What he says of 'these four stanzas[62]'—conveys, I think, no sentiment. Every word may be understood separately, but in their present arrangement they seem to have no meaning, or they mean nonsense, and perhaps, contradiction; but this passage I leave to the supreme tribunal of all authors—to the reason and common sense of the reader. He can best determine whether he has 'never seen the notions in any other place, yet persuades himself that he always felt them.' These ideas are very beautifully expressed in many passages of Gaelic poetry: and Mr. Gray, let it be remembered, to the honour of his taste and candour, was the warm admirer of Fingal.
Comparing Gray's ode with an ode of Horace[63], he says, 'there is in the Bard more force, more thought, and more variety'—as indeed there very well may, for in the one there are thirty-six lines only, and in the other one hundred and forty-four. His whole works are full of such trifling observations. 'But to copy is less than to invent, theft is always dangerous.' If he means to insinuate that Gray's Bard is a copy of Horace, (and this is the plain inference from his words) I charge him in direct terms as an atrocious violator of Truth.
'The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; (NO) but its revival disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood, Incredulus odi[64].' How will the Doctor's verdict be digested at Aberdeen by 'a poet, a philosopher, and a good man[65].' It is diverting to remark how these mutual admirers clash on the clearest point, with not a possibility of reconcilement.
I pass by five or six lines, which are not worth contradiction, though they cannot resist it. 'I do not see that the Bard promotes any truth moral or political[66].' The Rambler's intellect is blind.—He seems to have stared a great deal, to have seen little or nothing. The Bard very forcibly impresses this moral, political, and important truth, that eternal vengeance would pursue the English Tyrant and his posterity, as enemies to posterity, and exterminators of mankind. Dr Johnson, a stickler for the jus divinum, did not relish this idea.
He commends the 'Ode on Adversity,' but the hint was at 'first taken from Horace[67].' The poem referred to has almost no resemblance to Mr Gray's. And if we go on at this rate, where will we find any thing original? He mistakes the title of this poem, which is not an 'Ode on,' but a 'Hymn to' Adversity. This is a clear though trifling proof of his inattention. As he dare not condemn this piece, it is dismissed in six lines, to make room for 'The wonderful wonder of wonders, the two Sister Odes, by which many have been persuaded to think themselves delighted[68].' He chews them through four tedious octavo pages. We come then to Gray's Elegy, which occupies an equal share of a paragraph containing only fourteen lines. So much more plentiful is the critic in gall than honey! And in reading this fragment we may remark that nonsense is not panegyric.
Speaking of Welsh Mythology, he says, 'Attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn[69].' There is no reason to think that the Welsh disbelieved these fictions. It is much more likely that many believe them at this day. Shakespeare has from this superstition made a whimsical picture of Owen Glendower: He painted nature. This is one of those assertions which our dictator should have qualified with a perhaps, an adverb, which, wherever it ought to be met with in the Doctor's pages, 'will not easily be found[70].'
'But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example; but suicide is always to be had without expence of thought[71].'
The lines objected to are these:
'He spoke, and headlong from the mountains height,
Deep in the roaring tide, he plung'd to endless night.'
Let the Doctor, if he can, give us a better conclusion.