BULLER.
You could give a "sturdy stroke" yourself, Talboys. What's your weight?
TALBOYS.
Gray's style is sometimes too composite—you yourself, sir, would not deny it is so—but Mr Mitford's instances here are absurd, and the charge founded on them false. Gray seldom, if ever—say never, "sacrifices purity of language, and accuracy of thought," for the sake of introducing certain poetical expressions. "All give way" is a gross exaggeration. The beautiful words of the brethren, with which his loving memory was stored, came up in the hour of imagination, and took their place among the words as beautiful of his own congenial inspirations; the flowers he transplanted from poetry "languished not, grew dim, nor died;" for he had taken them up gently by the roots, and with some of the old mould adhering to their tendrils, and, true florist as he was, had prepared for them a richest soil in his own garden, which he held from nature, and which the sun and the dew of nature nourished, and will nourish for ever.
BULLER.
That face is not pleasant, sir. Nothing so disfigures a face as envy. Old Poets at last grow ugly all—but you, sir, are a Philosopher—and on your benign countenance 'twas but a passing cloud. There—you are as beautiful as ever—how comely in critical old age! Any farther fault to find with our friend Mitford?
NORTH.
"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires,
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."
"'Pious drops' is from Ovid—piæ lachrymæ; 'closing eye' is from Pope—'voice of nature' from the Anthologia, and the last line from Chaucer—'Yet on our ashes cold is fire yreken.' From so many quarries are the stones brought to form this elaborate Mosaic pavement." I say, for "piæ lachrymæ" all honour to Ovid—for "pious drops" all honour to Gray. "Closing eye" is not from Pope's Elegy; "voice of nature" is not from the Anthologia, but from Nature herself; Chaucer's line may have suggested Gray's, but the reader of Chaucer knows that Gray's has a tender and profound meaning which is not in Chaucer's at all—and he knows, too, that Mr Mitford is not a reader of Chaucer—for were he, he could not have written "ashes" for "ashen." There were no quarries—there is no Mosaic. Mosaic pavement! Worse, if possible—more ostentatiously pedantic—even than stuck in flowers, jewels, settings, and sockets.
TALBOYS.