IT has been the fortune of Gray, as well as of other poets of the first order, to suffer by the ignorance and the envy of contemporaries,and at last to obtain from posterity, amid the clamours of discordant criticism, only a divided suffrage. The coldness of his first reception by the publick, has, however, been more than compensated by the warmth of his real admirers ; for he is one of those few poets, who at every new reading recompenses you double for every encomium, by disclosing some

new

charm of sentiment or of diction. The many, who have ignorantly or reluctantly praised, may learn as they study him, that they have nothing to retract; and those, who have delighted to depreciate his excellence, will understand, if they ever learn to admire him, that their former insensibility was pardonable, though they may be tempted to wish, that it had never been known. Gray was not destitute of those anticipations of future fame, which God has sometimes granted to neglected genius, as he gives the testimony of conscience to suffering virtue. His letters to Mason and Hurd show how pleasantly he could talk of those, who could neither admire nor understand his odes.

He knew, that it was not of much consequence to be neglected by that pubiick, which suffered Thomson's Winter to remain for years unnoticed, and

HOR.

which had to be told by Addison at the expiration of half a century of the merit of the Paradise Lost. Still less could his fame be endangered by Colman's exquisitely humourous parody of his odes, especially since it is now known, that Colman has confessed to Warton, that he repented of the attempt; and at the present day, I know not whether it would add any thing to the final reputation of a lyrick poet, to have been praised by that great man, who could pronounce Dryden's ode on Mrs. Killigrew the finest in our language,and who could find nothing in Collins' but 'clusters of consonants."

It appears to the Remarker, that the whole controversy upon the subject of Gray's twin odes, which have been received with so much disdain, and so much enthusiasm, rests upon this single question, is there such a description of poetry as the lyrick? There are many whose taste in one kind of composition is highly polished, who yet remain entirely insensible to the merit of any other. One man is bigotted to didactick poetry, another to descriptive; one likes nothing but reason, another admires nothing but wit; one looks out for the colours of a picturesque fancy, another can never dispense with the melody of versification. Thousands can be made to feel no perfection, but such as they have been * Progress of Poesy and the Bard.

accustomed to admire in their favourite poet, and innumerable are the "word-catchers who live on syllables," men whom nothing but the grace of Apollo can exalt into the unaffected admirers of the enthusiasm and inspiration of his bards.

But if Gray has any claim to the character of a poet, he must hold an elevated rank or none. If he is not excellent he is supremely ridiculous; if he has not the living spirit of verse, he is only besotted and be wildered with the fumes of a vulgar and stupifying draught, which he found in some stagnant pool at the foot of Parnassus, and which he mistook for the Castallian spring. But if Pindar and Horace were poets, so too was Gray. The finest notes of their lyre were elicited by the breath of inspiration breathing on the strings; and he who cannot enter into the spirit which animates the first Pythian of Pindar, or the "Quem virum aut heroa" of Hor. ace, must be content to be shown beauties in Gray, which it is not yet granted him to feel, or spontaneously to discern. The Remarker is willing to rest the merit of Gray on Horace's definition of a poet

Ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior, at

que os,

Magna sonaturum, des nominis hujus honorem.

This comprehensive definition, even Pope, with all his good sense and satire, has not ventured to disdain; for Eloisa to Abelard is an immortal commentary on these lines, and Horace is propitiated. Whoever will ponder well the meaning of this definition, must acknowledge that there is a higher species of poetry, than the mere language of reason. Spencer, Milton, and even Dryden knew this, and they studied successfully the Italian poets;

but after the time of Dryden, our English poetry began to be formed too exclusively upon that of the French. The authority of Pope has been eminently useful; but the world is not yet persuaded that, to be a poet, it is always indispensable to write like Pope. Since his time, however, the lyrick powers of our language have been retrieved by Gray, Collins, Mason, and Warton; we have been saved from the elegant perfection of the school of Boileau, while the French poetry yet continues barren of the higher beauties of verse, correct without enthusiasm,and sensible without inspiration. When a man like Boileau, of a mind merely didactick attempts the ode, he falls as he has done in that on the taking of Namur, into frigidity and bombast; or like Pope, when he contended with Dryden in the ode on St. Cecilia's day, "how do the tuneful echoes languish!" Racine, and Racine only could have united that classical polish and spirit of exquisite combination, that touching pathos, and mysterious musick of verse which are requisite to the perfection of lyrick composition. But he has left us little of this kind, except the choruses in his tragedies, and in the judgment of Voltaire, he holds the first rank among their lyrick poets, surpassing even J. B. Rousseau, whom those, who understand French better than the Remarker, are content to admire.

