1757. Æt. 29. 66 saves something in domestic expenses into the bargain!' In subsequent serious expostulation with Mr. Hanway on some medical assumptions in his book, the reviewer lays aside his humble patched velvet of Bankside, and speaks as though with nothing less invested than the president's gold-headed cane: after which he closes with this piece of quiet good-sense. Yet after all, why so violent an outcry "against this devoted article of modern luxury? Every "nation that is rich hath had, and will have, its favourite "luxuries. Abridge the people in one, they generally run "into another; and the Reader may judge which will be "most conducive to either mental or bodily health: the watery beverage of a modern fine Lady, or the strong beer, "and stronger waters, of her great-grandmother?”* 66 This paper had appeared in July, and in the same number there was also a clever notice from the same hand of Dobson's translation of the first book of Cardinal de Polignac's Latin poem of Anti-Lucretius: the poem whose ill success stopped Gray in what he playfully called his Master Tommy Lucretius ("De Principiis Cogitandi "). The cardinal's work I may mention as a huge monument of misapplied learning and not a little vanity; the talk of the world in those days, now forgotten. It was the work of a life; could boast of having been corrected by Boileau and altered by Louis the Fourteenth; and was kept in manuscript so long, and so often, with inordinate self-complacency, publicly recited from by the author in a kind earnest of what the world was one day to expect, that some listeners with good memories (Le Clerc among them) stole its best passages, and published them for the world's earlier benefit as their own. This drove the poor cardinal at last to premature delivery, * Monthly Review, xvii. 50-4, July 1757. + Ibid, 44. + Works, ii. 191. 1757. and an instalment of thirteen thousand lines appeared ;* of which certainly one line (Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque Et. 29. sagittas, which the worthy cardinal had himself stolen from Marcus Manilius), having since suggested Franklin's epitaph (Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis),t has a good chance to live. To the August number of the Review, among other matters, Goldsmith contributed a lively paper on those new volumes of Voltaire's Universal History which so delighted Walpole and Gray; but in the September number, where he remarks on Odes by Mr. Gray, I find opinions which place in lively contrast the obscure Oliver and the brilliant Horace. Walpole called himself a whig, in compliment to his father; but except in very rare humours he hated, while he envied, all things popular. "I am more humbled," was his cry, when thirsting for every kind of notoriety, "I am more * See Grimm's Anecdotes, i. 455. I may add, that, ten years after the present date, "George Canning, of the Middle Temple, Esq," father of the statesman, published a poor translation of the Cardinal's first three books. + Turgot's biographer, Condorcet, quotes this line as the only Latin verse composed by the great French economist; but Turgot had only "adapted" it, and from Polignac no doubt, to place under a portrait of Franklin. The line of Manilius, the bar from which both wires are drawn, is that in which he speaks of Epicurus, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti." Astron. lib. v. line 104. In the form of a letter to the authors of the Monthly Review (xvii. 154, August 1757). Gray disliked Voltaire's opinions generally, "but this," says Mr. Nichols," did not prevent his paying the full tribute of admiration due to "his genius. He was delighted with his pleasantry; approved his historical "compositions, particularly his Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle; and placed his "tragedies next in rank to those of Shakspeare." Works, v. 32, 33. In a letter to Wharton (July 10, 1764) he talks of his having been reading "half-a-dozen 66 new works of that inexhaustible, eternal, entertaining scribbler Voltaire, who at "last (I fear) will go to Heaven, for to him entirely it is owing that the king of "France and his council have received and set aside the decision of the parliament "of Thoulouse in the affair of Calas. . . you see, a scribbler may be of some use in "the world." Works, iv. 35, 36. Let me add to this note that Gray's high opinion of Voltaire's tragedies is shared by one of our greatest authorities on such a matter now living, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, whom I have often heard maintain the marked superiority of Voltaire over all his countrymen in the knowledge of dramatic art, and the power of producing theatrical effects. 1757. Æt. 29. "humbled by any applause in the present age, than by hosts "of such critics as Dean Milles."