Case.
“Philip Gray, before his marriage with his wife (then Dorothy Antrobus, and who was then partner with her sister Mary Antrobus), entered into certain articles of agreement”—(permitting, in short, the said Dorothy Antrobus to continue the said partnership for her own sole and separate use.)
“That in pursuance of the said articles, the said Mary, with the assistance of the said Dorothy her sister, hath carried on the said trade for near thirty years, with tolerable success for the said Dorothy. That she hath been at no charge to the said Philip; and during all the said time hath not only found herself in all manner of apparel, but also for all her children to the number of twelve, and most of the furniture of his house; and paying £40 a-year for his shop, almost providing everything for her son, whilst at Eton school, and now he is at Peter House at Cambridge.
“Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, he hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the most vile and abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear, and danger of her life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit her bed and lie with her sister. This she was resolved, if possible, to bear; not to leave her shop of trade for the sake of her son, to be able to assist in the maintenance of him at the University, since his father won’t.
“There is no cause for this usage unless it be an unhappy jealousy of all mankind in general (her own brother not excepted); but no woman deserves or hath maintained a more virtuous character: or it is presumed, if he can make her sister leave off trade, he thinks he can then come into his wife’s money, but the articles are too secure for his vile purposes.
“He daily threatens he will pursue her with all the vengeance possible, and will ruin himself to undo her and his only son; in order to which he hath given warning to her sister to quit his shop where they have carried on their trade so successfully, which will be almost their ruin: but he insists she shall go out at Midsummer next; and the said Dorothy, his wife, in necessity must be forced to go along with her to some other house and shop, to be assisting to her said sister in the said trade, for her own and her son’s support.
“But if she can be quiet, she neither expects nor desires any help from him: but he is really so very vile in his nature, she hath all the reason to expect most troublesome usage from him that can be thought of.”—Vol. i. Appendix B.
Then follow some questions, and the answer of Counsel, which it is not necessary to extract. What must have been the effect of such domestic scenes as are here disclosed to us, on the sensitive mind of Gray, may be partly guessed. Nor need we be surprised that the college youth at Peter House, and the associate of Horace Walpole, early contracted a habit of silence upon the events of his own life. Bonstettin, whom he took so cordially to his friendship, says, “Je racontais à Gray ma vie et mon pays, mais toute sa vie à lui était fermée pour moi. Jamais il ne me parlait de lui. Il y avait chez Gray entre le present et le passé un abîme infranchisable. Quand je voulais un approche, de sombre nuées venaient le couvrir.”—Vol. V., Notes, p. 181.
We understand now why Gray held his mother in so much esteem, and why the father was rarely spoken of, while her name was never mentioned to the latest day without a trembling of the voice; why there was found at his death, still unopened, in his room, the chest containing her wearing-apparel: he had never dared to open it, or had never reconciled himself to part with its contents. To his mother he owed his education and the position he occupied in life—a greater debt than even that life which she twice gave. He was the only one of twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, as we are told, “from suffocation produced by a fulness of blood;” and this strange family destiny would have befallen Gray also, but that his mother “removed the paroxysm which attacked him, by opening a vein with her own hand.”
The chief incident of Gray’s life, so far as biographers have been able to record it, is his intimacy with Walpole;—his journey with him upon the Continent, and the rupture that took place between them. Of this quarrel we find an explanation in a note which is by no means honourable to Walpole. Entertaining a suspicion that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, he clandestinely opened and re-sealed one of Gray’s letters. After this, there was “little cordiality between them.” We should think not, for, short of a crime, could one man be guilty towards another of a more dishonourable action? But we are not satisfied with the authority on which this explanation is given. The account will be found in a note, vol. ii. p. 175. We have only that sort of hearsay evidence which lawyers have universally agreed in rejecting. A Mr Isaac Reed makes a private memorandum (some time after the conversation) of what a Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, had told him. This is not sufficient authority for what, we presume in the time of Walpole as well as our own, would be regarded as a grave charge, if brought against a gentleman. Of Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, and how he heard the story, we are told nothing. Mr Isaac Reed merely says of him “that he was likely to be well informed.”