We shall be more ready to admit, that the sole perfection of poetry consists not merely in faithful description, fine sense, or pointed sentiment in polished verse, if we attend to some curious remarks of Burke, in the last part of his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. He has there sufficiently shown that many fine passages, which produce the most powerful effect on a

sensible mind, present no ideas to the fancy, which can be strictly marked, or embodied. The most thrilling touches of sublimity and beauty are consistent with great indistinctness of images and concepIndeed it is hardly to be believed, before making the experiment, that we should be so much affected as we are, by passages which convey no definite picture to the mind. To those who are insensible to Gray's curious junction of phrases and hardy personifications, we recommend the study of this chapter of Burke. There they will see, that the effect of poetical expression depends more upon particular and indefinable associations, than upon the precise images, which the words convey. Thus, of Gray's poetry the effect, like that of Milton's finest passages in the Allegro and Penseroso, is to raise a glow, which it is not easy to describe; but the beauty of a passage, when we at tempt to analyze it, seems to consist in a certain exquisite felicity of terms, fraught with pictures, which it is impossible to transfer with perfect exactness to the canvas. The following instance which occurs to me at present in the poetry of Gray, may explain my meaning. In describing the queen of the loves and graces, he says,

O'er her warm check and rising bosom

mon perhaps, as that which results from the irregularity of the compositions. Many after reading them are tempted to ask, what is the subject of the piece, or what the object of the writer? We have received an indistinct impression of something poetically beautiful but we want the regularity of the drama, the coherence of a canto, the bearings and dependencies of an epick leading to some de finite conclusion; in short we want a beginning, a middle and an end. But this results from the same insensibility to different forms of perfection in writing that suggested the criticism of the mathematician, who, after reading Homer, exclaimed "all this is very fine, but I do not find that he has proved any thing?" If the perfection of poetry consists as Aikin has defined it, in imparting every impression to the mind in the most exquisite degree; and the ode has by the consent of criticks in all ages, been indulged in irregularities, which are not pardonable in other kinds of verse, because it is supposed to follow the rapid and unrestrained passage of images through the mind, it is surely enough to satisfy even Aristotle himselt, that in Gray's odes the subject is never entirely deserted, and that a continued succession of sublime or beautiful impressions is conveyed to the mind in language the most grateful to the ear, which our English tongue can furnish. Formy own part I take as much delight in contemplating the rich hues that succeed one another without order in a deep cloud in the west, which has no prescribed shape, as in viewing the seven colours of the rainbow disposed in a form exactly semicircular. The truth is, that after having read any poem once, we recur to it afterwards not as a whole, but for the beauty of particular passages.

It would be easy to reply in order to the invidious and contemptible criticisms of Johnson on particular passages in these odes, and to show their captious futility. This however has been frequently and successfully attempted. Those faults, which must at last be admitted in Gray's poetry, detract little from his merit. That only two flat lines should be found in a whole volume of poems, is an honour, which even Virgil is permitted to envy. He who can endure to dwell upon these petty blemishes in the full stream of Gray's enthusiasm, must be as insensible to the pomp and grandeur of poetick phrase, as that traveller would be to the sentiment of the sublime in nature, who could sit coolly by the cataract of Niagara, speculating upon the chips and straws that were carried over the fall.

some

That his digressions are times abrupt, is a character which he shares with his Grecian master ; and that an obscurity sometimes broods over his sublimest images, is not to be denied. But violence of transition, if it is a fault in this kind of poetry, must be excused by those laws of lyrical composition, which we have hitherto been content to receive, like the laws of the drama and the epick, implicitly from the ancients; and the obscurity of Gray is never invincible. It is not the fog of dullness; but, like the darkness which the eye at first perceives in excessive brightness, it vanishes the longer it is contemplated, and when the eye is accommodated to the flood of light.

The obscurity, however, which is said to attend the whole of his two odes, is of more consequence than the difficulty of particular passages. In the Bard, it may certainly be justified from the very nature of the subject. The language of

prophecy is always indistinct, and the terrour of predictions is heightened by the half uttered intent of the prophet. If Gray in this ode presumed too much upon his readers' familiarity with English history, it is a misfortune which has retarded, but not prevented the perception of his excellence. As to the Progress of Poesy, if you except the union of the simile and subject in the first stanza, I know of nothing which can long perplex an attentive and poetical reader. It should not be forgotten that every species of poetry has its peculiar character, and obviousness of meaning is not always an indispensable excellence.

The staleness of his morality, also, is an objection with those who forget that there are no discoveries to be made in ethicks. The truth is, that the most impressive maxims in common life are the most indisputable. They have always been the common property of poets, who have sufficiently attained their purpose, when they have given these common sentiments all the force and beauty of poetical expression. What can be imagined more trite than this morality of Horace :

Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas

Regumque turres.

Yet what can be imagined more forcible in phrase and imagery. would be easy to fill pages with truisms of this kind, from the odes of this most elegant and lyrical of the Latin poets. If you will revert farther back to the morality of Homer, or the rare reflexions of Pindar, you will find nothing but the common maxims of common men, clothed however in "words that burn.”

The distinguishing excellence of Gray's poetry, is, I think, to be found in the astonishing force and