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Reasoner is a very remarkable and a
very valuable one, and does honour to
his extensive erudition. His candour
and judgment, also, deserve much
praise; for (what is very unusual in
such researches,) hardly any of the
instances quoted can be said to be
forced or fanciful. To me, many of
them are altogether new. The whole
history of poetry does not afford an-
other example of such extraordinary
anxiety, such ambitious diligence, as
Gray has displayed in labouring to elc-
vate his sentiments. What Horace
says of himself, applies more exactly
to our poet.
Pareus belongs to nei-
ther.

-ego, apis Mutina
More modoque,
Grata carpentis thyma per laborem
Plurimum, circa nemus, nvidique
Tiburis ripas, operosa parvus

Carmina fingo.

But though the writings of Gray may be very well denominated carmina operosa, and were no doubt composed per plurimum laborem, by whatever means or exertion they were accomplished, they are at last exquisite poems. Gray, it is true, on many occasions made use of sentiments that had passed through others' minds, and forms of language not unknown but in his mode of doing it, marks of a bold and original genius appear, that stamp him a poet of the first order. A mere copyist, who has no ideas of his own, (a character which belongs to the greater part of poets,) never interests, because he himself is incapable of being interested. In reading the poems of Gray, we are not sensible of conversing but with one mind; we perceive not the sentiments of different writers for all is elevated to one pitch of conception, to one standard of excellence. Whether Gray be pouring forth his own thoughts, or those of others, he is one continued stream of rapture. His works bear no resemblance to that tame and laborious kind of patchwork which merely sorts a number of poctical phrases together without inspiring them with the peculiar qualities which belong to his own inind. He does not. in fact, borrow ideas from others, he makes them his own. He decomposes them, and reduces them to their first elements; some he refines, others he dignifies and ennobles. He melts them down in the crucible of his genius, purges them of their alloy; Europ. Mag. Vol, Ll, Jan. 1807.

sometimes exalts them into a nobler
substance, but never debases them. Even
to be able fully to enter into the ideas
of others,requires an exertion of thought
little inferior to his who first formed
them. If mere labour and an ingenious
assortment of splendid passages could
secure the celebrity of Gray, how many
celebrated poets should we then have!
I would willingly enter into a par-
ticular display of the beauties of Gray's
poetry; but this I shall reserve to an-
other time, when I shall have seen the
more minute analysis of this poet's me-
rits, which the Reasoner has promised.
But I cannot conclude without remark-
ing, that the Reasoner must not have
lately read, or not read with attention,
the thirty-fifth Ode of the first book of
Horace; from which, Johnson says, the
hint of the Ode to Adversity was taken.
The Reasoner here outdoes even John-
son; for not content with the slight
accusation of a hint, he contends that
it is a shameless piece of plagiarism,
in which Horace is followed so ser-
vilely as to copy his very words. The
poem of Gray bears so little resem
blance to Horace's ode, that I cannot
consent to the hint even being taken
from it. The expression purple tyrants
is evidently borrowed, but I should
imagine no more. Horace's ode is in
some parts embarrassed and obscure,
and certainly is not one of his happiest
productions. The following is a detail
of the substance of it. It begins by
addressing the goddess Fortune, who
had a temple at Antium, as the sove-
reign arbiter of events; whom the poor
man solicits with his prayers, whom the
fierce scythian and purple tyrant dread.
He supplicates the goddess that the
firm pillar of the Roman state be not
overturned by popular tumults. He
next alludes to certain instruments of
punishment kept in her temple at An-
tium, in this strain: Cruel necessity
goes before thee, holding in her hand
huge spikes and wedges, with the tor-
menting hook and melted lead; but
Hope reverences thee, and does not
leave thee, though thou abandonest
the houses of the Great. But the faith-
less companion, the parasite, and the
harlot, draw back when the casks
are exhausted. The poet now prays
that Cæsar may be preserved in his
expedition against Britain; and con-
cludes by confessing himself ashamed
of the wickedness of his age, and the
barbarity of his countrymen in wound-

F

ing one another; wounds which ought to have been inflicted on the enemies of Rome, the Massagetæ and the Arabians. The Ode to Adversity, the finest of any in ancient or modern times, can be no servile imitation of such a poem. Before I read Johuson's lives, I had always imagined that the hat of this ode was taken from the fol

lowing lines of As You Like It; which, to use a vulgar phrase, is undoubtedly a much broader hint than any thing that

occurs in Horace's ode:

Sweet are the uses of Adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel m is heat.