The quarrel, its cause and its reconciliation, are, perhaps, now of very little moment, but the intimacy with Walpole must always remain as one of the most important facts in the life of Gray. For what is the character which Gray reveals to us? In few words, it is the incongruous combination of the sensitive poet and man of letters, with the affectation and levity of a man of the world. This latter phase of his character must have owed much of its development to his early intercourse with the son of a prime-minister, and one whose wit and pleasantry would fully justify and explain an influence over his graver companion. Gray was a man who had a heart, and had learnt to hide it under the affectation of indifference; neither could he have been without the stirrings of a noble ambition; but he had taught himself that it was a prettier thing to graft the man of letters on the refined gentleman, than to give himself, heart and soul, to some intellectual enterprise. He thinks, or he can write, that “Literature, to take it in its most comprehensive sense, and include everything that requires invention or judgment, or barely application and industry, seems indeed drawing apace to its dissolution;” but he makes no serious effort to arrest this dissolution. What is the literature of a country but the efforts of such men as he? There was a younger contemporary, one Gibbon, then turning over the same classic pages as himself, who was soon to add to the literature of England a History which would display more learning and more eloquence than had ever before been united together. Antiquarian as he was, what epoch has he illustrated for us? Zoologist, botanist; he corrects the latinity of Linnæus! He makes notes innumerable—notes on Strabo, notes on Plato; the text of what author has he amended or explained for us? When appointed Professor of History, he does not even write a single lecture.
“The political opinions of Gray, H. Walpole says, he never rightly understood;” and his biographer adds that his religious opinions lie in a certain obscurity. Some writers “not favourable to the cause of Christianity,” have ranked him, it seems, amongst freethinkers: orthodox and pious friends have no doubt whatever about his orthodoxy or his piety. The perusal of his Letters never led us, for a moment, to rank him amongst unbelievers; but if any one should suggest that he had not thought on the subject with sufficient earnestness even to be a doubter, we might be disposed to acquiesce in this explanation. He lived in a time when there was little earnestness of thought, and he was not of that energetic nature which rises above the influence of the age. He was scandalised at Rousseau and Voltaire because they were disturbers of the peace: one is not sure that there was a deeper feeling in his hostility towards them. The manner in which a person is written to is often as significant as the manner in which he himself writes. Throughout their correspondence, the Rev. William Mason never alludes to his clerical profession in any one respect but as a means of living well and comfortably in the world—as a career in which promotion and good living are to be encountered. The credit of this quite secular tone must be divided between the correspondents: perhaps in the greater measure to the elder and more influential of the two.
These correspondents were, no doubt, excellent friends; but Gray never speaks to a third person in a very flattering manner of Mason. He is disposed always to deny any very close intimacy. He appears to have said to himself, Men will laugh at us two poets, communing upon verse, and flattering each other upon the muse; they will make me out also no better than a poet; whereas I am gentleman by profession and poet by accident. Writing to Walpole, he says, “I like Mr Aston Hervey’s Fable, and an ode by Mr Mason, a new acquaintance of mine.” Of this new acquaintance he had written to Warton, more than two years before, in the following strain: “Mr Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode very much, but have found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty. I take him for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves everybody he meets with; he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it.” In another place he says of him that he “has not, properly speaking, anything one can call a passion about him, except a little malice and revenge.” Such phrases as these occur in his correspondence with Warton and Brown: “I do not hear from Mason;” “You think us great correspondents, but,” &c. To us it seems that he really liked the younger poet, who more, perhaps, than any other man he knew, sympathised with him on the poetical side of his character; but then he did not like to be grouped with him, in the eyes of the wits and the worldlings. They will compare us, and associate us, and think us rival candidates for popular applause.
