The Bard related to Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell. "Mr. Beddington," the poet wrote to Dr. Wharton, “in a golden shower of panegyric, writes me word that, at York Races, he overheard three people, whom by their dress and manner he takes for lords, say that I was impenetrable and inexplicable, and they wished I had told them in prose what I meant in verse; and then they bought me (which was what most displeased him) and put me in their pocket. Dr. Warburton is come to town, and likes them extremely. He says the world never passed so just an opinion upon anything as upon them; for that in other things they have affected to like or dislike, whereas here they own they do not understand, which he looks upon to be very true; but yet thinks they understand them as well as they do Milton or Shakspeare, whom they are obliged by fashion to admire. Mr. Garrick's compliment you have seen; I am told it was printed in the Chronicle of last Saturday. The Review I have read, and admire it, particularly that observation that The Bard is taken from Pastor cum traheret. And the advice, to be more original, and in order to be so the way is (he says) to cultivate the native flowers of the soil, and not introduce the exotics of another climate." The critique at which Gray sneers was written by an obscure adventurer in London, performing task-work in the service of R. Griffiths, in Paternoster Row, the publisher of The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, conducted, as we learn from the title-page," by several hands." One of these hands was Goldsmith, then and for some years afterwards far removed from any circle where he could by chance become acquainted with the friend of Horace Walpole, the learned scholar of Pembroke Hall. But his works he regarded in no ungenial or ungentle spirit; and we know of nothing ever written on Gray's poetry more philosophical, more true, or more sincere, than the article to which we refer. Not that Gray could, under any circumstances, have profited by its advice, for you cannot train a sensitive plant to become a pine-tree; but it points out Gray's real weakness, and shows why he failed to become as popular as he became eminent. It is now nearly one hundred years since Griffiths handed the handsome shilling quarto from Strawberry Hill, with Dodsley's imprint, and the title, "Odes, by Mr. Gray," to his literary apprentice. Goldsmith was prompt in attending to them. The odes appeared in August, and the review in the following month. If to be " early was to be "kind," Goldsmith certainly was not disposed to be unfriendly; but he was obliged to temper his praise with suggestions which were not agreeable to the poet. "As this publication," says Goldsmith, "seems designed for those who have formed their tastes by the models of antiquity, the generality of readers cannot be supposed adequate judges of its merit; nor will the poet, it is presumed, be greatly disappointed if he finds them backward in commending a performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. We cannot, however, without some regret, behold those talents, so capable of giving pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the few; we cannot behold this rising poet seeking fame among the learned, without hinting to him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his scholars, Study the people. This study it is that has conducted the great masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom our modern lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He adapted his works exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen. Irregular, enthusiastic, and quick in transition, he wrote for a people inconstant, of warm imaginations, and exquisite sensibility. He chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs well known, in his days, to the meanest person." "It is, by no means, our design," he adds, after showing how ill suited are Pindaric imitations to the English character, "to detract from the merit of our author's present attempt; we would only intimate that an English poet, one whom the Muse has marked for her own, could produce a more luxuriant bloom of flowers by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by endeavoring to force the exotics of another climate; or, to speak without a metaphor, such a genius as Gray might give greater pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more original." Goldsmith awards the palm of merit to the second of the odes, The Bard, which he thinks likely to give as much pleasure to those who relish this style of composition as the odes of Dryden himself. After Goldsmith became famous himself, and looked upon Gray more in the light of a rival, he regarded his poetry with less favor. Mr. Cradock mentions, in his memoirs, that he once said to him, "You are so attached to Hurd, Gray and Mason, that you think nothing good can proceed but out of that formal school. Now, I'll mend Gray's Elegy by leaving out an idle word in every line." About three years after the publication of the odes, the parodies by Colman the elder and Robert Lloyd appeared, addressed "To Obscurity," and "To Oblivion ;" the latter aimed at Mason, and the first at Gray. They were laughed at for a day, and are forgotten, though Southey says they are among the very best of their kind.” The poet was amused by them, and sent a copy of the quarto pamphlet to Mason, as containing a "bloody satire against no less persons than you and I by name. The parodies were attributed to Colman, and Gray says, "What have you done to him? for I never heard his name before. He makes very tolerable fun with me where I understand him (which is not everywhere); but seems more angry with you. Lest people should not understand the humor of the thing (which indeed to do they must have our lyricisms at their fingerends), letters came out in Lloyd's Evening Post, to tell them who and what it was that he meant, and says it is like to produce a great combustion in the literary world. So, if you have any mind to combustle about it, well and good; for me, I am neither so literary nor so combustible." 