The notion that affliction or adversity is the school of virtue, that sorrow maketh the heart better, is so natural and obvious, that it has occurred to the

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wise and good of all ages. Perhaps, To the Editor of the European Magazine.

then, the idea of Gray's poem originated wholly from himself. In illustration of this supposition, let the following beautiful passages be compared. The subject and inoral are the suño, yet I would not be positive that Gray was indebted to Thomson; for the consideration on the happy but short existence of the insect tribes, impresses every serious mind with the melancholy reflection of the instability of human life.

Yet hark! how thro' the peopled air

The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honey'd Spring,

And float amid the liquid non
Some lightly o'er the current skin,
Some show their gaily-gilded tram,
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye,

Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end wher they began.
Alike, the busy and the gay
But flutter thro' life's j te day,

In Fortune's varying colours diest;
Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill'd by age, their any dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Ode to Spring,

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SIR,

Dec. 19, 1806. N the thirty-fourth volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, page 336, I observe a drawing and description of a gigantic figure cut out on the s.de of a very steep hill near Cerne, in Dorsetshire. Its dimensions are immense. The height is there given 180 feet. Some of your scientific and antiquarian readers, I suppose, have seen it, or are acquainted with it. It would afford great satisfaction to many others, as well as to me, who am your constant reader, if they would inform you of the age in which it was cut; the people by whom it was made; and many other particulars, which it would be gratifying to public curiosity to be acquainted with.

From the words made use of in describing it, I conceive it has been only cut out in the earth. If so, I suppose it may be a production of no great antiquity; as rain, the influence of the air, &c., must have worn it, and defaced it considerably. Were it cut out in stone, its execution may be of very great antiquity.

in Indostan there have been very great figures cut out in stone, soin? in exervations, and some upon the surface of the earth. Of the last kind are three gigantic statues at Bamian; a place mentioned in the Asiatick Besearches by that most ingenious and learned member of the Asiatic Society, Captain F. Wilford. These statues are cut in stone, and are clear from the mountain, of which the stone formerly,

no doubt, formed a part *. If I remember right, the height of the tallest, which is said to be of the masculine gender, is about seventy cubits; of the otaer, which is supposed to be intended to represent a female, the height is about fifty cubits; the third is, perhaps, only about twenty cubits. These statues are supposed to represent Adam and Eve, and one of their sons. As the country about Bamian is in a very savage state, the accounts of these statues have been taken from the report of such people as had been led to that country by their affairs, but who were not very exact in the notice they took of them, nor in their recollection of them. But certain it is that these, and many other buildings and excavations, are of a very high antiquity; though the time whe, and the people by whom, they were made, are unknown.

It is supposed that the Hindoos, at a very early period, had a knowledge of, and intercourse with, Britain. In some of their books, it is mentioned as the country of circular stones, of rocking stones, and of religious duties; under which last description it is said to have been a place for pilgrimage. if the figure in Dorsetshire were cut in stone, it might afford room to conjecture that the people who made it, and those who executed the statues in Indostan, had a very considerable connexion with each other.

