Gray's first public appearance as a poet was made in 1747, when his Ode to Eton College was published by Dodsley. Four years afterwards, his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was printed, and immediately became popular. His Pindaric Odes appeared in 1757, but met with little success. His name, however, was now so well known, that

Gray's Window, St Peter's College, Cambridge.

he was offered the situation of poet-laureate, vacant by the death of Colley Cibber. Gray declined the appointment; but shortly afterwards he obtained the more reputable and lucrative situation of Professor of Modern History, which brought him in about £400 per annum. For some years he had been subject to hereditary gout, and as his circumstances improved, his health declined. While at dinner one day in the college-hall, he was seized with an attack in the stomach, which was so violent as to resist all the efforts of medicine, and after six days of suffering, he expired on the 30th of July 1771, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. He was buried, according to his desire, by the side of his mother, at Stoke, near Eton-adding one more poetical association to that beautiful and classic district of England.*

The poetry of Gray is all comprised in a few pages, yet he appears worthy to rank in quality with the first order of poets. His two great odes, The Progress of Poesy, and The Bard, are the most splendid compositions we possess in the Pindaric style and measure. They surpass the odes of Collins in fire and energy, in boldness of imagination, and in condensed and brilliant expression. Collins is as purely and entirely poetical, but he is

*Gray's epitaph on his mother has an interesting touch of his peculiar melancholy: Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the

misfortune to survive her.'

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less commanding and sublime. Gray's stanzas, notwithstanding their varied and complicated versification, flow with lyrical ease and perfect harmony. Each presents rich personification, striking thoughts, or happy imagery

Sublime their starry fronts they rear.

The Bard is more dramatic and picturesque than The Progress of Poesy, yet in the latter are some of the poet's richest and most majestic strains. As, for example, the sketch of the savage youth of Chili:

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The muse has broke the twilight gloom,

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves.

Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue and generous shame,

The unconquerable mind and Freedom's holy flame.

Or the poetical characters of Shakspeare, Milton, and Dryden:

Far from the sun and summer gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,

What time, where lucid Avon strayed,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child

Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.

"This pencil take,' she said, 'whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal boy!

This can unlock the gates of Joy;

Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.'

Nor second he, that rode sublime

Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy.

He passed the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race,
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding
pace.

The Ode to Eton College, the Ode to Adversity, and the far-famed Elegy, present the same careful and elaborate finishing; but the thoughts and imagery are more simple, natural, and touching. A train of moral feelings, and solemn or affecting associations, is presented to the mind, in connection with beautiful natural scenery and objects of real life. In a letter to Beattie, Gray remarks: As to description, I have always thought that it made the most graceful ornament of poetry, but never ought to make the subject.' He practised what he taught; for there is always some sentiment or reflection arising out of the poet's descriptive passages. These are generally grave, tender, or pathetic. The cast of his own mind, and the comparative loneliness of his situation and studies, nursed a sort of philosophic spleen, and led him to moralise on the vanity of life. Byron and others have attached inordinate value to the Elegy, as the main prop of Gray's reputation. A manuscript copy of the poem in Gray's handwriting was sold in 1854 for the large sum of £131!

The Elegy is, doubtless, the most frequently read and repeated of all his productions, because it is connected with ordinary existence and genuine feeling, and describes, in exquisite harmonious verse, what all persons must, at some time or other, have felt or imagined. But the highest poetry can never be very extensively popular. A simple ballad air will convey pleasure to a greater number of persons than the most successful efforts of accomplished musical taste and genius; and, in like manner, poetry which deals with subjects of familiar life, must find more readers than those inspired flights of imagination, or recondite allusions, however graced with the charms of poetry, which can only be enjoyed by persons of fine sensibility, and something of kindred taste and knowledge. Gray's classical diction, his historical and mythological personifications, must ever be lost on the multitude. Even Dr Johnson was tempted into a coarse and unjust criticism of Gray, chiefly because the critic admired no poetry which did not contain some weighty moral truth, or some chain of reasoning. To restrict poetical excellence to this standard, would be to blot out Spenser from the list of high poets, and to curtail Shakspeare and Milton of more than half their glory. Let us recollect with another poet-the author of the Night Thoughts-that a fixed star is as much in the bounds of nature as a flower of the field, though less obvious, and of far greater dignity.' Or as Pope has versified the same sentiment:

Though the same sun, with all-diffusive rays,
Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze,
We prize the stronger effort of his power,
And justly set the gem above the flower.