* He was very steady in his fondness for Gray (though Gray appears never to have quite thrown aside the recollection of their early disagreement ), because there was that real indifference to popular influences in the poet, which the wit and fine gentleman was anxious to have credit for. This liking he proclaimed on all occasions; had written the short advertisement which prefaced the first edition of the Elegy; had himself taken the risk of publishing, four years before, "a fine edition of "six poems of Mr. Gray, with prints from designs of Mr. R. Bentley ;" and when he heard, in the July of this year, that Gray had left his Cambridge retreat for a visit to Dodsley the bookseller, he managed, as he says himself, to snatch" away the new Odes to confer grace on the newly started types at Strawberry-hill. § These were the Bard 66 Coll. Lett. v. 323. + For Walpole's account of their difference when travelling on the continent together in their youth, see Coll. Lett. v. 340, 341; but Mr. Mitford, in his edition of Gray, has explained the matter differently, on the authority of Mr. Isaac Reed. From this it would seem that the quarrel arose out of a suspicion on Walpole's part that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, which impelled him to open clandestinely, and reseal, one of Gray's letters. This was discovered and resented. Works, ii. 175, note. It is right to add, however, that this account is not borne out by what Gray said to Nichols, on the latter questioning him about the quarrel. "Walpole," replied Gray, was son of the first minister, "and you may easily conceive that on this account he might assume an air of "superiority, or do or say something which perhaps I did not bear as well as I ought." Works, v. 48. This, substantially, would bear out Walpole, who takes all that kind of blame frankly to himself. 66 See his own Short Notes of his life, Letters to Mann (1843, 1844, concluding series), iv. 343. See also his brief Memoir of Gray, and the letters to Brown and Mason, in Mitford's Correspondence of Gray and Mason (1853) xxxiii, 89, and 92. § "I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first fruits "of my press." Coll. Lett. iii. 304. "Odes by Mr. Gray. Printed at Strawberry "Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall Mall. 1757. 4to." The publishing price was a shilling. "I yet reflect with pain," wrote Wharton to Mason in 1781, when their friend had been ten years in the grave, upon the cool reception "which those noble odes, The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, met with at their "first publication; it appeared that there were not twenty people in England who 66 and the Progress of Poesy; two noble productions, it must 1757. surely be admitted, whatever of cavil can be urged against Et. 29. them for the want of clearness or ease: though not to be admired after the manner of Walpole, who never praises without showing his dislike of others, much more than his love of Gray. "You are very particular, I can tell you," he says to Montague, "in liking Gray's Odes: but you "must remember that the age likes Akenside, and did like "Thomson! can the same people like both? Milton was "forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles."* It was a habit of depreciation too much the manner of the time. Even the enchanting genius of Collins struck no responsive chord in Gray himself; nor had the Elegies of Shenstone, the Imagination of Akenside, or even the Castle of Indolence itself, given always grateful addition to the learned idleness of the poet of Pembroke-hall.† But Goldsmith, for the present, was not to this manner born; and though he might perhaps more freely have acknowledged the splendour of Gray's imagination and the deep humanity of his feeling, his exquisite pathos, the melancholy grandeur of his tone, his touching thoughts and most delicately chosen words, yet was he at least not Nevertheless it "liked them." Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 465. Nothing surprises me so much as these little heterodoxies in Gray, whose taste for poetry was in other respects exquisite,-always generous, almost always right. To Shenstone, Akenside, and Thomson, he makes objection indeed only as to special poems, admitting the beauties of others; but Collins he classes generally with Thomas Warton, as "both writers of odes;" and continues, "it is odd enough, "but each is the half of a considerable man, and one the counterpart of the other... They both deserve to last some years, but will not." Gray to Wharton, Dec. 1746. Works, iii. 28-9. 66 1757. disposed, when Mr. Griffiths laid Messrs. Dodsley's shilFt. 29. ling quarto before him, to any comparison or test less fair than his own feeling of the objects and aims of poetry. And this he stated with a strength and plainness which marks with personal interest what was said of Gray. Portions of a poem he had himself already written, fragments of exquisite simplicity; and in what the tone of this criticism. exhibits, we see what will one day give unity and aim to those poetical attempts, and raise them into enduring structures. We observe the gradual development of settled views; the better defined thoughts which the rude beginnings of literature are breeding in him; the rich upturning of the soil of his mind, as Mr. Griffiths passes with his harrow. The toils and sufferings of the past are now not only yielding fruit to him, but teaching him how it may be gathered. The lesson is very simple, but of inappreciable value, and the reverse of Horace Walpole's. It is to study the people, whom Walpole would disregard; to address those popular sympathies, which he affected to despise; to speak the language of the heart, of which he knew not much; and before all things study, what so little came within the range of his experience, the joys and the sorrows of the poor. It is the lesson which Roger Ascham would have taught two hundred and fifty years before-to think as a wise man, but to speak as the common people. "We cannot without "some regret," Goldsmith wrote, "behold 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 66 |