While some, on earnest business bent, Their murmuring labors ply 'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of their little reign, And unknown regions dare descry: Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,1 And lively cheer, of vigor born; Alas! regardless of their doom, No sense have they of ills to come, Yet see how all around them wait? The ministers of human fate, And black Misfortune's baleful train! These shall the fury Passions tear,3 And Shame that skulks behind; That inly gnaws the secret heart; Ambition this shall tempt to rise, Then whirl the wretch from high To bitter Scorn a sacrifice, 1 "This is at once poetical and just: and yet there seems to be an impropriety in the next verse:Less pleasing when possest: for though the object of hope may truly be said to be less pleasing in possession than in the fancy; yet Hope in person cannot possibly be possessed."— Wakefield. 2 "This representation of the ministers of Fate, and the two succeeding stanzas, which exhibit the variety of human passions, with their several attributes, blends moral instruction with all the animation and sublimity of poetry.”—Wakefield. a "I do not know that any poet, ancient or modern, has given so complete a picture of the passions in so short a compass."- Wakefield. The stings of Falsehood those shall try, That mocks the tear it forced to flow; Lo! in the vale of years beneath' The painful family of Death, More hideous than their queen: Those in the deeper vitals rage: Lo! Poverty, to fill the band, To each his sufferings: all are men, The tender for another's pain, Th unfeeling for his own. Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, And happiness too swiftly flies? SONG. Thyrsis, when we parted, swore 1 A most happy idea; and the whole stanza is exquisitely beautiful, and will not be disgraced by appearing in the same view with a passage in "Paradise Lost," where description is carried to its highest pitch of excellence: "Immediately a place Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisome, dark; A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. Book xt. ver. 477. Idle notes! untimely green! Prove not always winter past. Cease, my doubts, my fears to move- The chief prose compositions of Gray are his letters, which are among the best in the language, full of just remarks, beautiful criticisms, and descriptions of natural scenery, "which a painter might study, and which a poet alone could have conceived;" and occasionally exhibit a genial humor which mark the author of the "Ode to a Favorite Cat." In 1798, before the letters of Cowper were published, Dr. Beattie thus writes to a friend: "I am acquainted with many parts of your excursion through the north of England, and very glad that you had my old friend Mr. Gray's Letters' with you, which are indeed so well written, that I have no scruple to pronounce them the best letters that have been printed in our language. Lady Montagu's are not without merit, but are too artificial and affected to be confided in as true, and Lord Chesterfield's have much greater faults; indeed, some of the greatest that letters can have: but Gray's letters are always sensible, and of classical conciseness and perspicuity. They very much resemble what his conversation was." HOW HE SPENDS HIS TIME IN THE COUNTRY. TO MR. WALPOLE. I was hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble I would have done. The description of a road, which your coach-wheels have so often honored, it would be needless to give you; suffice it, I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids his galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mightily cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have, at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest, (the vulgar call it a common,) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do, may venture to climb; and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their oid stories to the winds, And, as they bow their hoary tops, relate, In murmuring sounds, the dark decrees of fate; While visions, as poetic eyes avow, Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. At the foot of one of these squats me I, (Il penseroso,) and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there. In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is, talk to you, but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me. I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is entirely your own fault. I shall be in town in about three weeks. Adieu. September, 1737. NETLEY ABBEY AND SOUTHAMPTON.-BEAUTIFUL SUNSET. TO MR. NICHOLLS.2 I received your letter at Southampton, and as I would wish to treat everybody according to their own rule and measure of good breeding, have, against my inclination, waited till now before I answered it, purely out of fear and respect, and an ingenious diffidence of my own abilities. If you will not take this as an excuse, accept it at least as a well-turned period, which is always my principal concern. So I proceed to tell you that my health is much improved by the sea; not that I drank it, or bathed in it, as the common people do: no! I only walked by it, and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild, even in October and November; no snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past; the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window; the town, clean and well-built, surrounded by its old stone walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea, which, having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in direct view till it joins the British Channel: it is skirted on either side with gently-rising grounds, clothed with thick wood, and directly cross its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight at distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods (concealed from profane eyes) lie hid the ruins of Netley Abbey; there may be richer and greater houses of religion, but the Abbot is content with his situation. See there, at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shade of those old trees that bend into a half circle about it, he is walking slowly, 1 "The same ludicrous expression is met with in Foote's play of The Knights,' p. 27, from the mouth of Sir Penurious Trifle:And what does me I, but take a trip to a coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane,' &c. See also 'Don Quixote' by Smollet, vol. iv. p. 30."-Milford. Rector of Lounde and Bradwell, in Suffolk. Hls acquaintance with Mr. Gray commenced a few years before the date of this, when he was a student in Cambridge (good man!) and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors, interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it (the meadow still descending) nods a thicket of oaks that mask the building, and have excluded a view too garish and luxuriant for a holy eye; only on either hand they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. Did you not observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself to drive the tempter from him that had thrown that distraction in his way? I should tell you, that the ferryman who rowed me, a lusty young fellow, told me that he would not for all the world pass a night at the Abbey (there were such things seen near it) though there was a power of money hid there. From thence I went to Salisbury, Wilton, and Stonehenge; but of these I say no more; they will be published at the University press. P. S.-I must not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was, that (in the course of my late tour) I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea-coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapors open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide, (as it flowed gently in upon the sand,) first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen.1 It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody ever saw it before? I hardly believe it. TO MR. NICHOLLS, ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. It is long since that I heard you were gone in haste into Yorkshire on account of your mother's illness, and the same letter informed me that she was recovered, otherwise I had then wrote to you only to beg you would take care of her, and to inform you that I had discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life one can never have any more than a single mother You may think this is obvious, and (what you call) a trite observation. You are a green gosling! I was at the same age (very near) as wise as you, and yet I never discovered this (with full evidence and conviction I mean) till it was too late. It is thirteen years ago, and seems but as yesterday, and every day I live it 1 See a description of similar beauty by Jeremy Taylor, p. 223, under "Dawn and Progress of Reason." |