Dryden, and many more are banished from our libraries I cannot see that Fielding ought to be ostracised. We must also discriminate how much of this censure applies to the individual and how much to the age in which he lived. I do not mean that change of place or time can change the standards of Right and Wrong, of Purity and Licentiousness; but where a writer is gross in a gross age, it only shows that he has not the singular virtue of rejecting the taint of evil communications; whereas, he who writes licentiously in defiance of custom and example, must draw his impurities from the foul depths of his own bad heart. I gladly on this disagreeable subject refer to Sir Walter Scott's defence of Swift, a far worse offender than Fielding. Scott says "The best apology for this unfortunate perversion of taste, indulgence of caprice, and abuse of talent is the habits of the times and situation of the author. In the former respect, we should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period contain passages which in modern times would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of conversation more pure than that of composition; for the taint of Charles the Second's reign continued to infect society until the present reign, when, if not more moral, we have become at least more decent than our fathers." 1 Scott quotes, in a note to this passage, several curious proofs of how gross (if judged of by modern rules) the conversation of even ladies of the highest rank used to be, fifty or sixty years before the time when he was writing. He might, in fact, have done more than claim for us a superiority in this respect over our fathers. We are entitled to vary the celebrated boast of Sthenelus, and say Ημεις τοι ΜΗΤΡΩΝ μέγ ̓ ἀμείμονες εὐχόμεθ ̓ εἶναι. Fielding's last novel was his "Amelia," a work in which some have fancied that they could trace symptoms of declining genius. This book certainly wants the vigour and variety of " Tom Jones," but it is itself full of interest, power, and pathos. The character of Justice Thrasher is as severely and strongly drawn, as any in Fielding's other works; and neither he nor any other writer has surpassed the fearful truthfulness of the prison scenes. Above 1 Life of Swift, p. 385. all, Fielding has made his heroine, throughout the story, an object of our admiration, and also of our anxious sympathy and interest: unlike the good personages in many novels, who are made by their authors so painfully meek, and who bear their sufferings with such elaborate propriety, that they seem fit for nothing but to be victims, and the reader feels quite disappointed when any good fortune befalls them. Fielding's last publication was "The Covent-garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knight, Censor-general of Great Britain." This periodical, published twice a-week, he continued for a year, at the end of which the number and extent of his disorders induced him to make a last effort for recovery by a voyage to Portugal. In an account of his voyage, the last production of his active pen, he gives a mournful picture of the state of his health, while his remarks, although full of humour and his wonted vivacity, show occasional depression of spirits, and more than his usual sarcasm. He survived his arrival in Lisbon but two months, and died on the 8th of October, 1754, in the 48th year of his age. (Scott's Lives of the Novelists.-Life, by Murphy.— Cunningham's Brit. Biog.) L GRAY. Or all the men of genius whom Eton has educated, there is no one who has blended his fame more closely with hers, than the poet Gray. Every reader of his poems is reminded or informed of Eton's beauties and glories; and very few of the hundreds who annually visit or revisit Eton, look upon the old College towers, and the fair fresh scenery around them, without feeling Gray's exquisite stanzas almost spontaneously revive in the memory. THOMAS GRAY was born in Cornhill, on the 16th of December, 1716. He was the fifth among twelve children, of Mr. Philip Gray, a citizen and scrivener of London, and was the only one of the twelve who outlived the period of infancy. Probably much of Gray's peculiarly retiring and sensitive character was owing to the circumstance of his thus being brought up an only child; and, though his father lived for many years after Gray had arrived at early manhood, the future poet was emphatically "the only child of his mother;" for the father, a harsh, selfish, violent, and unprincipled man, refused to put himself to any expense, or to take any trouble about his son's education; over which his mother watched with unremitting tenderness and care. Gray repaid his mother's love with the deepest reverence and affection to the end of her life. She lived long enough to witness her son's celebrity; and they frequently resided together. To quote the beautiful lines of Pope : "Him did the tender office long engage To rock the pillow of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath, Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death, And keep a while one parent from the sky." Gray's mother died in 1753, and, according to his friend, Mason, Gray, for many years afterwards, never