have attempted to prove this in an analysis of his sonnet. SMYTHE. Say rather that the thoughts glow through the words, kindling them into colours and lustre. WORDSWORTH. I draw also an unfavourable conclusion from his depreciatory opinion of Thomson and Collins; to the exquisite beauty of the Castle of Indolence he was avowedly insensible, and of the sweetest, the most poetic odes of their kind in the language, he could only say, that they deserved to last for some years, but would not. Mr. Jeffrey could hardly have produced a more unfortunate prophecy. In condemning the ornamental character of Gray's diction, I omit the Elegy from my censure; it is almost the only instance where he deviated into nature. SMYTHE. Yet in truth, Gray did not differ so very widely from your own theory. We think in words, he said, but poetry consists in expression; and beside this, your criticism is unfair in suppressing all those instances of moral wisdom, and what you, on a different occasion, have styled a meditative pathos, a reflective sadness, R into which you say the mind cannot sink of itself, but must descend by treading the steps of thought*. Now, in this pathos Gray is inimitable. He reminds us of the noixar apponia-the Ethic Harmonies of ancient days. You cannot read a stanza without being struck, as with a Divine rod, by the wise truth of one of his sentences. There is no writer whose works occupy so small a space, from whom so many moral lessons might be gathered; and let me add, that no writer, except Shakspeare, is likely to live so long in the hearts of the people. When no green tomb swells up in our village burial-grounds, no rustic moralist exists to spell the decayed epitaphs, no busy housewife to "ply her evening care," no children to climb the knees of their returning father, then shall the memory of Gray die and be forgotten. It has been urged that his beauties are not original; but the accusation holds not of all his most excellent passages, nor of the greater number, nor of many. In him you perceive the full meaning of imitative fancy, in opposition to direct imitation; that is, the art of elevating and improving what he borrows; of melting the gold into a more striking image; of detaching a thought and blending it with a new combination. Into a similar explanation all the parallel passages that crowd the new Supplement to the Preface. * editions of Milton may be resolved. But as Criticism, like History, teaches best by example, let me illustrate my remark by the lines in the Progress of Poetry, where, describing the early years of Shakspeare, he says, Stretched forth its little arms and smiled*. But Gray, by the insertion of the epithet dauntless, so expressive of the ardent childhood of the great poet, has given a life and a spirit to the picture; he has adorned his imitation by his fancy; he has converted a theft into a victory. Of his adaptations from the ancient authors I must admit, for my own part, that I find in them a source of uncommon delight; we come unexpectedly upon them, as upon objects that recall the happiest days of our life. He awakens at every line remembrances of Grecian and Latin Song, so that the poet, as one of his biographers has elegantly observed, seems to accompany us into the regions of his beautiful creations, while the activity of our imagination multiplies into a thousand forms the image it has * See Mitford's Remarks upon the Poetry of Gray. received; and the memory, gathering up the most distant associations, surrounds the poet with a lustre There is not less truth than beauty not his own. in Davenant's remark, that all the streams of our heroic song flow from one Grecian Spring. WORDSWORTH. The objection I have ventured to hint against Gray, is more unmitigated towards his friend Mason, of whose Caractacus I remember to have heard Mr. Coleridge say that it was one continued falsetto*. His English Garden possesses high merit as a didactic poem; but the playful criticism of a contemporary writer is just, who says that he begins by invoking Simplicity, but she never comes. How he would have stared at such a passage as this from the Pharonnida of Chamberlain, a poem of which my friend, Mr. Southey, speaks in high commendation! Before the birth O' th' sluggish morning from his bed had drawn Lending our eyes the slow salutes of light, That fringed an humble valley. Towards those, *This remark is also recorded in the Table Talk. Her sleeping infancy, we went, and now Being come so near, we might discover how The unstirred smoke streamed from the cottage tops, It was with a view of aiding in the purification of our poetical style, that my Lyrical Ballads were composed; in which, as I have stated in the Preface, humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition the feelings exist in a simpler form, and may, therefore, he contemplated with clearer accuracy, and communicated with greater force; because also from those feelings spring the manners of rural life, which, from their very nature, are more easy of comprehension, and more enduring in themselves; and, finally, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature, from whom there is continually going out a healing virtue. Nor is the language of such men of itself unsusceptible of imaginative adornment. He who has Nature for his companion during the day, must, in some measure, be ennobled by the intercourse. The language of the heart changes * This neglected poem deserves a better fate; how pretty is the picture of Glad Fame that brings Truth's messages upon her silver wings. |