had pitched upon, and the other two, it was impossible to balance long: examples show me that it is not absolutely necessary to be a blockhead to succeed in this profession." As he saw his fortune was so slender as not to enable him to take the usual course of residing in one of the Inns of Court, and yet unwilling to hurt the feelings of his mother by appearing entirely to forsake his profession, he changed, or pretended to change, the line of study, and went to Cambridge to take his degree in civil law. "But the narrowness of his circumstances," says Mr. Mason, "was not the only thing that distressed him at this period. He had lost the friendship of Mr. Walpole abroad; he had also lost much time in his travels, a loss which application could not easily retrieve, when so severe and laborious a study as that of the common law was to be the object of it; and he well knew, that whatever improvement he might have made in this interval, either in taste or science, such improvement would have stood him in little stead with regard to his present situation and exigencies." That Gray, however, had entirely relinquished all thoughts of his profession, seems to appear from a letter to West; "Alas! for one,” he writes, "who has nothing to do but to amuse himself. I believe my amusements are as little amusing as most folks'. But no matter: it makes the hours pass, and is better than

ἐν ἀμάθιᾳ καὶ ἀμοῦσιᾳ καταβιῶναι.”

He now began his tragedy of Agrippina, which Mason thinks was suggested by a favourable

impression left on his mind by a representation of His friend objected to

the Britannicus of Racine.

C

the length of Agrippina's speech; and the fragment is now published, not exactly as Gray left it, but as it was altered by Mason from the suggestion of West. The same friend also objected to the style, which he thought too antiquated. "I will not," he says, "decide what style is fittest for the English stage; but I should rather choose one that bordered upon Cato, than upon Shakespeare." To this Gray answered; "As to matter of style, I have this to say, the language of the age is never the language of poetry, excepting among the French, whose verse, when the thoughts or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose, &c." And he then supports this opinion by saying, that all poets have enriched their language by foreign idioms, expressions, and sometimes words of their own composition and invention; that Shakespeare and Milton had been great creators in this way, and none more licentious than Pope* and Dryden.

* Some of Pope's expressions, in his attempts to compress his sense, are such as are not warranted by the structure of our language, and cannot be approved; such as, ex. gr. Essay on Man-—

66

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul." ii. 59. acts, for actuates.

"Say at what part of nature will they stand?" stand, for stop or stay.

"Thus victor of his health, his fortune, friends,

ix. 56.

And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." Ep. iii.

332.

a singular expression, "victor of his health, his friends," &c.

He then gives some instances from Dryden, who is certainly a great master of our poetical tongue, and who abounds with idiomatical expressions; but such expressions as "museful mopings, foiled doddard oaks, retchless of laws," and many others which he gives, appear to me rather exceptions to the grace and harmony of Dryden's style, than ornaments of it. I also think, that the propriety of the introduction of antique expressions, and obsolete words, will much depend on the nature of the poem, and even on the structure of the verse; and that unless used with great caution, and selected with taste and care, they will give the composition the character of imitation, which would be injurious to its effect. The language of Shakespeare may Garth inflamed with early praise."

"Well-natured

Prol. to Sat. 137.

for want of the insertion of "me" after "inflamed," the verb is mistaken for the passive voice, and is applied to Garth himself. "What will it leave me, if it snatch my rhyme?"

Imit. of Horace, 77.

snatch is put for "steal from me, take away;" but steal had been used just before.

"There are who have not; and thank Heaven there are Who, if they have not, think not worth their care." Ibid v. 262.

i. e. think them not worth their care.

"Whose seats the weary travellers repose:

i. e. on whose seats.

And many others might be mentioned in the works of this correct poet; so difficult is the art, even to the most skilful workmen.

be more picturesque and poetical than that of Addison and Rowe, but the propriety and advantage of adapting it to modern composition does not appear to me necessarily to follow.

Mason, in a note on this passage of the Letters, supports Gray's opinion, and considers "that following these rules will prevent our poetry from falling into insipidity;" as if fine thoughts and poetical imagery, however expressed, could be insipid. But Mason's own poetry was formed on this model, and its artificial character, and flowery and redundant expressions, were the necessary results. In some correspondence between Gray and Mason, which I possess in manuscript, the former very severely criticised the artificial structure of Mason's poetry. He says, "Pray have done with 'pil'd stores, and coral floors,'" &c. And of another poem, he observes, "The line which I like best in your sonnet is the simplest-'So to beguile my solitary way.'* It looks as if you could live at Aston, which is not true; but that's not my affair." If I recollect rightly, there is but one line in the Elegy on Lady Coventry which he seemed much to approve, and that was one in which the thought and expression were most easy, natural, and just. "Come here, he adds, and I will read and criticise

"Your amorous ditties all a winter's day."

*MS. Letter.