M.
GRAY AND COWLEY.
Some spirited publisher would confer a serious obligation on the classical world by bringing out an edition of Gray's Poems, with the parallel passages annexed. "Taking him for all in all," he is one of our most perfect poets: and though Collins might have rivalled him (under circumstances equally auspicious), he could have been surpassed by Milton alone. In 1786, Gilbert Wakefield attempted to do for Gray what Newton and Warton had done for Milton (and, for one, I thank him for it); but his illustrations, though almost all good and to the point, are generally from books which every ordinary reader knows off by heart. Besides, Wakefield is so very egotistical, and at times so very puerile, that he is too much for most people. However, his volume, The Poems of Mr. Gray, with Notes, by Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge: London, 1786, would furnish a good substratum for the volume I am now recommending.
Not to speak of Milton's English poems and the great masterpieces of ancient times, with which so learned a scholar as Gray was, of course, familiar, he draws largely from the Greek anthology, from Nonnus, from Milton's Latin poems, from Cowley, and I had almost said from the prose works of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. His admiration of the great "Shakspeare of Divinity" is proved from a portion of one of his letters to Mason; and some other day I may furnish an illustration or two. Indeed, were any publisher to undertake the generous office I mention, I dare say that many a secret treasure would be unlocked, and many an "orient pearl at random strung" be forthcoming for his use. Let me first mention Gray's opinion of Cowley, and then add in confirmation one or two passages out of many. He says in a note to his "Ode on the Progress of Poesy:"
"We have had in our language not other odes of the sublime kind than that of Dryden 'On St. Cecilia's Day:' for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man."
We must submit to Gray's oracular sentence, for he himself was pre-eminently gifted in the three great qualities in which he declares the deficiency of Cowley (at least if we are to judge from his English poems; for the prosody of his Latin efforts seems sadly deficient). At times Cowley's "harmony" is not first-rate, and his "style" is deeply impregnated with the fantastic conceits of the day; but he is still a poet, and a great one too. And I think that in some of his writings Gray had Cowley evidently in mind; e.g. in the epitaph to his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard:"
"Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompence as largely send:
He gave to mis'ry (all he had) a tear;
He gained from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend."