And with seraphic flame compassion blends. In which they bade each lenient aid be nigh, That could the sick-bed smoothe of that sad company. LXXIII. It was a worthy edifying sight, And gives to human kind peculiar grace, Some holy man by prayer all opening heaven dispreds. Attended by a glad acclaiming train Of those he rescu'd had from gaping hell, Then, varying to a joyless land of bogs, Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds moe. The first was with base dunghill rags y'clad, And dogs, where'er he went, still barked all the while. LXXVIII. The other was a fell despightful fiend! Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below; Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry. * The north-east wind. LXXIX. Even so through Brentford town, a town of mud, The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud, Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous song, And oft they plunge themselves the mire among; THE HAPPY MAN. HE's not the Happy Man, to whom is given Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing; SONG. HARD is the fate of him who loves, But to the lonely listening plain. Ye gentle spirits of the vale, To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale, And sigh my sorrows in her ear. O, tell her what she cannot blame, Nor holier her own sighs in prayer. But if, at first, her virgin fear Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same. SONG. FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove Bid us sigh on from day to day, But busy, busy, still art thou, For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer, Make but the dear Amanda mine. ODE. TELL me, thou soul of her I love, Or dost thou, free, at pleasure roam, Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While under every well-known tree, I to thy fancy'd shadow talk, And every tear is full of thee; In slumber find a short relief, ODE. O NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove, O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me! You, happy birds! by Nature's simple laws And love and song is all your pleasing care: But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride, O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame. HYMN ON SOLITUDE. HAIL, mildly pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly. Oh! how I love with thee to walk; And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Descending angels bless thy train, O let me pierce thy secret cell! I just may cast my careless eyes TO THE REV. MR. MURDOCH, RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738. THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall: Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all; No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife; Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life. GRAY'S POETICAL WORKS. THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. THOMAS GRAY was born in Cornhill, in the city of London, on the 26th of December, 1716. His father, Philip Gray, was a money-scrivener; but being of an indolent and profuse disposition, he rather diminished than improved his paternal fortune. Our Author received his classical education at Eton school, under Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, a man of sound learning and refined taste, who directed his nephew to those pursuits which laid the foundation of his future literary fame. During his continuance at Eton, he contracted a friendship with Mr. Horace Walpole, well known for his knowledge of the fine arts; and Mr. Richard West, son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, a youth of very promising talents. When he left Eton school, in 1734, he went to Cambridge, and entered a pensioner at Peterhouse, at the recommendation of his uncle Antrobus, who had been a fellow of that college. It is said, that from his effeminacy and fair complection, he acquired among his fellow students, the appellation of Miss Gray, to which the delicacy of his manners seems not a little to have contributed. Mr. Walpole was at that time a fellow-commoner of King's College, in the same University; a fortunate circumstance, which afforded Gray frequent opportunities of intercourse with his Honourable Friend. Mr. West went from Eton to Christ Church, Oxford; and in this state of separation, these two votaries of the Muses, whose dispositions were congenial, commenced an epistolary correspondence, part of which is published by Mr. Mason, a gentleman whose character stands high in the republic of letters. Gray, having imbibed a taste for poetry, did not relish those abstruse studies which generally occupy the minds of students at college; and therefore, as he found very little gratification from academical pursuits, he left Cambridge in 1738, and returned to London, intending to apply himself to the study of the law; but this intention was soon laid aside, upon an invitation given him by Mr. Walpole, to accompany him in his travels abroad; a situation highly preferable, in Gray's opinion, to the dry study of the law. They set out together for France, and visited most of the places worthy of notice in that country: from thence they proceeded to Italy, where an unfortunate dispute taking place between them, a separation ensued upon their arrival at Florence. Mr. Walpole, afterwards, with great candour and liberality, took upon himself the blame of the quarrel; though, if we consider the matter coolly and impartially, we may be induced to conclude that Gray, from a conscious superiority of ability, might have claimed a deference to his opinion and judgment, which his Honourable Friend was not at that time disposed to admit the rupture, however, was very unpleasant to both parties. Gray pursued his journey to Venice on an economic plan, suitable to the circumscribed state of his finances, and having continued there some weeks, returned to England in September, 1741. He appears, from his letters published by Mr. Mason, to have paid the minutest attention to every object worthy of notice throughout the course of his travels. His descriptions are lively and picturesque, and bear particular marks of his genius and disposition. We admire the sublimity of his ideas when he ascends the stupendous heights of the Alps, and are charmed with his display of nature, decked in all the beauties of vegetation. Indeed, abundant information, as well as entertainment, may be derived from his casual letters. In about two months after his arrival in England, he lost his father, who, by an indiscreet profusion, had so impaired his fortune, as not to admit of his son's prosecuting the study of the law with that degree of respectability which the nature of the profession requires, without becoming burthensome to his mother and aunt. To obviate, therefore, their importunities on the subject, he went to Cambridge, and took his bachelor's degree in civil law. But the inconveniencies and distress attached to a scanty fortune, were not the only ills our poet had to encounter at this time; he had not only lost the friendship of Mr. Walpole abroad, but poor West, the partner of his heart, fell a victim to complicated maladies, brought on by family misfortunes, on the 1st of June, 1742, at Pope's, a village in Hertfordshire, where he