To see these subjects elucidated by men of genius and learning, will afford very great satisfaction to any of your readers, and particularly to

Your most obedient humble servant,

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Passing some years on the margin of the Main, it was my daily custom almost to pace the sands, and respire the bracing air the beach afforded; "to chase the ebbing Neptune, and to fly him when he came back;" though sometimes caught in truth, when engaged to purloin a painted shell, or weed of Tyrian dye. But while amused with productions of the fruitful Ocean-or musing the infinite variety of animated tribes which glide therein, in equal delight, whether under the torrid or the.. freezing climes- or extending my ideas. to the numerous distinct nations on the extremest borders of that ever-varying undulated green, my attention would be occasionally arrested by the clash of waves in opposition. This I saw arise from the flowing of the sea between two somewhat elevated parts of the shore, when the wave, spreading laterally up the sides of those protuberances, became separated as it were, and received a new direction adverse. These on their return down those gentle declivities, encountering as they met, produced that clashing report, and were impeded in their progress for a moment, not more, as each immediately pursued its way according to the inclination they had severally received, one shallow waye pass.g along the sand to my right hand, as not in the least obstruct by the lacumbent fluid, otherwise imposed; while the other flowed with qual facility to my left hand, without uniting with the water beneath it. in motion also; and before these became quiescout, I have at times observed the sea send up a slender wave, which spread over the two before described as over marble, imposing an idea of diaphanous plates pat in motion at plers are by the hand, as wholly uncon

ed appeared those flund sheets! This I have often beheld, and as often admired. 1 was pleased with such ocular de nonstrations of under currents in the sea, and which are so frequently manifested in the ligater element above

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and though it pained me exceedingly, I could not refrain a smile when observing that I did thus "the multitudinous sea incarnadine, making the green one, red." Macbeth, however, might naturally ask, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?" No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous sea incarnadine, making the green, one red: which reading, leaving infinitely the greater impression on the mind, was certainly intended by Shakspeare himself, or the players of his time; otherwise we should have seen it, making the green flood

red.

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CARDINAL BERNIS *.

It is well known, that this prelate, T is well known, that this Prelate, through the intrigues of the infamous Madame de Pompadour, from the station of a poor Abbé to the dignities of Cardinal and Minister of State. This woman, to whom he had been attached

long before she became Louis the XVth's mistress, and whom he so frequently made the idol of his "tender strains,' even after she had attained the darling object of her ambition, continued to evince a tender regard for her former lover. Soon after her clevation she procured him apartments in the Louvre,

and at the same time that she announced this desirable intelligence to him, she gave him a piece of rich Persian tapes try to hang them with. Overjoyed with his good fortune, he was hurrying down a back staircase with his present under his arm, when he met the King coming up. Louis, who possessed no small degree of curiosity about trifles, asked

• François Joachim de Pierre, (Comte de Bernis, Cardinal, Minister of State, Member of the "Académie Française," and also of the "Académie de Belles Lettres" at Stockholm,) was born at Saint Marcel de l'Ardêche. in ci-devant Languedoc, in 1715, and died at Rome in the month of September, 1794. His poems vary in their subjects: some of which are serious and others humorous: although his versification is generally negligent, and full of affectation, yet many of his compositions possess considerable merit, particularly his "Description des Quatre Parties du Jour," and "Quatre Saisons." It was on account of the extreme floridness of his manner, and its want of variety, that Voltaire used to call him "Babet la Bouquetière."

him where he had been? and what he had got under his arm? Notwithstanding his embarrassment, he answered by frankly confessing the truth. The King thereupon, to his great surprise, took a purse of fifty louis d'ors out of his pocket, and presented it to him, saying,

Madame de Pompadour has given you the hangings; here is something for the nails. She has often mentioned you to me in very favourable terms; I will take care of you."-In order to form his mind for the brilliant sphere in which she destined him to shine, the jovial Abbé was, upon her solicitation, shortly after sent as Ambassador to Venice, at that period the focus of political intrigue. There he occupied himself rather in cultivating the good graces of the Venetian fair, than in acquiring the subtile refinements of court intrigue and modern policy. He therefore returned to Paris with nearly the same ideas of state concerns as he had taken out with him, and was afterwards appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs; in which capacity he made himself the secret laughing-stock of all of the Order of the Holy Ghost. On parties. He was then admitted a Knight the altar of the Chapel of Versailles, this occasion, as he was kneeling before surrounded by the Knights of the Order, and the customary Installation Ode, "Veni Creator Spiritus," was per-. forming, a paper was thrown from the served between the senior and junior uppermost gallery upon the space preKnights, which contained a Latin parody of the Installation Ode, and ran, with

the exception of two very indelicate lines, nearly to the following effect:

Esprit saint, divine essence,
Daignez guider ce ministre nouveau,
Et pour l'honneur de la France,
Illuminez son cerveau.

