[107]. After all, he may be forgiven much apparent over-valuation of Mason for this name. Whatever its meaning between the friends, it “speaks” the author of Elfrida and Caractacus, and the Monologues and the Odes, and all but those lines of the epitaph on his wife which Gray wrote for him. “To skroddle” should have been naturalised for “to write minor poetry.”
[108]. As printed in Mr Gosse’s edition he is made to say that the Moral Ode was written “almost two hundred years after Chaucer’s time.” The sense, however, as well as the use of the word “Semi-Saxon,” shows that he meant “before,” so that “after” must be a slip either of his own pen or of the later press.
[109]. See Letter to Wharton, October 7, 1757 (cxxxvi., ii., 340, ed. cit.).
[110]. I mean, of course, nobody except specialists. On the vexed question of Gray’s direct knowledge of Norse, on the priority or contemporaneousness of Percy’s “Five Pieces,” and on the subject generally, an interesting treatise, Mr F. E. Finlay’s Scandinavian Influences on the English Romantic Movement (Boston, U.S.A., 1903), has appeared since the text was written.
[111]. Despite the curious infuriation which such attention seems to excite in some minds by no means devoid of celestial quality. Gradually it will be seen that current views of prosody are a sort of “tell-tale” or index of the state of poetic criticism generally. They concern us here, however, only at certain moments.
[112]. My copy of him is Dodsley’s third edition, in 2 vols., of the Poems and Essays (London, 1768), with the second edition of the additional volume containing the Letters (London, 1769). These latter are described by Gray in the less agreeable Graian manner, as “about nothing but” the Leasowes “and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen who wrote verses also.”
[113]. Ed. cit., ii. 10-13, 158-161, and elsewhere.
[114]. Most of the quotations following are found in two Essays on “Books and Writers,” ii. 157-180, 228-239.
[115]. ii. 172; ii. 167. The first of these has been echoed, perhaps unconsciously, by more than one great Romantic writer. For the second, compare Regnier’s regret pensif et confus, D’avoir été et n'être plus. Shenstone’s Letters (as is implied in the very terms of Gray’s sneer) deal with literary subjects freely enough; but their criticism is rarely important, though I have noted a good many places. Some of the most interesting (p. 58 sq., ed. cit.) concern Spenser, and Shenstone’s gradual conversion “from trifling and laughing to being really in love with him.” From another (lxii. p. 175) we learn that at any rate when writing, S. was still in the dark about “the distance of the rhymes” in Lycidas. There is seen in Letter xc., viii. sq., on “Fables,” an intimation (c. iii. p. 321) of the ballad plan with Percy; praise of The Rambler; a defence of light poetry as being still poetry, &c. &c. It is almost all interesting as an example of Critical Education.
[116]. By Messrs Hales & Furnivall. 3 vols. and Supplement. (London, 1867-68.) As for Percy’s Scandinavian Enquiries, see note above.