We see this morbid sense of ridicule betray itself in his publication of his poems. He insists upon it that the poems shall be published as mere illustrations of the drawings of Bentley, which accompanied them. The book met with applause, and the Elegy became at once a popular favourite. He seems, in a letter to Warton, to reprove and to repudiate this abundant praise. “I should have been glad that you and two or three more people had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply.” For all this, when he published the Bard, and other odes which, from their nature, appealed still more to the select few, he was not a little nettled because “the town” found them obscure.
In his manner and carriage, Gray is described as being cold and fastidious to an offensive degree. A contemporary and admirer, Rev. William Cole, says, “I am apt to think the characters of Voltaire and Mr Gray were similar. They were both little men, very nice and exact in their persons and dress, most lively and agreeable in conversation, except that Mr Gray was apt to be too satirical, and both of them full of affectation.” And then contrasting him with Dr Farmer, he thus describes the two men: “The one (Dr Farmer) a cheerful, companionable, hearty, open, downright man, of no great regard to dress or common forms of behaviour; the other (Gray) of a most fastidious and recluse distance of carriage, rather averse to sociability, but of the graver turn; nice, and elegant in his person, dress, and behaviour, even to a degree of finicalness and effeminacy.”—Vol. i., Appendix. The contrast here drawn between Gray and Dr Farmer, suggests to us the dissimilarity and mutual distaste which existed between Gray and a still greater contemporary, Dr Johnson. They repelled each other far more by diversity of manner than by opposition of opinion. Gray refused to be personally acquainted with Johnson. Passing him in the streets of London, he whispered to the companion with whom he was walking, “There is the Great Bear! there goes Ursa Major!” and accompanied the words with a sort of shrinking and recoil. It is well known that the antipathy was mutual. The judgment passed upon Gray in the Lives of the Poets is the harshest and the least equitable criticism throughout that work. One cannot help admitting, however, that, if Gray had written the life of Johnson, there would have been a piece of criticism produced still less equitable. Gray is rarely just to any of his contemporaries. He seldom admires, and the little praise he bestows is distributed most capriciously. He speaks as highly of Lyttleton’s Monody as of the Odes of Collins. He mentions Sterne but coldly, and when he would be complimentary, always selects his Sermons! You would say that a certain superciliousness has been creeping over and into the very heart of the man.
But now change the point of view, and from this the world-aspect turn to the poetic side of the character. It was not a heartless man who wrote the Elegy and the Bard, who was the friend of West, who in later times was the friend of Bonstettin, who at all times could find society in meditation, and companionship in beauties of nature. The Letters of Gray are too well known to render it necessary for us to make extracts from them, to show how often a vein of deep feeling runs through a half-playful style of diction. His pathos touches us still more, whether he is describing nature, or speaking of himself and of his friends, from the restraint he has evidently put upon his own enthusiasm, or his own tenderness. The “melancholy Gray” was a far higher being than the witty and Walpolian Gray; and it is the blending of the two together that has made the singular charm of the Letters.
If evidence were wanted to prove that there existed uncorrupted in the mind of Gray springs of pure and genuine feeling, we should find that evidence in his attachment to Bonstettin. This young foreigner, by his own ardent temper, had broken down all those cold artificial barriers in which it is said the poet habitually intrenched himself. Gray had taken lodgings for him at Cambridge, near his own rooms, and they spent the evenings together, reading the Greek poets and philosophers. When Bonstettin returned to his native country, Switzerland, Gray felt the loss of his friend in a manner which he does not seek even to disguise, but expresses with unaffected warmth:—
“Cambridge, April 12, 1770.
“Never did I feel, my dear Bonstettin, to what a tedious length the few short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and expectation, till you had left me: nor ever knew before with so strong a conviction how much this frail body sympathises with the inquietude of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks, like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head into a vessel of water, and take it out again, as the standers-by affirmed, at the command of a Dervise, and found he had passed many years in captivity, and begot a large family of children. The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to you are only owing to your last letter, a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows when it may shine again. I did not conceive till now, I own, what it was to lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own condition before I possessed the happiness of your friendship.
