XXIX. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

February 21, 1758.

WOULD you know what I am doing? I doubt you have been told already, and hold my employments cheap enough: but every one must judge of his own capability, and cut his amusements according to his disposition. The drift of my present studies is to know, wherever I am, what lies within reach that may be worth seeing, whether it be building, ruin, park, garden, prospect, picture, or monument; to whom it does or has belonged, and what has been the characteristic and taste of different ages. You will say this is the object of all antiquaries; but pray what antiquary ever saw these objects in the same light, or desired to know them for a like reason? In short, say what you please, I am persuaded whenever my list* is finished you will approve it, and think it of no small use.. My spirits are very near the freezing point; and for some hours of the day this exercise, by its warmth and gentle motion, serves to raise them a few degrees higher.

I hope the misfortune that has befallen Mrs. Cibber's canary bird will not be the ruin of Agis: it is probable you will have curiosity enough to see it, as it is by the author of Douglas.

XXX. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

Cambridge, March 8, 1758.

It is indeed for want of spirits, as you suspect, that my studies lie among the cathedrals, and the tombs, and the ruins. To think, though to little purpose, has been the

* He wrote it under its several divisions, on the blank pages of a pocket atlas. I printed lately a few copies of this catalogue for the use of some friends curious in such matters; and, when I am sufficiently furnished with their observations and improvements upon it, shall perhaps reprint it and give it to the public, as a shorter and more useful pocket companion to the English traveller than has hitherto appeared.

chief amusement of my days; and when I would not, or cannot think, I dream. At present I feel myself able to write a catalogue, or to read the Peerage book, or Miller's Gardening Dictionary, and am thankful that there are such employments and such authors in the world. Some people, who hold me cheap for this, are doing perhaps what is not half so well worth while. As to posterity, I may ask (with somebody whom I have forgot) what has it ever done to oblige me?

To make a transition from myself to as poor a subject, the tragedy of Agis; I cry to think that it should be by the author of Douglas: why, it is all modern Greek; the story is an antique statue painted white and red, frizzed, and dressed in a negligée made by a Yorkshire mantua-maker. Then here is the Miscellany (Mr. Dodsley has sent me the whole set gilt and lettered, I thank him). Why, the two last volumes are worse than the four first; particularly Dr. Akenside is in a deplorable way. What signifies learning and the ancients (Mason will say triumphantly), why should people read Greek to lose their imagination, their ear, and their mother tongue? But then there is Mr. Shenstone, who trusts to nature and simple sentiment, why does he do no better? he goes hopping along his own gravel-walks, and never deviates from the beaten paths for fear of being lost.

*

I have read Dr. Swift, and am disappointed.† There is nothing of the negociations that I have not seen better in M. de Torcy before. The manner is careless, and has little to distinguish it from common writers.

I

* I have been told that this writer, unquestionably a man of great learning and genius, entertained, some years before his death, a notion, that poetry was only true eloquence in metre; and, according to this idea, wrote his Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England, and afterward made considerable alterations in that Collection of Odes which he had published in the earlier part of his life. We have seen in the second letter of this Section, that Mr. Gray thought highly of his descriptive talents at that time. We are not therefore to impute what he here says to any prejudice in the critic, but to that change of taste in the poet, which (if the above anecdote be true) would unavoidably flatten his descriptions, and divest them of all picturesque imagery: nay, would sometimes convert his verse into mere prose; or, what is worse, hard inflated prose.

+ His History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne.

meet with nothing to please me but the spiteful characters of the opposite party and its leaders. I expected much more secret history.

XXXI. MR. GRAY TO MR. STONHEWER.

Cambridge, August 18, 1758.

I AM as sorry as you seem to be, that our acquaintance harped so much on the subject of materialism, when I saw him with you in town, because it was plain to which side of the long-debated question he inclined. That we are indeed mechanical and dependent beings, I need no other proof than my own feelings; and from the same feelings I learn, with equal conviction, that we are not merely such that there is a power within that struggles against the force and bias of that mechanism, commands its motion, and, by frequent practice, reduces it to that ready obedience which we call habit; and all this in conformity to a preconceived opinion (no matter whether right or wrong), to that least material of all agents, a thought. I have known many in his case who, while they thought they were conquering an old prejudice, did not perceive they were under the influence of one far more dangerous; one that furnishes us with a ready apology for all our worst actions, and opens to us a full licence for doing whatever we please; and yet these very people were not at all the more indulgent to other men (as they naturally should have been), their indignation to such as offended them, their desire of revenge on any body that hurt them, was nothing mitigated: in short, the truth is, they wished to be persuaded of that opinion for the sake of its convenience, but were not so in their heart; and they would have been glad (as they ought in common prudence) that nobody else should think the same, for fear of the mischief that might ensue to themselves. His French author I never saw, but

quate ideas of his goodness and justice, as we have of his natural ones, his wisdom and power." This position the excellent author of the View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, calls the MAIN PILLAR of his system; and adds, in another place, that the FATE OF ALL RELIGION is included in this question. On this important point, therefore, that able writer has dwelt largely, and confuted his Lordship effectually. Some sort of readers, however, who probably would slight that confutation, may regard the arguments of a layman, and even a poet, more than those which are drawn up by the pen of a divine and a bishop: it is for the use of these that the paper is published; who, if they learn nothing else from it, will find that Mr. Gray was not of their party, nor so great a wit as to disbelieve the existence of a Deity.*

I will allow Lord Bolingbroke, that the moral, as well as physical attributes of God must be known to us only à posteriori, and that this is the only real knowledge we can have either of the one or the other; I will allow too, that perhaps it may be an idle distinction which we make between them: his moral attributes being as much in his nature and essence as those we call his physical; but the occasion of our making some distinction is plainly this: his eternity, infinity, omniscience, and almighty power, are not what connect him, if I may so speak, with us his creatures. We adore him, not because he always did in every place, and always will, exist; but because he gave and still preserves to us our own existence by an exertion of his goodness. We

* In one of his pocket-books I find a slight sketch in verse of his own character, which may, on account of one line in it, come into a note here with sufficient propriety. It was written in 1761.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune;

He had not the method of making a fortune:

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;

NO VERY GREAT WIT, HE BELIEV'D IN A GOD.

A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

This last line needs no comment for readers of the present time, and it surely is not worth while to write one on this occasion for posterity.