Chapter XVII (8)

“Richard Lyttleton, K.B. He married the Lady Rachel Russell, sister of
John Duke of Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of
Bridgewater. He was first page of honour to Queen Caroline; then
successively Captain of Marines, Aide-de-Camp to the Earl of Stair at
the battle of Dettingen, and Deputy Quartermaster-General in South
Britain, with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel and Lieut.-General, &c. He
was fifth son of Sir Thomas, fourth baronet and younger brother of
George, First Lord Lyttleton.—See some letters by him in ‘Chatham
Correspondence,’ vol. ii. p. 173, &c. He was Governor of Minorca in
1764, and subsequently Governor of Guernsey.—See ‘Walpole’s Misc.
Letters,’ iv. pp. 363, 424. He died in 1770. _His house, in the Harley
Street corner, 1 Cavendish Square_, was bought by the Princess Emily,
and was afterwards Mr Hope’s, and then Mr Watson Taylor’s.—See
‘Grenville Papers,’ i. pp. 49, 249; and ii. pp. 442, 449. _When in
Minorca, he was involved in some dispute with Samuel Johnson, who held
a situation under him._—See reference to it in ‘Walpole’s Letters to
Lord Hertford,’ Feb. 6, 1764.”

All this, we doubt not, is very praiseworthy; but where is it to end? A learned man writing to another learned man, says, in honest blunt vernacular, “Have you seen Mr Thomson?” and passes on to other matter. Is the heart of an editor to beat within him till he has discovered who this Thomson was, and everything discoverable about him—what house he lived in, and whom he quarrelled with? This Thomson is mentioned only once, and we have nothing of him but his name. The more mysterious, seems the indefatigable editor to think; and the more meritorious, if from so slight a clue he can succeed in identifying this defunct Thomson. Whereupon a ransacking of all libraries and innumerable references,—see this, see that! see, see! We wonder if there is any one man in Great Britain, not an editor, so laboriously idle as to climb the steps of a library to _see_ after all these surprising discoveries.

Books, it seems, are used by different persons for very different purposes. Some build up theories of all sorts with them; children take them out of the book-case, and build houses and castles with them, perhaps almost as substantial; the good monks in one of the monasteries of the Levant, Mr Curzon tells us, used them as mats, or cushions, to protect their bare feet from the cold pavement of the chapel; and others, again, pull them about, and toss over the leaves with restless agitation—to find who Mr Thomson was! Of the two last, we infinitely prefer the quiet serviceable employment of them by the monks whom Mr Curzon visited.

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains”—there must be a charm in labour editorial that only editors can know. There is withal, it seems, a gravity of duty, a weight of responsibility, which they only can duly appreciate. We are happy to hear, that in proportion to the dulness is the virtue of their labours. “To give some personality,” says our present editor in his preface, “_to names, most of them new, even to those who are acquainted with the common biographies of Gray_, has been found, from the lapse of time, a matter of some difficulty; and success has only been attained by the assistance of various friends. To have passed over this part of the task would have been unsatisfactory, and considered _a dereliction of duty_!” It is added, with a little inconsistency, that the persons whose names are here heard for the first time, “formed the select and intimate society of one who was not remarkable for the facility with which his acquaintance was gained.” What intimate friend have we here added to the well-known list? But let us grant that the mantle of the poet ennobles all it touches, does the Reverend William Mason also rank among the inspired?—for we find that his letters are edited with the same reverential care.

We shall be answered, that if we do not think highly of the immortal author of _Elfrida_, and _Caractacus_, and _The English Garden_, others do. Mr Mitford does. “The place in his library was pointed out to me,” he pathetically tells us, “where Mason usually sate and wrote. _His poetical chair_—sedes beata—_was kindly bequeathed to me; and I have left it by will to the Poet Laureate of the day, that it may rest amongst the sacred brotherhood!_” What an announcement for Mr Tennyson to read! What will he do with the chair when it comes? A superstitious man would hardly venture to sit in it. Who knows what spirit of drowsiness may be still clinging about it?

If we have been provoked into any impatient remarks on this excess of editorship, we would at the same time express—as we feel—an undiminished respect for Mr Mitford. He is a literary veteran who has performed many a good service. We would rather retract every word, and beg that every expression be set down to mere petulance on our part, than be thought wanting in personal respect to one who has well earned his reputable position in the world of letters. But we cannot help ourselves; we must “tell the tale,” as the tale tells itself to us.