In the character of Gray there are some seeming inconsistencies. As a man, he was nice, reserved, and proud-a haughty retired scholar; yet we find him in his letters full of English idiom and English feeling, with a spice of the gossip, and sometimes not overfastidious in his allusions and remarks. He was indolent, yet a severe student-hating | Cambridge and its college discipline, yet constantly residing there. He loved intellectual ease and luxury, and wished, as a sort of Mohammedan paradise, to 'lie on a sofa, and read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.' Yet all he could say of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, when it was first published, was, that there were some good verses in it! Akenside, too, whom he was so well fitted to appreciate, he thought often obscure, and even unintelligible.' As a poet, Gray studied in the school of the ancient and Italian poets, labouring like an artist to infuse part of their spirit, their melody, and even some of their expressions, into his inimitable Mosaic work, over which he breathed the life and fragrance of eternal spring. In his country tours, the poet carried with him a plano-convex mirror, which, in surveying landscapes, gathers into one confined glance the forms and tints of the surrounding scene. His imagination performed a similar operation in collecting, fixing, and appropriating the materials of poetry. All is bright, natural, and interesting-rich or magnificent-but it is seen but for a moment. Yet, despite his classic taste and models, Gray was among the first to welcome and admire the Celtic strains of Macpherson's Ossian; and he could also delight in the wild superstitions of the Gothic nations; in translating from the Norse tongue the Fatal Sisters and the Descent of Odin, he called up the martial fire, the rude energy and abruptness of the ancient ballad minstrels. Had his situation and circumstances been different, the

genius of this accomplished and admirable poet would in all probability have expanded, so as to embrace subjects of wider and more varied interest of greater length and diversity of character. The subdued humour and fancy of Gray are perpetually breaking out in his letters, with brief picturesque touches that mark the poet and man of taste. The advantages of travelling and of taking notes on the spot, he has playfully but admirably summed up in a letter to a friend, then engaged in making a tour in Scotland: 'Do not you think a man may be the wiser-I had almost said the better-for going a hundred or two of miles; and that the mind has more room in it than most people seem to think, if you will but furnish the apartments? I almost envy your last month, being in a very insipid situation myself; and desire you would not fail to send me some furniture for my Gothic apartment, which is very cold at present. It will be the easier task, as you have nothing to do but transcribe your little red books, if they are not rubbed out; for I conclude you have not trusted everything to memory, which is ten times worse than a lead-pencil. Half a word fixed upon or near the spot is worth a cart-load of recollection. When we trust to the picture that objects draw of themselves on our mind, we deceive ourselves: without accurate and particular observation, it is but ill drawn at first, the outlines are soon blurred, the colours every day grow fainter, and at last, when we would produce it to anybody, we are forced to supply its defects with a few strokes of our own imagination.'

Impressed with the opinion he here inculcates, the poet was a careful note-taker, and his delineations are all fresh and distinct. Thus, he writes in the following graceful strain to his friend Nicholls, in commemoration of a tour which he made to Southampton and Netley Abbey: 'My health is much improved by the sea, not that I drank it or bathed in it, as the common people do: no, I only walked by it, and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild even in October and November; no snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past; the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window; the town clean and well-built, surrounded by its old stone-walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea, which, having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in direct view, till it joins the British Channel; it is skirted on either side with gently rising grounds, clothed with thick wood, and directly across its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight at some distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods-concealed from profane eyes-lie hid the ruins of Netley Abbey; there may be richer and greater houses of religion, but the abbot is content with his situation. See there, at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shade of those old trees that bend into a half-circle about it, he is walking slowly (good man!), and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors, interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it-the meadow still descending-nods a thicket of oaks that mask the building, and have excluded a view too garish and luxuriant for a holy eye; only on either hand they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. Did you not observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself to drive the tempter from him that had thrown that distraction in his way? I should tell you that the ferryman who rowed me, a lusty young fellow, told me

that he would not for all the world pass a night at the abbey-there were such things near it-though there was a power of money hid there. From thence I went to Salisbury, Wilton, and Stonehenge; but of these I say no more; they will be published at the university press.

commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is still made greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on the other hand, the cascades that in many places throw themselves from the very summit down into the vale and the river below, and many other particulars impossible to describe, you will conclude we had no occasion to repent our pains. This place St Bruno chose to retire to, and upon its very top founded the aforesaid convent, which is the superior of the whole order. When we came there, the two fathers who are commissioned to entertain strangers

Much as has since been written on the lakecountry, nothing can exceed the beauty and finish of this miniature picture of Grassmere: 'Passed by the little chapel of Wiborn, out of which the Sunday congregation were then issuing. Passed a beck [rivulet] near Dunmailrouse, and entered Westmoreland a second time; now begin to see Helmcrag, distinguished from its rugged neighbours not so much by its height, as by the strange broken outline of its top, like some gigantic building demolished, and the stones that composed it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just beyond it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom of the mountains spreading here into a broad basin, discovers in the midst Grassmere water; its margin is hollowed into small bays with bold eminences, some of them rocks, some of soft turf, that half conceal and vary the figure of the little lake they command. From the shore, a low promontory pushes itself far into the water, and on it stands a white village, with the parish church rising in the midst of it; hanging enclosures, cornfields, and meadows green as an emerald, with their trees, hedges, and cattle, fill up the whole space from the edge of the water. Just opposite to you is a large farmhouse, at the bottom of a steep smooth lawn embosomed in old woods, which climb half-way up the mountain's side, and discover above them a broken line of crags, that crown the scene. Not a single red tile, no glaring gentleman's house or garden-walls, break in upon the repose of this little unsuspected paradise; but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty, in its neatest and most becoming attire.'

