His felicitations upon his friend’s marriage are not always distinguished for their delicacy. With full allowance for the difference of the times, we still encounter a certain coarseness we should not have expected in the fastidious Gray. But the following is a very charming letter:—
“Dear Mason,—Res est sacra miser (says the poet), but I say it is the happy man that is the sacred thing, and therefore let the profane keep their distance. He is one of Lucretius’ gods, supremely blest in the contemplation of his own felicity, and what has he to do with worshippers? This, mind, is the first reason why I did not come to York; the second is, that I do not love confinement, and probably by next summer may be permitted to touch whom, and where, and with what I think fit, without giving you any offence; the third and last, and not the least perhaps, is, that the finances were at so low an ebb that I could not exactly do what I wished, but was obliged to come the shortest road to town and recruit them. I do not justly know what your taste in reasons may be since you altered your condition, but there is the ingenious, the petulant, and the dull; any one would have done, for in my conscience I do not believe you care a halfpenny for reasons at present: so God bless ye both, and give ye all ye wish, when ye are restored to the use of your wishes.
“I am returned from Scotland charmed with my expedition: it is of the Highlands I speak; the Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a-year. None but those monstrous creatures of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror. A fig for your poets, painters, gardeners, and clergymen, that have not been among them; their imagination can be made up of nothing but bowling-greens, flowering shrubs, horse-ponds, Fleet-ditches, shell grottoes, and Chinese rails. Then I had so beautiful an autumn—Italy could hardly produce a nobler scene—and this so sweetly contrasted with the perfection of nastiness, and total want of accommodation, that Scotland only can supply! Oh, you would have blessed yourself! I shall certainly go again.”
“Dear Mason,—I rejoice; but has she common sense? Is she a gentlewoman? Has she money? Has she a nose? I know she sings a little, and twiddles on the harpsichord, hammers at sentiment, and puts herself in an attitude, admires a cast in the eye, and can say Elfrida by heart. But these are only the virtues of a maid. Do let her have some wife-like qualities, and a double portion of prudence, as she will have not only herself to govern but you also, and that with an absolute sway. Your friends, I doubt not, will suffer for it. However, we are very happy, and have no other wish than to see you settled in the world. We beg you would not stand fiddling about it, but be married forthwith.”
It is impossible, and indeed would be doing injustice to the editor, to regard this present volume in any other light than as a supplement to his edition of the Works of Gray. We must beg leave, therefore, to revert briefly to the life and letters as they are set forth in this preceding publication. It so happens that Mr Mitford was not fortunate even here in the order and method in which his materials reached him, and were consequently arranged. Fresh accessions came in at the latest hour; a fifth volume was to be added, in which there was much repetition; whole letters being reprinted that had already appeared in their place in the previous volumes. Sometimes also an interesting fact is slipped into an appendix, where it may chance to have escaped the eye of all but very attentive readers.
One such fact arrested our own attention, and is a fact of great significance. To some of our readers we may be rendering a welcome service by bringing it forward. We are referred to Sir Egerton Brydges as the authority for it.
Few lives, even of literary men, are said to have been more devoid of incident than Gray’s; yet it is probable that, if we could lift the curtain from his domestic life during the period of his youth, we should find that it was disturbed enough, and of such a nature as must have left deep traces in the subsequent character of the man. Gray, it will be remembered, was (to adopt the language of Horace Walpole) “the son of a money scrivener by Mary Antrobus, a milliner in Cornhill, and sister to two Antrobus’s who were ushers of Eton School. He was born in 1716, and educated at Eton College, chiefly under the direction of one of his uncles, who took prodigious pains with him, which answered exceedingly. From Eton he went to Peter House at Cambridge,” &c. &c. So in all biographies glides on the simple account of his career. Nothing is said of that home in Cornhill, or wherever it was in the City.
But now, some years ago, at a sale of books belonging to one Isaac Reid, there was purchased a manuscript volume of law cases, written out very probably by some studious pupil, for his future behoof and instruction. Amongst these law cases was one drawn up by the mother of Gray, or by some one on her part, and laid formally before counsel for his opinion. It reveals in its one solitary statement the history of years; it tells of domestic discord of the harshest character, and this brought on and imbittered by pecuniary difficulties. Whilst young Gray was studying at Peter House, Cambridge, his mother was drawing up the following case for the opinion of counsel.
Case.
“Philip Gray, before his marriage with his wife (then Dorothy Antrobus, and who was then partner with her sister Mary Antrobus), entered into certain articles of agreement”—(permitting, in short, the said Dorothy Antrobus to continue the said partnership for her own sole and separate use.)