Of the few additions made in the present volume to the letters of Gray, those which congratulate Mason on his clerical promotion, and on his marriage, are amongst the most sprightly and entertaining. The following extracts may be new to our readers:—

“DEAR MASON,—It is a mercy that old men are mortal, and that dignified
clergymen know how to keep their word. I heartily rejoice with you in
your establishment, and with myself that I have lived to see it—to see
your insatiable mouth stopped, and your anxious periwig at rest and
slumbering in a stall. The Bishop of London, you see, is dead; there
is a fine opening. Is there nothing further to tempt you? Feel your
own pulse, and answer me seriously. It rains precentorships; you have
only to hold up your skirts to catch them.” * * *

“DEAR DOCTOR,—I send your reverence the lesson, &c. No sooner do
people feel their income increase than they want amusement. Why, what
need have you of any other than to sit like a Japanese divinity, with
your hands folded on your fat belly, wrapped, and, as it were,
annihilated in the contemplation of your own _copuses_ and revenues?”

His felicitations upon his friend’s marriage are not always distinguished for their delicacy. With full allowance for the difference of the times, we still encounter a certain coarseness we should not have expected in the fastidious Gray. But the following is a very charming letter:—

“DEAR MASON,—_Res est sacra miser_ (says the poet), but I say it is
the happy man that is the sacred thing, and therefore let the profane
keep their distance. He is one of Lucretius’ gods, supremely blest in
the contemplation of his own felicity, and what has he to do with
worshippers? This, mind, is the first reason why I did not come to
York; the second is, that I do not love confinement, and probably by
next summer may be permitted to touch whom, and where, and with what I
think fit, without giving you any offence; the third and last, and not
the least perhaps, is, that the finances were at so low an ebb that I
could not exactly do what I wished, but was obliged to come the
shortest road to town and recruit them. I do not justly know what your
taste in reasons may be since you altered your condition, but there is
the ingenious, the petulant, and the dull; any one would have done,
for in my conscience I do not believe you care a halfpenny for reasons
at present: so God bless ye both, and give ye all ye wish, when ye are
restored to the use of your wishes.

“I am returned from Scotland charmed with my expedition: it is of the
Highlands I speak; the Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the
mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once
a-year. None but those monstrous creatures of God know how to join so
much beauty with so much horror. A fig for your poets, painters,
gardeners, and clergymen, that have not been among them; their
imagination can be made up of nothing but bowling-greens, flowering
shrubs, horse-ponds, Fleet-ditches, shell grottoes, and Chinese rails.
Then I had so beautiful an autumn—Italy could hardly produce a nobler
scene—and this so sweetly contrasted with the perfection of nastiness,
and total want of accommodation, that Scotland only can supply! Oh,
you would have blessed yourself! I shall certainly go again.”

“DEAR MASON,—I rejoice; but has she common sense? Is she a
gentlewoman? Has she money? Has she a nose? I know she sings a little,
and twiddles on the harpsichord, hammers at sentiment, and puts
herself in an attitude, admires a cast in the eye, and can say
_Elfrida_ by heart. But these are only the virtues of a maid. Do let
her have some wife-like qualities, and a double portion of prudence,
as she will have not only herself to govern but you also, and that
with an absolute sway. Your friends, I doubt not, will suffer for it.
However, we are very happy, and have no other wish than to see you
settled in the world. We beg you would not stand fiddling about it,
but be married forthwith.”

It is impossible, and indeed would be doing injustice to the editor, to regard this present volume in any other light than as a supplement to his edition of the Works of Gray. We must beg leave, therefore, to revert briefly to the life and letters as they are set forth in this preceding publication. It so happens that Mr Mitford was not fortunate even here in the order and method in which his materials reached him, and were consequently arranged. Fresh accessions came in at the latest hour; a fifth volume was to be added, in which there was much repetition; whole letters being reprinted that had already appeared in their place in the previous volumes. Sometimes also an interesting fact is slipped into an appendix, where it may chance to have escaped the eye of all but very attentive readers.

One such fact arrested our own attention, and is a fact of great significance. To some of our readers we may be rendering a welcome service by bringing it forward. We are referred to Sir Egerton Brydges as the authority for it.