Renouvellez ce miracle
Sur le pauvre abbé Bernis;
Embrasez le de vos flammes,
Inspirez lui votre amour :
Qu'il baise un peu moins les dames,
Et surtout la Pompadour.

·-

better conceived than described. Bernis The effect which these lines produced is rose, however, from post to post, and was at length created Cardinal. It has even been said, that Madame de Pompadour had destined some millions of livres to purchase for her favourite the

keys of St. Peter, which were then likely to lose their master.

of the red Hat was conferred upon him, On the same day that the dignity he invited the Court to a sumptuous banquet, and, like many witlings of the present day, did not neglect to store himself before-hand with a fund of plagiarisins, that he might give himself the air of a superior genius. The learned Cardinal, engaged in this important duty, having taken down a volume from his shelf, opened it in the very place where some malicious wight had painted the famous fable of the apes, who nimbly skipped from branch to branch, till they reached the top of the tree; but, alas! the higher they clambered, the more did they expose their post-a.

Camberwell, 6th Jan. 1807.

S.. II.

CHARACTERISTICS.

1.

Falent, active and eager in his EBRIO is a man of extraordinary pursuits. The instant Febrio sees an object before him, he gives, as it were, it. Febrio never loses an instant of the view holloa, and away he goes after time, nor leaves that until to-morrow which could be done to-day. He combines his ideas on any subject with amazing celerity and correctness; is extremely fond of novelty and of speculation: but what is remarkable in Febrio is, that as soon as success begins heartily sick of them himself, he pants to smile upon his undertakings, he gets after something new, and turns off in full chase he hunts down the game very well, but never comes in at the death. Febrio is restless in good fortune, and impatient in bad.

Febrio, caimot bear tranquillity: he

To the Editor of the European Magazine. hates to be quiet; has the greatest

SIR,

Dec. 13th, 1806.

IN the conclusion of your remarks, in your last Magazine, page 358, on the life and character of Mr. Fox, you express "regret that those who had the care of his early education had not paid more attention to" him in the beginning of his life; and as in your former number you have told us that Dr. Newcome, the late Primate of Ireland, had been his private tutor at Eton, the reader will be led to apply this charge to that worthy Prelate. Your regard for justice will, therefore, I am persuaded, make you glad to rectify a mistake, which I see has prevailed in other periodical publications, respecting Dr. Newcome, who was never a private tutor at Eton School, but the public tutor at Hertford College, in Oxford, where his faithful discharge of that important office had so raised his reputation, that the father of Mr. Fox, as did other noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, placed his son under his care in that small seminary, in preference to the other larger Colleges at that time; and had he been there guilty of any remarkable irregularities, you may be assured he could not have escaped the reproofs of so good a man.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

OXONIENSIS.

aversion to repose; and pines when he is unmolested. What is still more extraordinary, Febrio is married, and dis

likes his wife because she is obedient: he would have a woman to tease and he would be kept contradict him: constantly excited; and would prefer a cause for jealousy sooner than not be jealous, or invent a cause for quarrelling sooner than not quarrel: he is outrageous when confined, and in a state of phrenzy when he is free. As a sailor hates a calm because the vessel has no way through the water, and that he cannot approach his port, so does Febrio With a little dislike the being at rest. address, Febrio would turn his talents to advantage; as it is, he suffers only the fever of enterprise, and fails at the instant With his object is within his grasp. Febrio, the words of Shakspeare, that madness has method in it, is reversed, for Febrio's method has always a spice of madness. Febrio's application is of application which involves him in praiseworthy. It is his misapplication disgrace.

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