He had

but he had foreseen their probable reception. written to Walpole, "I don't know but I may send him [Dodsley] very soon... an ode to his own tooth, a high Pindaric upon stilts, which one must be a better scholar than he is to understand a line of, and the very best scholars will understand but a little matter here and there."

In the Pindaric Odes, Gray ceased to follow the age; he struck out ahead of it, and helped to mould its literary taste. From this time people began to regard him as a Romanticist, and to look for wild and extravagant productions from his pen. When the Castle of Otranto appeared in 1764, Gray was by many believed to be the author. The Odes became much more popular after Gray's death a sign of growth in public taste. This made Dr. Johnson angry, and had much to do with his satirical treatment of the Odes in his wretched Life of Gray. He did not like to think that Gray had really taught the people anything, and so he declared that the admiration for Gray was all hypocrisy, just as many honest people to-day make fun of those who admire Wagner's music. Johnson said that in Gray's Odes "many were content to be shewn beauties which they could not see"; and the Doctor was thinking of the Odes when the following interesting conversation with Boswell took place: "He attacked Gray, calling him 'a dull fellow.' BOSWELL. 'I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet.' He then repeated some ludicrous lines, which

1 Works, II, 218.

have escaped my memory, and said, 'Is not that GREAT, like his Odes?'"' 1

We now enter upon the third and last period of Gray's literary production. In 1755 Paul Henri Mallet's Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc appeared. This had a powerful effect on Gray, and aroused his interest in Northern mythology, which he studied with the utmost enthusiasm. In 1761, Gray wrote The Fatal Sisters, and The Descent of Odin. Here we find him writing on strictly Romantic themes. Evan Evans's book on Welsh poetry 2 (1764) containing specimens from ancient Welsh bards, inspired Gray again, and he wrote The Triumphs of Owen, together with two other shorter pieces.

The Fatal Sisters, Odin, and Owen were published in 1768, in the edition of his writings revised by himself. In 1760, when the Ossianic Fragments appeared, Gray was wonderfully aroused. His friends knew he would be excited, for Walpole, writing to Dalrymple, 4 April 1760, said: "You originally pointed him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old Irish poetry you sent me." Gray's letters on Ossian may be found among the selections from his prose in this book; also his interesting remark on the ballad Child Maurice, which he greatly enjoyed.

As he advanced in life, Gray's ideas of poetry grew free in theory as well as in practice. His Observations on English Metre, written probably in 1760–61, and published in 1814, contains much interesting matter. Gray had planned to write a History of English Poetry, but

1 Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, II, 374.

2 Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards. Translated into English, with Explanatory Notes on the Historical Passages, and a short account of Men and Places mentioned by the Bards, in order to give the Curious some Idea of the Taste and Sentiments of our Ancestors, and their manner of Writing.

when he heard that Thomas Warton was engaged in that work, he gave up the idea, and handed over his general scheme to Warton. If Gray had completed a history of this kind, it would certainly have been more accurate than Warton's, and would probably have done as much service to Romanticism. A few words may be quoted from the Observations, to show how far Gray had advanced in his ideas since 1740. Speaking of Milton, he says: "The more we attend to the composition of Milton's harmony, the more we shall be sensible how he loved to vary his pauses, his measures and his feet, which gives that enchanting air of freedom and wildness to his versification, unconfined by any rules but those which his own feeling and the nature of his subject demands."

2

V. GRAY'S PROSE.

"I do not pretend to write prose, Gray once remarked; but nevertheless he wrote it admirably. Although Gray often imitated Milton in his poetry, he never attempted to do so in his prose, which Milton wrote, to use his own words, with his left hand. The eighteenth century was the golden age of letter writing; cheap postage had not then done its fatal work on epistolary style. In the letters of Gray we see perhaps the best representatives of the best period; he does not suffer even in comparison with the most famous of all English letter-writers, Horace Walpole. Walpole is more brilliant, but he is also more artificial; and he too evidently was writing for the benefit of posterity. Gray's style has nearly all the charm of Walpole's, and it is simplicity itself. One would imagine that his reserved tempera

ment might make his letters cold, stiff, formal, and therefore profitless reading; on the contrary, they exhibit the perfection of ease and grace. Walpole said, “Gray never wrote anything easily but things of humour. Humour was his natural and original turn." To those who know Gray only through the Elegy, this remark seems scarcely true; but it is eminently true of Gray when writing to his friends. His familiar ways with Mason, whom he called "Skroddles," his playful tone with Nicholls, and his mild satires on literary ignorance and political selfishness, all tend to prove the truth of Walpole's statement. (Nor can any one read Gray's letters without admiring the man; he is so sensible and so genuine. His own troubles are mentioned with reserve, as is fitting; and his sympathy for the sorrows of others is as full of depth as it is free from gush. His remarks on men of letters and on current events are sprightly and often keen; but above all, his prose epistles are interesting and valuable for the evidence they show of unfeigned and discriminating appreciation of nature. In this respect, they are deeply interesting to the student of Romanticism. He was one of the first men in Europe who had any real appreciation of wild and romantic scenery. It has now become so fashionable to be fond of mountains, and lakes, and picturesque landscapes, that it seems difficult to believe that all this is a modern taste. To-day the average summer traveler speaks enthusiastically of precipices, mountain cascades. and shaded glens, and even to some extent interprets them by the imagination; but the average eighteenth century sojourner neither could nor would do anything of the sort. This appreciation of the picturesque in external nature has a close kinship with the Romantic

1 Letters, VI, 206.

movement in literature; for the same emotions are at the foundation of both.

The Classicists had no more love for wild nature than they had for Gothic architecture or Romantic poetry. Let us take Addison as a conspicuous example. "In one of his letters, dated December, 1701, he wrote that he had reached Geneva after 'a very troublesome journey over the Alps. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices; and you can't imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain!' This little phrase is a good illustration of the contempt for mountains, of the way they were regarded as wild, barbaric, useless excrescences. . . . The love of mountains is something really of modern, very modern, growth, the first traces of which we shall come across towards the middle of the last century. Before that time we find mountains spoken of in terms of the severest reprobation.'

Mountains and wild scenery were considered as objects not of beauty or grandeur, but of horror. But in Gray's letters we hear the modern tone. In this respect he was even more in advance of his contemporaries than in his Romantic poetry. From first to last he was always a lover of wild nature; and, as this taste was so unfashionable, we may be sure of his sincerity. Toward the close of his life, this feeling in Gray becomes more and more noticeable. His Journal in the Lakes2 is a marvel when we consider its date, for it is written in the true spirit of Wordsworth. But his early letters and journals show that he knew how to appreciate romantic scenery. Take two extracts from his Journal in France (1739). These words are interest

1 T. S. Perry's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, p. 145.

2 See p. 99.