Few lives, even of literary men, are said to have been more devoid of incident than Gray’s; yet it is probable that, if we could lift the curtain from his domestic life during the period of his youth, we should find that it was disturbed enough, and of such a nature as must have left deep traces in the subsequent character of the man. Gray, it will be remembered, was (to adopt the language of Horace Walpole) “the son of a money scrivener by Mary Antrobus, a milliner in Cornhill, and sister to two Antrobus’s who were ushers of Eton School. He was born in 1716, and educated at Eton College, chiefly under the direction of one of his uncles, who took prodigious pains with him, which answered exceedingly. From Eton he went to Peter House at Cambridge,” &c. &c. So in all biographies glides on the simple account of his career. Nothing is said of that home in Cornhill, or wherever it was in the City.

But now, some years ago, at a sale of books belonging to one Isaac Reid, there was purchased a manuscript volume of law cases, written out very probably by some studious pupil, for his future behoof and instruction. Amongst these law cases was one drawn up by the mother of Gray, or by some one on her part, and laid formally before counsel for his opinion. It reveals in its one solitary statement the history of years; it tells of domestic discord of the harshest character, and this brought on and imbittered by pecuniary difficulties. Whilst young Gray was studying at Peter House, Cambridge, his mother was drawing up the following case for the opinion of counsel.

CASE.

“Philip Gray, before his marriage with his wife (then Dorothy
Antrobus, and who was then partner with her sister Mary Antrobus),
entered into certain articles of agreement”—(permitting, in short, the
said Dorothy Antrobus to continue the said partnership for her own
sole and separate use.)

“That in pursuance of the said articles, the said Mary, with the
assistance of the said Dorothy her sister, hath carried on the said
trade for near thirty years, with tolerable success for the said
Dorothy. That she hath been at no charge to the said Philip; and
during all the said time hath not only found herself in all manner of
apparel, but also for all her children to the number of twelve, and
most of the furniture of his house; and paying £40 a-year for his
shop, _almost providing everything for her son, whilst at Eton school,
and now he is at Peter House at Cambridge_.

“Notwithstanding which, _almost ever since he hath been married_, he
hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking,
pinching, and with the most vile and abusive language; that she hath
been in the utmost fear, and danger of her life, and hath been obliged
this last year to quit her bed and lie with her sister. _This she was
resolved, if possible, to bear; not to leave her shop of trade for the
sake of her son, to be able to assist in the maintenance of him at the
University, since his father won’t._

“There is no cause for this usage unless it be an unhappy jealousy of
all mankind in general (her own brother not excepted); but no woman
deserves or hath maintained a more virtuous character: or it is
presumed, if he can make her sister leave off trade, he thinks he can
then come into his wife’s money, but the articles are too secure for
his vile purposes.

“He daily threatens he will pursue her with all the vengeance
possible, and _will ruin himself to undo her and his only son_; in
order to which he hath given warning to her sister to quit his shop
where they have carried on their trade so successfully, which will be
almost their ruin: but he insists she shall go out at Midsummer next;
and the said Dorothy, his wife, in necessity must be forced to go
along with her to some other house and shop, _to be assisting to her
said sister in the said trade, for her own and her son’s support_.

“But if she can be quiet, she neither expects nor desires any help
from him: but he is really so very vile in his nature, she hath all
the reason to expect most troublesome usage from him that can be
thought of.”—Vol. i. Appendix B.

Then follow some questions, and the answer of Counsel, which it is not necessary to extract. What must have been the effect of such domestic scenes as are here disclosed to us, on the sensitive mind of Gray, may be partly guessed. Nor need we be surprised that the college youth at Peter House, and the associate of Horace Walpole, early contracted a habit of silence upon the events of his own life. Bonstettin, whom he took so cordially to his friendship, says, “Je racontais à Gray ma vie et mon pays, mais toute sa vie à lui était fermée pour moi. _Jamais il ne me parlait de lui._ Il y avait chez Gray entre le present et le passé un abîme infranchisable. Quand je voulais un approche, de sombre nuées venaient le couvrir.”—Vol. V., Notes, p. 181.

We understand now why Gray held his mother in so much esteem, and why the father was rarely spoken of, while her name was never mentioned to the latest day without a trembling of the voice; why there was found at his death, still unopened, in his room, the chest containing her wearing-apparel: he had never dared to open it, or had never reconciled himself to part with its contents. To his mother he owed his education and the position he occupied in life—a greater debt than even that life which she twice gave. He was the only one of twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, as we are told, “from suffocation produced by a fulness of blood;” and this strange family destiny would have befallen Gray also, but that his mother “removed the paroxysm which attacked him, by opening a vein with her own hand.”

