'Gray thought his language more poetical, as it was more remote from common use[48].' This assertion is not entirely without foundation, but it is very far from being quite true.
'Finding in Dryden, honey redolent of spring, an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making gale to be redolent of joy and youth[49].' The censure is just. But Dr Johnson is the last man alive, who should blame an author for driving our language to its utmost limits: For a very great part of his life has been spent in corrupting and confounding it. In some verses to a Lady, he talks of his arthritic pains[50], an epithet not very suitable to the dialect of Parnassus. Dr Johnson himself cannot always write common sense. 'In a short time many were content to be shewn beauties which they could not see[51].' He must here mean—'Beauties which they could not have seen;'—for it is needless to add, that no man can be shewn what he cannot see.
It is curious to observe a man draw his own picture, without intending it. Pomposo, when censuring some of Gray's odes, observes, That 'Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble.' He (the author of an Elegy in a country church-yard) 'has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tip-toe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease, or nature. In all Gray's odes, there is a kind of cumbrous splendour which we wish away[52].' We may say like Nathan, Thou art the man.
Mr. Gray, and Mr. Horace Walpole, are said to have wandered through France and Italy[53]. And as a contrast to this polite expression, I shall add some remarks which have occurred on the Doctor's own mode of wandering.
'It must afford peculiar entertainment to see a person of his character, who has scarcely ever been without the precincts of this metropolis (London), and who has been long accustomed to the adulation of a little knot of companions of his own trade, sallying forth in quest of discoveries—Neither the people nor the country that he has visited will perhaps be considered as the most extraordinary part of the phænomena he has described.—The Doctor has endeavoured to give an account of his travels; but he has furnished his readers with a picture of himself. He has seen very little, and observed still less. His narration is neither supported by vivacity, to make it entertaining, nor accompanied with information, to render it instructive. It exhibits the pompous artificial diction of the Rambler with the same vacuity of thought.—The reader is led from one Highland family to another merely to be informed of the number of their children, the barrenness of their country, and of the kindness with which the Doctor was treated. In the Highlands he is like a foolish peasant brought for the first time into a great city, staring at every sign-post, and gaping with equal wonder and astonishment at every object he meets[54].'
'At Florence they (Gray and Walpole) quarelled and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault[55].' This is a dirty insinuation; and the rant which follows in the next period is of equal value.
He observes, That 'A long story perhaps adds little to Gray's reputation[56].' Perhaps was useless here, and indeed the Doctor has introduced it in a thousand places, where it was useless, and left it out in as many where it was necessary. In justice to Gray, he ought to have added, that their Author rejected, from a correct edition of his works, this insipid series of verses.
'Gray's reputation was now so high that he had the honour of refusing the laurel[57].' No man's reputation has ever yet acquired him the laurel, without some particular application from a courtier. What honour is acquired by refusing the laurel? An hundred pounds a-year would have enabled an œconomist like Mr Gray to preserve his independence and exert his generosity. The office of laureat is only ridiculous in the hands of a fool. Mr. Savage in that character produced nothing which would dishonour an Englishman and a poet. It is probable that Mr. Gray, a very costive writer, could hardly have made a decent number of verses within the limited time. From the passage now quoted the reader will not fail to remark, that the Rambler 'nurses in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings[58].'
Mr. Gray 'had a notion not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastic foppery to which my kindness for a man of learning and of virtue wishes him to have been superior[59].' Milton, who was no doubt a shallow fellow compared with the Reformer of our language, had the same 'fantastic foppery.' Mr Hume remarks that Milton had not leisure 'to watch the returns of genius.'—Every man feels himself at some times less capable of intellectual effort, than at others. The Rambler himself has, in the most express terms, contradicted his present notion. In Denham's life he quotes four lines which must, he says, have been written 'in some hour propitious to poetry.' In another place in the same lives his tumid and prolix eloquence disembogues itself to prove, what no man ever doubted, viz. 'That a tradesman's hand is often out, he cannot tell why.' And an inference is drawn, That this is still more apt to be the case with a man straining his mental abilities.
In Gray's ode on spring, 'The thoughts have nothing new, the morality is natural, but too stale[60].' Read the poem, and then esteem the critic if you can. Speaking of the Bard he says, 'Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor[61].' The question here is, What he means by a technical beauty? That word he explains, 'Belonging to arts; not in common or popular use'—How can this word in either of these senses apply here with propriety?