mentioned her name without a sigh. Gray was indebted to this parent, not only for the rudiments of education which he learned from her lips, while at home, but for being sent to Eton, where Mr. Antrobus, a brother of his mother, was then an assistant-master. Gray was placed under his care; and at Eton he passed many years of industry and happiness, until 1734, when he entered as a pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge. Gray formed, at Eton, a friendship with Horace Walpole and one more cordial and permanent with Richard West; the affectionate intimacy of those two kindred spirits was only terminated by West's death; and it forms one of the most pleasing features in Gray's Biography. The two friends were temporarily separated on leaving Eton: West going to Oxford, and Gray to Cambridge; but they were regular correspondents, and their published letters are some of the most interesting and agreeable specimens of our epistolatory literature. Gray found very little gratification at Cambridge in the society and manners of the young university men who were his contemporaries. They ridiculed his sensitive temper and retired habits, and gave him the nickname of "Miss Gray," for his supposed effeminacy. Nor does Gray seem to have lived on much better terms with his academic superiors. He abhorred mathematics, with the same cordiality of hatred which Pope professed towards them, and at that time concurred with Pope in thinking that the best recipe for dullness was to "Full in the midst of Euclid plunge at once, And petrify a genius to a dunce." "You must know," says Gray, in a letter written by him in his second year at Cambridge, to West, at Oxford, "You must know that I do not take degrees, and after this term shall have nothing more of College impertinencies to undergo." It must not, however, be supposed, that Gray's time at Cambridge was spent in idleness. He was at all times a diligent and systematic reader. Besides improving his acquaintance with the classics, he paid great attention, at this period, to modern languages and literature; and some of his Latin poems, and translations into English from the classical writers, were written by him during the first year that he spent at Cambridge. In the spring of 1739, Gray set out, in company with Horace Walpole, and at his request, on a tour through France and Italy. They passed the following winter at Florence with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Mann, the envoy at that court; and after visiting Rome and Naples, and seeing the remains of Herculaneum, which had only been discovered the year before, they passed eleven months more at Florence. While here, Gray commenced his Latin poem "De Principiis Cogitandi," which shows how diligently and successfully he had studied the best features of Lucretius. There is, however, nothing in it to tempt a second reading; but there is another Latin poem of Gray's, written by him during his travels, which is equal to even his best English poems for the originality and grandeur of its thoughts, as well as for the grace of its diction. This is his Alcaic Ode, written in the Album of the Grande Chartreuse in Dauphiny, in August, 1741. If the reader will turn back to the memoir of Robert Boyle, he will see the effect produced on that celebrated man by the wild scenery of this renowned spot. There is an admirable description of it in one of Gray's letters to his mother; and it inspired in him the following majestic stanzas :— "Oh Tu, severi Religio loci, Quocunque gaudes nomine (non leve Nativa nam certe fluenta Numen habet veteresque sylvas; "Præsentiorem et conspicimus Deum Inter aquas, nemorumque noctem ; Da placidam juveni quietem. Vetat volentem, me resorbens "Saltem remote da, Pater, angulo Surripias hominumque curis." Let those who sneer at modern Latin poetry, try to produce anything from Horace that is superior to this ode, especially to the lines which I have Italicised. If it be said that Gray might have written his ideas in English, let the person who says so, try to turn these Alcaics into English, and see what appearance they will wear. They are as incapable of being translated without their force and grace evaporating in the process, as Horace is. The genius of every language is peculiarly adapted for the expression of some particular trains of thought. The Latin is incomparably the finest vehicle for such ideas as Gray felt at the Grand Chartreuse. This is no disparagement to our own language. Ours has its peculiar powers and graces, more numerous than those of the Latin, though different in kind. Can Shakespeare be Latinised? I will bring together here one or two more specimens of Gray's Latin poetry. The first is a stanza of which Byron deeply felt the beauty and pathos, and which is the theme of one of the best of his minor poems; I mean of the one that commences thus : "There's not a joy the world can give like what it takes away," &c. The Latin lines of Gray which inspired Byron, are: "O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit." The next (and last) two Latin stanzas by Gray which I shall quote, are the two first of a set of Sapphics, addressed by him to |