The chief incident of Gray’s life, so far as biographers have been able to record it, is his intimacy with Walpole;—his journey with him upon the Continent, and the rupture that took place between them. Of this quarrel we find an explanation in a note which is by no means honourable to Walpole. Entertaining a suspicion that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, he clandestinely opened and re-sealed one of Gray’s letters. After this, there was “little cordiality between them.” We should think not, for, short of a crime, could one man be guilty towards another of a more dishonourable action? But we are not satisfied with the authority on which this explanation is given. The account will be found in a note, vol. ii. p. 175. We have only that sort of hearsay evidence which lawyers have universally agreed in rejecting. A Mr Isaac Reed makes a private memorandum (some time after the conversation) of what a Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, had told him. This is not sufficient authority for what, we presume in the time of Walpole as well as our own, would be regarded as a grave charge, if brought against a gentleman. Of Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, and how he heard the story, we are told nothing. Mr Isaac Reed merely says of him “that he was likely to be well informed.”

The quarrel, its cause and its reconciliation, are, perhaps, now of very little moment, but the intimacy with Walpole must always remain as one of the most important facts in the life of Gray. For what is the character which Gray reveals to us? In few words, it is the incongruous combination of the sensitive poet and man of letters, with the affectation and levity of a man of the world. This latter phase of his character must have owed much of its development to his early intercourse with the son of a prime-minister, and one whose wit and pleasantry would fully justify and explain an influence over his graver companion. Gray was a man who had a heart, and had learnt to hide it under the affectation of indifference; neither could he have been without the stirrings of a noble ambition; but he had taught himself that it was a prettier thing to graft the man of letters on the refined gentleman, than to give himself, heart and soul, to some intellectual enterprise. He thinks, or he can write, that “Literature, to take it in its most comprehensive sense, and include everything that requires invention or judgment, or barely application and industry, seems indeed drawing apace to its dissolution;” but he makes no serious effort to arrest this dissolution. What is the literature of a country but the efforts of such men as he? There was a younger contemporary, one Gibbon, then turning over the same classic pages as himself, who was soon to add to the literature of England a History which would display more learning and more eloquence than had ever before been united together. Antiquarian as he was, what epoch has he illustrated for us? Zoologist, botanist; he corrects the latinity of Linnæus! He makes notes innumerable—notes on Strabo, notes on Plato; the text of what author has he amended or explained for us? When appointed Professor of History, he does not even write a single lecture.

“The political opinions of Gray, H. Walpole says, he never rightly understood;” and his biographer adds that his religious opinions lie in a certain obscurity. Some writers “not favourable to the cause of Christianity,” have ranked him, it seems, amongst freethinkers: orthodox and pious friends have no doubt whatever about his orthodoxy or his piety. The perusal of his Letters never led us, for a moment, to rank him amongst unbelievers; but if any one should suggest that he had not thought on the subject with sufficient earnestness even to be a doubter, we might be disposed to acquiesce in this explanation. He lived in a time when there was little earnestness of thought, and he was not of that energetic nature which rises above the influence of the age. He was scandalised at Rousseau and Voltaire because they were disturbers of the peace: one is not sure that there was a deeper feeling in his hostility towards them. The manner in which a person is _written to_ is often as significant as the manner in which he himself writes. Throughout their correspondence, the Rev. William Mason never alludes to his clerical profession in any one respect but as a means of living well and comfortably in the world—as a career in which promotion and good living are to be encountered. The credit of this quite secular tone must be divided between the correspondents: perhaps in the greater measure to the elder and more influential of the two.

These correspondents were, no doubt, excellent friends; but Gray never speaks to a third person in a very flattering manner of Mason. He is disposed always to deny any very close intimacy. He appears to have said to himself, Men will laugh at us two poets, communing upon verse, and flattering each other _upon the muse_; they will make me out also no better than a poet; whereas I am gentleman by profession and poet by accident. Writing to Walpole, he says, “I like Mr Aston Hervey’s Fable, and an ode by Mr Mason, a new acquaintance of mine.” Of this new acquaintance he had written to Warton, more than two years before, in the following strain: “Mr Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode very much, but have found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty. I take him for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves everybody he meets with; he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it.” In another place he says of him that he “has not, properly speaking, anything one can call a passion about him, except a little malice and revenge.” Such phrases as these occur in his correspondence with Warton and Brown: “I do not hear from Mason;” “You think us great correspondents, but,” &c. To us it seems that he really liked the younger poet, who more, perhaps, than any other man he knew, sympathised with him on the poetical side of his character; but then he did not like to be grouped with him, in the eyes of the wits and the worldlings. They will compare us, and associate us, and think us rival candidates for popular applause.

