work does not allow us to make a longer extract than the two following, in which we think there will be found very just and well.

founded criticism, as well as a great deal of good taste.

Our author has added a description of the Troade, or country of Troy; in which he has taken great pains. The change of the face of the country, in such a long suc cession of ages, by earthquakes, as well as new inhabitants, required that the pains should not be small; and we must leave to the reader's own good sense to judge how far his position is made out.

The following extracts will, we think, engage the reader to enter more deeply into the work.

"Having taken a short view of the poet at home, if, according to our proposed order, we follow him abroad; I think we shall find him a traveller of curiosity and observation.

If our conjectures with regard to his country are well-founded, he lived in an island, or upon the seacoast. The Asiatic Greeks did not spread into the inland parts of that continent, but confined themselves to the shore, looking towards their mother country with an attachment and respect unknown to later ages.

When the great objects of hu man pursuit, whether wealth, power, honours, or science, were not to be acquired at home, it is not reasonable to suppose, that a turn of mind like Homer's, should sit down con tented with the poverty, ignorance, and inglorious insignificance of his native spot, For though ambition or avarice might not, yet curiosity, which we cannot doubt his possessing in a great degree, would naturally draw him forth into the active scene. An impatient thirst after knowledge was in those days only to be satisfied by travelling. The tranquillity and security essen