“But enough of this—I return to your letter. It proves at least that, in the midst of your new gaieties, I still hold some place in your memory; and, what pleases me above all, it has an air of undissembled sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable friend, to show me your heart simply, and without the shadow of disguise, and leave me to weep over it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.”
“April 19, 1770.
“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read, ‘Ce n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that remembrance is the only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your shadow—the known sound of your voice still rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the fender, you are standing, or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on the sofa. Do you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before I can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have my answer; and that all that time I am employed, with more than Herculean toil, in pushing the tedious hours along, and wishing to annihilate them: the more I strive, the heavier they move, and the longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have spent many tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.
“May 9, 1770.
“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible for me to dissemble with you: such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”
These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.
We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?
We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless. Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised, perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler, but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance. The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel, that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian, some large and useful task.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.
[1]. Life in Abyssinia; being Notes collected during Three Years’ Residence and Travels in that Country. By Mansfield Parkyns. In Two Volumes. London: 1853.
[2]. A young Mahommedan, now resident at Adoua, was robbed one night of the scalp of one side of his head.—Parkyns, ii. 293.
[3]. Blackwood’s Magazine for September 1851.
[4]. “Τὸ μὲν οὖν κολακεύειν, αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον.”—Dem. Phal. de Elocutione.
[5]. Not such asphaltum as is now commonly used; he had a method of preparing it to render it innocuous.
[6]. We owe it to Mr Stansfield to say, that had the authority we quoted given, with Mr Stansfield’s answers, the subsequent explanation of them, we should not have used such an expression as that he “confessed an astonishing indifference.” We therefore quote his explanation. He is asked, (Question 3628,) “You have stated that you have not studied these pictures in the National Gallery much; that you were not very conversant with the works of the old masters; and that you had not studied those pictures in particular; so you, from your previous knowledge of them, feel competent to give an opinion whether or not they have been injured in the minute details to which reference has been made? Yes. I think I may; because when I spoke of my ignorance, I did it in reference to my not possessing the information that I know many gentlemen belonging to the Academy have. I should refer to Mr Dyce at once as a very great authority, and also to Sir Charles Eastlake himself. I have not their experience in Italian works of art, but still the pictures that are before us I have looked at with admiration, and I know that if there is any material injury done to them I should detect it as soon as any one.”
[7]. Gen. x. 3; Ezek. xxvii. 14, xxxviii. 6; Herod, iv. 5.
[8]. Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses voyages de l’Inde, depuis l’an 629 jusqu’en 645. Par Hoei II. et Yen-thsong. Traduite du Chinois par Stanislas Julien. Paris: 1853.
[9]. Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. Corrected by himself. London, 1854.
[10]. Funfzig Jahre in beiden Hemisphären. Reminiscences of a Merchant’s Life. By Vincent Nolte. 2 volumes. Hamburg: Perthes-Besser. London: Williams and Norgate. 1853.
[11]. Memoires de G. J. Ouvrard. Paris, 1826.
[12]. The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon. By S. W. Baker, Esq. London: 1854.
[13]. The Correspondence of Thomas Gray and William Mason, with Notes and Illustrations. By the Rev. John Mitford, Vicar of Benhall.
Gray’s Works. Aldine Edition.
[14]. Gray’s Works, Appendix, vol. i. p. 112.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
| Page | Changed from | Changed to |
|---|---|---|
| [171] | αἰχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾷν, ἐπισαφλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐχηματισμένον—Dem. Phil. | αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον—Dem. Phal. |
| [178] | not dry brush, a glaze, and he may | hot dry brush, a glaze, and he may |
| [188] | A judge sate in the centre of | A judge sat in the centre of |
- Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
- Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.