We see this morbid sense of ridicule betray itself in his publication of his poems. He insists upon it that the poems shall be published as mere illustrations of the drawings of Bentley, which accompanied them. The book met with applause, and the _Elegy_ became at once a popular favourite. He seems, in a letter to Warton, to reprove and to repudiate this abundant praise. “I should have been glad that you and two or three more people had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply.” For all this, when he published the _Bard_, and other odes which, from their nature, appealed still more to the select few, he was not a little nettled because “the town” found them obscure.

In his manner and carriage, Gray is described as being cold and fastidious to an offensive degree. A contemporary and admirer, Rev. William Cole, says, “I am apt to think the characters of Voltaire and Mr Gray were similar. They were both little men, very nice and exact in their persons and dress, most lively and agreeable in conversation, except that Mr Gray was apt to be too satirical, and both of them full of affectation.” And then contrasting him with Dr Farmer, he thus describes the two men: “The one (Dr Farmer) a cheerful, companionable, hearty, open, downright man, of no great regard to dress or common forms of behaviour; the other (Gray) of a most fastidious and recluse distance of carriage, rather averse to sociability, but of the graver turn; nice, and elegant in his person, dress, and behaviour, even to a degree of finicalness and effeminacy.”—Vol. i., Appendix. The contrast here drawn between Gray and Dr Farmer, suggests to us the dissimilarity and mutual distaste which existed between Gray and a still greater contemporary, Dr Johnson. They repelled each other far more by diversity of manner than by opposition of opinion. Gray refused to be personally acquainted with Johnson. Passing him in the streets of London, he whispered to the companion with whom he was walking, “There is the Great Bear! there goes Ursa Major!” and accompanied the words with a sort of shrinking and recoil. It is well known that the antipathy was mutual. The judgment passed upon Gray in the _Lives of the Poets_ is the harshest and the least equitable criticism throughout that work. One cannot help admitting, however, that, if Gray had written the life of Johnson, there would have been a piece of criticism produced still less equitable. Gray is rarely just to any of his contemporaries. He seldom admires, and the little praise he bestows is distributed most capriciously. He speaks as highly of Lyttleton’s Monody as of the Odes of Collins. He mentions Sterne but coldly, and when he would be complimentary, always selects his _Sermons_! You would say that a certain superciliousness has been creeping over and into the very heart of the man.

But now change the point of view, and from this the world-aspect turn to the poetic side of the character. It was not a heartless man who wrote the _Elegy_ and the _Bard_, who was the friend of West, who in later times was the friend of Bonstettin, who at all times could find society in meditation, and companionship in beauties of nature. The Letters of Gray are too well known to render it necessary for us to make extracts from them, to show how often a vein of deep feeling runs through a half-playful style of diction. His pathos touches us still more, whether he is describing nature, or speaking of himself and of his friends, from the restraint he has evidently put upon his own enthusiasm, or his own tenderness. The “melancholy Gray” was a far higher being than the witty and Walpolian Gray; and it is the blending of the two together that has made the singular charm of the Letters.

If evidence were wanted to prove that there existed uncorrupted in the mind of Gray springs of pure and genuine feeling, we should find that evidence in his attachment to Bonstettin. This young foreigner, by his own ardent temper, had broken down all those cold artificial barriers in which it is said the poet habitually intrenched himself. Gray had taken lodgings for him at Cambridge, near his own rooms, and they spent the evenings together, reading the Greek poets and philosophers. When Bonstettin returned to his native country, Switzerland, Gray felt the loss of his friend in a manner which he does not seek even to disguise, but expresses with unaffected warmth:—

“_Cambridge, April 12, 1770._

“Never did I feel, my dear Bonstettin, to what a tedious length the
few short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and
expectation, till you had left me: nor ever knew before with so strong
a conviction how much this frail body sympathises with the inquietude
of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks,
like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head
into a vessel of water, and take it out again, as the standers-by
affirmed, at the command of a Dervise, and found he had passed many
years in captivity, and begot a large family of children. The strength
and spirits that now enable me to write to you are only owing to your
last letter, a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows when it may
shine again. I did not conceive till now, I own, what it was to lose
you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own condition before I
possessed the happiness of your friendship.