66 At the close of 1757, the laureateship became vacant by the death of Cibber, and it was offered to Gray, with the intimation that he would not be called on for the customary odes. Looking upon this proffered honor in the light in which it was subsequently regarded by Walter Scott, he declined it without hesitation. Even as a sinecure Gray would not accept it. Though I very well know," he wrote to Mason, "the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both of sack and silver, yet, if any great man would say to me, ‘I make you ratcatcher to his majesty, with a salary of three hundred pounds a year and two butts of the best Malaga; and, though it has been usual to catch a mouse or two for form's sake, in public, once a year, yet to you, sir, we shall not stand upon these things,' I cannot say that I should jump at it; nay, if they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure to the King's Majesty, I should still feel a little awkward, and think everybody I saw smelt a rat about me.” After the loss of his mother, Gray spent the greater part of his summer vacations in the country during which he visited the old houses, cathedrals, tombs, and other objects of interest to the antiquary in England and Wales, and made a catalogue of them on the blank pages of Kitchen's English Atlas. He was interested, also, in genealogical researches; and, in his copy of Dugdale's Origines, he filled in and described in the margin the arms of all the families mentioned. When the British Museum was opened to the public, in 1759, Gray went to London, and lived for nearly three years in the neighborhood, reading and transcribing historical documents with the diligence of a copying clerk. A folio volume of these transcripts was in Mason's hands, but they seem to have been made to little or no purpose. When tired of this aimless toil, Gray turned to natural history, and made notes in an interleaved Linnæus, with Latin descriptions of the living things and plants he met with in his tours. He watched the weather and the progress of the seasons, and devoured travels and novels, and commenced a history of English poetry, which was abandoned before it was fairly begun. While in London at this time he lodged in Southampton Row, then commanding a view of the country; but in general he took rooms, at half-aguinea a week, with Roberts the hosier, or Frisby the oilman, in Jermyn-street, receiving his dinners from a neighboring coffee-house. In 1762 the professorship of modern history became vacant, and, through a friend, Gray applied for it, but was refused; and "so I have made my fortune," he said, "like Sir Francis Wronghead." Three years afterwards, he made a journey into Scotland, where he became acquainted with Dr. Beattie, and, at his desire, authorized Foulis, of Glasgow, to publish an edition of his poems at the same time Dodsley was printing them in London. In both editions The Long Story was omitted, as the plates from Bentley's designs were worn out, and Gray said that "its only use, which was to explain the plates, was gone." The translations from the Welsh and Norwegian were substituted; and to his odes Gray now consented to add some notes, "partly," he says, "from justice to acknowledge the debt when I had borrowed anything: partly from ill temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward the First was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor." In 1768 the professorship he had sought in vain six years previously became again vacant, and was bestowed on him, without solicitation, by the Duke of Grafton. When the duke was, the next year, elected to the chancellorship of the university, Gray wrote for his installation the celebrated Ode to Music, which, to the great disappointment of Dr. Burney, was composed, under the poet's direction, by Dr. Randall, then professor of music at Cambridge. This ceremony over, Gray went on a tour to the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, which is described in a series of letters to his friend Dr. Wharton, who was prevented, by sickness, from being the companion of his journey. In the winter of 1769, through the introduction of his intimate friend, Mr. Nicholls, of Blundeston, Gray made the acquaintance of Victor de Bonstetten, a young Swiss, then on his travels, and an affectionate intimacy soon grew up between them. They read the English poets together; but Bonstetten could never induce him to speak of his own works, or of his past history. On these points he maintained an uniform silence. He became more and more the victim of his inherited maladies. In the autumn of 1770 he made a tour into Wales, the outlines of which he sketched, in the May following, in a letter to Dr. Wharton. In this letter he complains of an incurable cough, and of spirits habitually depressed. He now became gloomy and miserable, sometimes without cause, and sometimes from anxiety with regard to the undischarged duties of his professorship. The hours grew longer and heavier to him, and he said that it was more than Herculean toil to push them along. He wished to "annihilate them." But the end was not far distant. While sitting at dinner in the college hall, he was seized with an attack of gout in the stomach, and, six days afterwards, on the night of the 30th of July, 1771, he died, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. He was buried, as he requested in his will, by the side of his mother, in the church-yard of Stoke Pogeis. A small stone, lately inserted in the wall of the church, alone marks the spot. Not far from the church-yard is a cenotaph erected by Mr. Penn to his memory. His monument in Westminster Abbey, erected in 1778, bears the following inscription, from the pen of Mr. Mason : NO MORE THE GRECIAN MUSE UNRIVALLED REIGNS ; TO BRITAIN LET THE NATIONS HOMAGE PAY; His executors were Mr. Brown, the president of Pembroke College, |