liant and appropriate in the longer poem than in the shorter. In form the poems are sufficiently analogous; each has three main divisions, with strophe, antistrophe, and epode, and in each the epode is dedicated to briskly rhyming measures and experiments in metre. The opening is admirably startling and effective; the voice that meets us with its denunciations is that of the last survivor of the ancient race of Celtic bards, a venerable shape who is seated on a rock above the defile through which the forces of Edward I. are about to march. This mysterious being, in Gray's own words, "with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit declares, that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression." The scheme of the poem, therefore, is strictly historical, and yet is not very far removed from that of Gray's previous written and unwritten Pindaric odes. In these three poems, the dignity of genius and its function as a ruler and benefactor of mankind are made the chief subject of discourse, and a mission is claimed for artists in verse than which none was ever conceived more brilliant or more august. But, fortunately for his readers, Gray was diverted from his purely abstract consideration of history into a concrete observation of its most picturesque forms, and forgot to trace the "noble ardour of poetic genius" in painting vivid pictures of Edward II. enduring his torture in Berkeley Castle, and of the massacre of the bards at the battle of Camlan. Some of the scenes which pass across the magic mirror of the old man's imagination are unrivalled for concision and force. That in which the court of Elizabeth, surrounded by her lords and her poets, flashes upon the inner eye, is of an inimitable felicity : Girt with many a baron bold, Sublime their starry fronts they rear; And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old In the midst a form divine! Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line; What strings symphonious tremble in the air, What strains of vocal transport round her play. They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. This closing vision of a pretty but incongruous "Rap ture" may remind us that the crowning fault of Gray and his school, their assumption that a mythology might be formed out of the emotions of the human mind, and a new Olympus be fitted out with brand-new gods of a moralist's making, is rarely prominent in The Bard or the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, his two greatest works. Some use of allegorical abstraction is necessary to the very structure of poetry, and is to be found in the works of our most realistic writers. It is in its excess that it becomes ridiculous or tedious, as in Mason and other imitators of Gray. The master himself was not by any means able at all times to clothe his abstractions with flesh and blood, but he is never ridiculous. He felt, indeed, the danger of the tendency in himself and others, and he made some remarks on the subject to Mason which were wholly salutary : I had rather some of these personages, "Resignation," "Peace," "Revenge," "Slaughter," "Ambition," were stripped of their allegorical garb. A little simplicity here and there in the expression would better prepare the high and fantastic strain, and all the imaginable harpings that follow. . . . The true lyric style, with all its flights of fancy, ornaments, and heightening of expression, and harmony of sound, is in its nature superior to every other style; which is just the cause why it could not be borne in a work of great length, no more than the eye could bear to see all this scene that we constantly gaze upon, the verdure of the fields and woods, the azure of the sea and skies, turned into one dazzling expanse of gems. The epic, therefore, assumed a style of graver colours, and only stuck on a diamond (borrowed from her sister) here and there, where it best became her. When we pass from the diction that suits this kind of writing to that which belongs to the former, it appears natural, and delights us: but to pass on a sudden from the lyric glare to the epic solemnity (if I may be allowed to talk nonsense) has a very different effect. We seem to drop from verse into mere prose, from light into darkness. Do you not think if Mingotti stopped in the middle of her best air, and only repeated the remaining verses (though the best Metastasio ever wrote) that they would not appear very cold to you, and very heavy? Between Dryden and Wordsworth there was no man but Gray who could write in prose about his art with such coherence and science as this. These careless sentences outweigh tomes of Blair's glittering rhetoric and Hurd's stilted disquisitions on the Beautiful and the Elevated. Almost directly after Gray had finished The Bard he was called upon to write an epitaph for a lady, Mrs. Jane Clarke, who had died in childbirth at Epsom, where her husband was a physician, on the 27th of April, 1757. Dr. Clarke had been an early college friend of Gray's, and he applied to Gray to write a copy of verses to be inscribed on a tablet in Beckenham Church, where his wife was buried. Gray wrote sixteen lines, not in his happiest vein, and these found their way into print after his death. In his tiny nosegay there is perhaps no flower so inconsiderable as this perfunctory Epitaph. One letter, several years later than the date of this poem, proves that Gray continued to write on intimate terms to Dr. Clarke, who does not seem to have preserved the poet's correspondence, and is not otherwise interesting to us. In April Gray made another acquaintance, of a very different kind; Lord Nuneham, a young man of fashion and fortune, with a rage for poetry, came rushing down upon him with a letter of introduction and a profusion of compliments. He brought a large bouquet of jonquils, which he presented to the poet with a reverence so profound that Gray could not fail to smell the jessamine-powder in his periwig, and indeed he was too fine " even for me," says the poet, 66 who love a little finery." Lord Nuneham came expressly in Newmarket week to protest against going to Newmarket, and sat devoutly at Gray's feet, half fop, half enthusiast, for three whole days, talking about verses and the fine arts. Gray was quite pleased with him at last; and so "we vowed eternal friendship, embraced, and parted." Lord John Cavendish, too, was in Cambridge at this time, and also pleased Gray, though in a very different and less effusive manner. In the summer of 1757 Horace Walpole set up a printing-press at Strawberry Hill, and persuaded Gray to let his Pindaric Odes be the first issue of the establishment. Accordingly Gray sent him a MS. copy of the poems, and they were set up with wonderful fuss and circumstance by Walpole's compositor; Gray being more than usually often at Strawberry Hill this summer. Dodsley agreed to publish the book, and 2000 copies were struck off. On the 29th of June Gray received forty guineas, the only money he ever gained by literature. On the 8th of August there was published a large thin quarto, entitled "Odes by Mr. Gray. ÞWVAVTA OUVETOLO. Printed at Strawberry Hill for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall," with an engraving of Walpole's little gimcrack dwelling on the title-page. The two odes have no other titles than Ode I., Ode II.; they form a pamphlet of twenty-one pages, and were sold at one shilling. Small as the volume was, however, it was by no means insignificant, and it achieved a very great success. Garrick and Warburton led the chorus of praise; the famous actor publishing some verses in honour of the odes, the famous critic pronouncing them above the grasp of the public, and this indeed was true. In fact Gray lamented, as most men of genius have had to lament, that the praise he received was not always judicious praise, and therefore of little worth. "The ZuveToì," he says, 66 appear to be still fewer than even I expected." He became, however, a kind of lion. Goldsmith wrote an examination of the Odes for the Monthly Review. The Cobhams, at Stoke, were very civil, and Mr. and Mrs. Garrick came down there to stay with him; the stiff, prim demeanour of Dr. Hurd melted into smiles and compliments; the Critical Review was in raptures, though it mistook the Eolian Lyre for the Harp of Eolus; and at York Races sporting peers were heard to discuss the odes in a spirit of bewildered eulogy. Within two months 1300 copies had been sold. Best of all, Miss Speed seemed to understand, and whispered “ φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσι " in the most amiable and sympathetic tones. But Gray could enjoy nothing; several little maladies hung over him, the general wreck of his frail |