From the very first these observations have, to us, no uncertain sound. In a letter to West,[[104]] when the writer was about six-and-twenty, we find it stated with equal dogmatism, truth, and independence of authority that “the language of the age is never the language of poetry except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs nothing from prose,” with a long and valuable citation, illustrating this defence of “poetic diction,” and no doubt thereby arousing the wrath of Wordsworth. Less developed, but equally important and equally original, is the subsequent description of our language as not being “a settled thing” like the French. Gray, indeed, makes this with explicit reference only to the revival of archaisms, which he defends; but, as we see from other places as well as by natural deduction, it extends to reasonable neologisms also. In this respect Gray is with all the best original writers, from Chaucer and Langland downwards, but against a respectably mistaken body of critics who would fain not merely introduce the caste system into English, but, like Sir Boyle Roche, make it hereditary in this caste not to have any children.

This same letter contains some of Gray’s best-known criticisms, in his faint praise of Joseph Andrews and his warm appreciation of Marivaux and Crébillon. I am not quite certain that, in this last, Gray intended any uncomplimentary comparison, or that he meant anything more than a defence of the novel generally—a defence which itself deserves whatever crown is appropriated to critical merit, inasmuch as the novel had succeeded to the place of Cinderella of Literature. However, both Fielding and Smollett were probably too boisterous for Gray, who could appreciate Sterne better, though he disliked “Tristram’s” faults.

But the fact is that it is not in criticisms of his contemporaries, or indeed in definite critical appreciation at all, that Gray’s strength lies. For any defects in the former he has, of course, the excuse that his was a day of rather small things in poetry; but, once more, it is not quite certain that circumstances would have much altered the case. We must remember that Mr Arnold also does not come very well out of this test; and indeed, that second variety of the critical temperament which we have defined above is not conducive to enthusiasm.[[105]] It is, of course, unlucky that Gray’s personal affection for Mason directed his most elaborate praises to a tenth-rate object; but it is fair to remember that he does reprehend in Mason faults—such as excessive personification—which were not merely those of his friend, the husband of “dead Maria,” but his own. It is a thousand pities that, thanks to Mason himself, we have the similar criticisms of Beattie only in a garbled condition; but they too are sound and sensible, if very merciful. The mercy, however, which Gray showed perhaps too plentifully to friends and relations he did not extend to others. That the “frozen grace” of Akenside appealed little to him is less remarkable than his famous pair of judgments on “Joe” Warton and Collins.

The coupling itself, moreover, and even the prophecy that “neither will last,” are less extraordinary (for the very keenest eyes, when unassisted by “the firm perspective of the past,” will err in this way, and Joseph’s Odes are, as his friend, Dr. Johnson, said of the rumps and kidneys, “very pretty little things”) than the ascription of “a bad ear” to Collins. This is certainly “a term inexplicable to the Muse.” It was written in 1746. Five years later an undated but clearly datable letter to Walpole contains (lxxxiv., ed. cit.) in a notice of Dodsley’s Miscellany, quite a sheaf of criticisms. That of Tickell—“a poor short-winded imitator of Addison, who had himself not above three or four notes in poetry, sweet enough indeed, like those of a German flute, but such as soon tire and satiate the ear with their frequent return”—is very notable for this glance backward on the great Mr Addison, though it would have been unjust to Tickell if (which does not quite appear) it had been intended to include his fine elegy on Addison himself, and the still finer one on Cadogan.[[106]] Gray is quite amiable to The Spleen and The Schoolmistress, and London; justly assigns to Dyer (the Dyer of Grongar Hill, not of The Fleece) “more of poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number,” but unjustly calls him “rough and injudicious,” and brushes most of the rest away, not too superciliously. A year later (December 1752, to Wharton) he grants to Hall’s Satires “fulness of spirit and poetry; as much of the first as Dr Donne, and far more of the latter.” In the elaborate “buckwashing” of Mason’s Caractacus ode, which occupies great part of the very long letter of December 19, 1756, there is a passage of great importance on Epic and Lyric style, which exhibits as well perhaps as anything else the independence, and at the same time the transitional consistency, of Gray’s criticism.

He says first (which is true, and which no rigidly orthodox Neo-Classic would or could have admitted): “The true lyric style, with all its flights of fancy ornaments, heightening of expression, and harmony of sound, is in its nature superior to every other style.” Then he says that this is just the cause why it could not be borne in a work of great length; then that the epic “therefore assumed graver colours,” and only stuck on a diamond borrowed from her sister here and there; then that it is “natural and delightful” to pass from the graver stuff to the diamond, and then that to pass from lyric to epic is to drop from verse to mere prose. All of which seems to argue a curious inequality in clearing the mind from cant. It is true, as has been said, that Lyric is the highest style. But surely the reason why this height cannot be kept is the weakness, not of human receptivity but of human productiveness. Give us an Iliad at the pitch of the best chorus of the Agamemnon, and we will gladly see whether we can bear it or not. Again, if you can pass from the dress to the diamond, why not pass from the diamond to the dress? It is true that in Mason’s case the diamonds were paste, and bad paste; but that does not affect the argument. When, in still a later letter (clxii.) to the same “Skroddles”[[107]] he lays it down that “extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical is one of the grand beauties of lyric poetry,” we must accentuate one of the. But there is a bombshell for Neo-Classicism in cvii., still to “Skroddles.” “I insist that sense is nothing in poetry, but according to the dress she wears and the scene she appears in.”

Gray’s attitude to Ossian is interesting, but very much what we should have expected. He was bribed by its difference from the styles of which he was weary; but he seems from the very first to have had qualms (to which he did some violence, without quite succeeding, in order to stifle them) as to its genuineness.

The Observations on Aristophanes and Plato.

No intelligent lover of the classics, whose love is not limited to them, can fail to regret that by very far the larger bulk of Gray’s critical Observations is directed to Aristophanes and Plato. The annotator is not incompetent, and the annotated are supremely worthy of his labours; but the work was not specially in need of doing, and there have been very large numbers of men as well or better qualified to do it. Such things as this—Aves, 1114: “These were plates of brass with which they shaded the heads of statues to guard them from the weather and the birds”—are things which we do not want from a Gray at all. They are the business of that harmless drudge, the lexicographer, in general, of a competent fifth-form master editing the play, in particular. But there was probably at that time not a single man in Europe equally qualified by natural gifts and by study to deliver really critical and comparative opinions on literature, to discuss the history and changes of English, and the like. Nor has there probably at any date been any man better qualified for this, having regard to the conditions of his own time and country. One cannot, then, but feel it annoying that a life, not long but by no means very short, and devoted exclusively to literary leisure, should have resulted, as far as this special vocation of the author is concerned, in some eighty small pages of Dissertation devoted to English metres and to the Poems of Lydgate.

Let us, however, rather be thankful for what we have got, and examine it, such as it is, with care.