* * * * *

“But enough of this—I return to your letter. It proves at least that,
in the midst of your new gaieties, I still hold some place in your
memory; and, what pleases me above all, it has an air of undissembled
sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable friend, to show me your heart
simply, and without the shadow of disguise, and leave me to weep over
it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.”

“_April 19, 1770._

“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere
read, ‘Ce n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that
remembrance is the only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a
conversation with your shadow—the known sound of your voice still
rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the fender, you are standing,
or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on the sofa. Do
you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before
I can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have
my answer; and that all that time I am employed, with more than
Herculean toil, in pushing the tedious hours along, and wishing to
annihilate them: the more I strive, the heavier they move, and the
longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have spent many
tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going
for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.

“_May 9, 1770._

“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made
into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you
might have been with me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your
letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being
as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt,
the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little
interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your
nature and present enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you
cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible for me to dissemble with
you: such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal
a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”

These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.

We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?

We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless. Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised, perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler, but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance. The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel, that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian, some large and useful task.

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

-----

Footnote 1:

_Life in Abyssinia; being Notes collected during Three Years’
Residence and Travels in that Country._ By MANSFIELD PARKYNS. In Two
Volumes. London: 1853.

Footnote 2:

A young Mahommedan, now resident at Adoua, was robbed one night of the
scalp of one side of his head.—PARKYNS, ii. 293.

Footnote 3:

_Blackwood’s Magazine_ for September 1851.

Footnote 4:

“Τὸ μὲν οὖν κολακεύειν, αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ
τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον.”—_Dem. Phal. de Elocutione._

Footnote 5:

Not such asphaltum as is now commonly used; he had a method of
preparing it to render it innocuous.

Footnote 6:

We owe it to Mr Stansfield to say, that had the authority we quoted
given, with Mr Stansfield’s answers, the subsequent explanation of
them, we should not have used such an expression as that he “confessed
an astonishing indifference.” We therefore quote his explanation. He
is asked, (_Question_ 3628,) “You have stated that you have not
studied these pictures in the National Gallery much; that you were not
very conversant with the works of the old masters; and that you had
not studied those pictures in particular; so you, from your previous
knowledge of them, feel competent to give an opinion whether or not
they have been injured in the minute details to which reference has
been made? Yes. I think I may; because when I spoke of my ignorance, I
did it in reference to my not possessing the information that I know
many gentlemen belonging to the Academy have. I should refer to Mr
Dyce at once as a very great authority, and also to Sir Charles
Eastlake himself. I have not their experience in Italian works of art,
but still the pictures that are before us I have looked at with
admiration, and I know that if there is any material injury done to
them I should detect it as soon as any one.”

Footnote 7:

Gen. x. 3; Ezek. xxvii. 14, xxxviii. 6; Herod, iv. 5.

Footnote 8:

_Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses voyages de l’Inde,
depuis l’an 629 jusqu’en 645._ Par Hoei II. et Yen-thsong. Traduite du
Chinois par Stanislas Julien. Paris: 1853.

Footnote 9:

_Speeches of the Right Honourable_ T. B. MACAULAY, _M.P._ _Corrected
by himself._ London, 1854.

Footnote 10:

_Funfzig Jahre in beiden Hemisphären._ Reminiscences of a Merchant’s
Life. By VINCENT NOLTE. 2 volumes. Hamburg: Perthes-Besser. London:
Williams and Norgate. 1853.

Footnote 11:

_Memoires de G. J. Ouvrard._ Paris, 1826.

Footnote 12:

_The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon._ By S. W. BAKER, Esq. London:
1854.

Footnote 13:

_The Correspondence of_ THOMAS GRAY _and_ WILLIAM MASON, _with Notes
and Illustrations._ By the Rev. JOHN MITFORD, Vicar of Benhall.

GRAY’S _Works._ Aldine Edition.

Footnote 14:

GRAY’S _Works_, Appendix, vol. i. p. 112.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

171 αἰχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾷν, αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν,
ἐπισαφλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ,
τουτέστι τὸ ἐχηματισμένον—Dem. τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον—Dem.
Phil. Phal.

178 not dry brush, a glaze, and he hot dry brush, a glaze, and he
may may

188 A judge sate in the centre of A judge sat in the centre of

1. Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. 2. Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.