The sublime scenery of the Grande Chartreuse, in Dauphiné-the subject of Gray's noble Alcaic ode-awakened all his poetical enthusiasm. Writing to his mother from Lyon, he says: 'It is a fortnight since we set out hence upon a little excursion to Geneva. We took the longest road, which lies through Savoy, on purpose to see a famous monastery, called the Grande Chartreuse, and had no reason to think our time lost. After having travelled seven days very slow-for we did not change horses, it being impossible for a chaise to go post in these roads-we arrived at a little village among the mountains of Savoy, called Echelles; from thence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it,

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to any one else-received us very kindly, and set before us a repast of dried fish, eggs, butter, and fruits, all excellent in their kind, and extremely neat. They pressed us to spend the night there, and to stay some days with them; but this we could not do, so they led us about their house, which is, you must think, like a little city, for there are a hundred fathers, besides three hundred servants, that make their clothes, grind their corn, press their wine, and do everything among themselves. The whole is quite orderly and simple; nothing of finery; but the wonderful decency, and the strange situation, more than supply the place of it. In the evening we descended by the same way, passing through many clouds that were then forming themselves on the mountain's side.'

In a subsequent letter to his poetical friend West, Gray again adverts to this memorable visit: 'In our little journey up the Grande Chartreuse,' he says, 'I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument. One need not have a very fantastic imagination to see spirits there at noonday. You have Death perpetually before your eyes, only so far removed, as to compose the mind without frightening it.'

In turning from these exquisite fragments of description to the poetry of Gray, the difference will be found to consist chiefly in the rhyme and measure: in purity of sentiment and vividness of expression, the prose is equal to the verse.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful science still adores

Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey;

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among (Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way!)

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!

Where once my careless childhood strayed,

A stranger yet to pain:

1 King Henry VI., founder of the college.

I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow,

As, waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green,
The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which inthral?
What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

While some on earnest business bent
Their murmuring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty;
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
And unknown regions dare descry:

Still as they run, they look behind;
They hear a voice in every wind,

And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possessed; The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast. Theirs buxom health of rosy hue, Wild wit, invention ever new, And lively cheer of vigour born;

The thoughtless day, the easy night, The spirits pure, the slumbers light, That fly the approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;

No sense bave they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day;

Yet see how all around 'em wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train.

Ah! shew them where in ambush stand,

To seize their prey, the murth'rous band;

Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And shame that skulks behind;

Or pining love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;

And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

Then whirl the wretch from high, To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' altered eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild,
Amid severest woe.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen :

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in, the deeper vitals rage:

Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand, And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,

The unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

Hymn to Adversity.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth

Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse, thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe;

By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom, in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
Warm Charity, the general friend,
With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand Not in thy gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful bandAs by the impious thou art seenWith thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound, my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive;
Teach me to love and to forgive;
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

[The Bard-A Pindaric Ode.]

[This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward I., when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.]

'Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,

Confusion on thy banners wait;

Though fanned by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's1 shaggy side

He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Glo'ster2 stood aghast in speechless trance; "To arms!' cried Mortimer,3 and couched his quivering lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood-
Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air-
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
'Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,

Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, O king! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hushed the stormy main :

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head.
On dreary Arvon's shore 4 they lie,

Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries-
No more I weep. They do not sleep.

1 Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryri. It included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the castle of Conway, built by King Edward I., says: 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery;' and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283): 'Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniæ fecit erigi castrum forte.'

2 Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward.

3 Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. They both were lords-marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in this expedition.

'Weave the warp, and weave the woof,

The winding-sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room, and verge enough

The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright,

The shrieks of death through Berkeley's1 roof that ring,

Shrieks of an agonising king!

She-wolf2 of France, with unrelenting fangs,

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born,3 who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him
wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

'Mighty victor, mighty lord,

Low on his funeral couch he lies!

No pitying heart, no eye afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior 5 fled?

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm,

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

'Fill high the sparkling bowl,7

The rich repast prepare;

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray,8

Lance to lance, and horse to horse?

Long years of havoc urge their destined course, And through the kindred squadrons mow their way. Ye Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,

With many a foul and midnight murder fed, Revere his consort's faith,10 his father's 11 fame,

1 Edward II., cruelly butchered in Berkeley Castle. 2 Isabel of France, Edward II.'s adulterous queen. 3 Alluding to the triumphs of Edward III. in France. 4 Alluding to the death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed in his last moments by his courtiers and his mistress.

5 Edward, the Black Prince, dead some time before his father.

6 Magnificence of Richard II.'s reign. See Froissart_and other contemporary writers.

7 Richard II. (as we are told by Archbishop Scroop, and the confederate lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsing

5 Camden and others observe, that eagles used annually to build their eyry among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigianeryri, or the Crags of the Eagles. At this day, I am told, the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's Nest. That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots and the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, &c., can testify; it has even built its nest in the Peak of Derbyshire.-(See Willoughby's Ornithology, published by Ray.)

story of his assassination by Sir Piers, of Exon, is of much later date.

8 Ruinous civil wars of York and Lancaster.

9 Henry VI., George, Duke of Clarence, Edward V., Richard, Duke of York, &c., believed to be murdered secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part of that structure is vulgarly attributed to Julius Cæsar.

10 Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who struggled hard to save her husband and her crown. 11 Henry V.