“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read, ‘Ce n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that remembrance is the only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your shadow—the known sound of your voice still rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the fender, you are standing, or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on the sofa. Do you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before I can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have my answer; and that all that time I am employed, with more than Herculean toil, in pushing the tedious hours along, and wishing to annihilate them: the more I strive, the heavier they move, and the longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have spent many tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.
“May 9, 1770.
“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible for me to dissemble with you: such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”
These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.
We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?
We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless. Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised, perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler, but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance. The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel, that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian, some large and useful task.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.
[1]. Life in Abyssinia; being Notes collected during Three Years’ Residence and Travels in that Country. By Mansfield Parkyns. In Two Volumes. London: 1853.
[2]. A young Mahommedan, now resident at Adoua, was robbed one night of the scalp of one side of his head.—Parkyns, ii. 293.