went for the benefit of the air. The excessive degree in which his mind was agitated for the loss of his friend, will best appear from the following beautiful little sonnet: "In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, Mr. Gray now seems to have applied his mind very sedulously to poetical composition: his Ode to Spring was written early in June to his friend Mr. West, before he received the melancholy news of his death: how our poet's susceptible mind was affected by that melancholy incident, is evidently demonstrated by the lines quoted above; the impression, indeed, appears to have been too deep to be soon effaced; and the tenor of the subjects which called for the exertions of his poetical talents subsequent to the production of this Ode, corroborates that observation; these were his Prospect of Eton, and his Ode to Adversity. It is also supposed, and with great probability, that he began his Elegy in a Country Church Yard about the same time. He passed some weeks at Stoke, near Windsor, where his mother and aunt resided, and in that pleasing retirement finished several of his most celebrated poems. From thence he returned to Cambridge, which from this period was his chief residence during the remainder of his life. The conveniencies with which a college life was attended to a person of his narrow fortune, and studious turn of mind, were more than a compensation for the dislike which, for several reasons, he bore to the place; but he was perfectly reconciled to his situation, on Mr. Mason's being elected a fellow of Pembroke Hall; a circumstance which brought him a companion, who, during life, retained for him the highest degree of friendship and esteem. In 1742, he was admitted to the degree of bachelor in the civil law, as appears from a letter written to his particular friend, Dr. Wharton, of Old Park, near Durham, formerly fellow of Pembroke-Hail, Cambridge, in which he ridicules, with much point and humour, the follies and foibles, and the dulness and formality, which prevailed in the university. In order to enrich his mind with the ideas of others, he devoted a considerable portion of his time to the study of the best Greek authors; so that, in the course of six years, there were hardly any writers of eminence in that language whose works he had not only read, but thoroughly digested. His attention however to the Greek classics did not wholly engross his time; for he found leisure to advert, in a new sarcastical manner, to the ignorance and dulness with which he was surrounded, though situated in the centre of learning. There is only a fragment remaining of what he had written on this subject, from which it may be inferred, that it was intended as an Hymn to Ignorance. The fragment is wholly introductory; yet many of the lines are so pointed in signification, and harmonious in versification, that they will be admitted by the admirers of verse, to display his poetical talents with more brilliancy than appears in many of his lyric productions. Hail, horrors, hail! ye ever gloomy bowers, Ye gothic fanes, and antiquated towers! Where rushy Camus' slowly-winding flood Perpetual draws his humid train of mud: Glad I revisit thy neglected reign: Oh, take me to thy peaceful shade again. But chiefly thee, whose influence, breath'd from high, In 1744, he seems to have given up his attention to the Muses. Mr. Walpole, desirous of preserving what he had already written, as well as perpetuating the merit of their deceased friend West, endeavoured to prevail with Gray, to whom he had previously become reconciled, to publish his own poems, together with those of West; but Gray declined it, conceiving their productions united, would not suffice to fill even a small volume. In 1747, Gray became acquainted with Mr. Mason, then a scholar of St. John's College, and afterwards Fellow of Pembroke-Hall. Mr. Mason, who was a man of great learning and ingenuity, had written the year before, his "Monody on the death of Pope," and his "Il Bellicoso," and "Il Pacifico;" and Gray revised these pieces at the request of a friend. This laid the foundation of a friendship that terminated but with life: and Mr. Mason, after the death of Gray, testified his regard for him, by superintending the publication of his works. The same year he wrote a little Ode on the Death of a favourite Cat of Mr. Walpole's, in which humour and instruction are happily blended: but the following year he produced an effort of much more importance; the fragment of an Essay on the Alliance of Education and Government. Its tendency was to demonstrate the necessary concurrence of both to form great and useful men. It opens with the two following similes. The exordium is rather uncommon; but he seems to have adopted it as a kind of clue to the subject he meant to pursue in the subsequent part of the poem. As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, They follow pleasure, and they fly from pain; Say, then, thro' ages by what fate confin'd Has Scythia breath'd the living cloud of war; Th' encroaching tide that drowns her less'ning lands, What wonder in the sultry climes, that spread If, with advent❜rous oar and ready sail, It is much to be lamented that our author did not finish what he had so successfully, begun, as the fragment is deemed superior to every thing in the same style of writing which our language can boast. In 1750, he put the finishing stroke to his Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, which was communicated first to his friend Mr. Walpole, and by him to many persons of rank and distinction. This beautiful production introduced the author to the favour of Lady Cobham, and gave occasion to a singular composition, called A Long Story: in which various effusions of wit and humour are very happily interspersed. The Elegy having found its way into the "Magagazine of Magazines," the author wrote to Mr. Walpole, requesting he would put it into the hands of Mr. Dodsley, and order him to print it immediately, in order to rescue it from the disgrace it might have incurred by its appearance in a magazine. The Elegy was the most popular of all our author's productions; it ran through eleven editions, and was translated into Latin by Anstey and Roberts; and in the same year a version of it was published by Lloyd. Mr. Bentley, an eminent artist of that time, wishing to decorate this elegant composition with every ornament of which it is so highly deserving, drew for it a set of designs, as he also did for the rest of Gray's productions, for which the artist was liberally repaid by the author in some beautiful stanzas; but unfortunately no perfect copy of them remains. It appears, by a letter of Dr. Wharton, that Gray finished his Ode on the Progress of Poetry early in 1755. The Bard also was begun about the same time; and the following beautiful fragment on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude, the next year. The merit of the two former pieces was not immediately perceived, nor generally acknowledged. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Lloyd and Colman wrote, in concert, two Odes, to "Oblivion" and "Obscurity," in which they were ridiculed with much ingenuity. "Now the golden morn aloft Waves her dew-bespangled wing, Till April starts, and calls around |