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Poetical Character of Gray.-BUCKMINSTER.

IT has been the fortune of Gray, as well as of other poets of the first order, to suffer by the ignorance and the envy of contemporaries, and at last to obtain from posterity, amid the clamours of discordant criticism, only a divided suffrage. The coldness of his first reception by the public has, however, been more than compensated by the warmth of his real admirers; for he is one of those few poets, who at every new reading recompenses you double for every encomium, by disclosing some new charm of sentiment or of diction. The many, who have ignorantly or reluctantly praised, may learn, as they study him, that they have nothing to retract; and those, who have delighted to depreciate his excellence, will understand, if they ever learn to admire him, that their former insensibility was pardonable, though they may be tempted to wish, that it had never been known. Gray was not destitute of those anticipations of future fame, which God has sometimes granted to neglected genius, as he gives the testimony of conscience to suffering virtue. His letters to Mason and Hurd show how pleasantly he could talk of those, who could neither admire nor understand his odes. He knew, that it was not of much consequence to be neglected by that public, which suffered Thomson's Winter to remain for years unnoticed, and which had to be told by Addison, at the expiration of half a century, of the merit of the Paradise Lost. Still less could his fame be endangered by Colman's exquisitely humorous parody of his odes, especially since it is now known, that Colman has confessed to Warton, that he repented of the attempt; and, at the present day, I know not whether it would add any thing to the final reputation of a lyric poet, to have been praised by that great man, who could pronounce Dryden's ode on Mrs. Killigrew

the finest in our language, and who could find nothing in Collins' but "clusters of consonants."

If Gray has any claim to the character of a poet, he must hold an elevated rank or none. If he is not excellent, he is supremely ridiculous; if he has not the living spirit of verse, he is only besotted and bewildered with the fumes of a vulgar and stupifying draught, which he found in some stagnant pool at the foot of Parnassus, and which he mistook for the Castalian spring. But if Pindar and Horace were poets, so too was Gray. The finest notes of their lyre were elicited by the breath of inspiration breathing on the strings; and he, who cannot enter into the spirit which animates the first Pythian of Pindar, or the "Quem virum aut heroa" of Horace, must be content to be shown beauties in Gray, which it is not yet granted him to feel, or spontaneously to discern. I am willing to rest the merit of Gray on Horace's definition of a poet,

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"Ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior, atque os,
Magna sonaturum, sed nominis hujus honorem."

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We shall be more ready to admit, that the sole perfection of poetry consists not merely in faithful description, fine sense, or pointed sentiment in polished verse, if we attend to some curious remarks of Burke, in the last part of his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. He has there sufficiently shown that many fine passages, which produce the most powerful effect on a sensible mind, present no ideas to the fancy, which can be strictly marked or imbodied. The most thrilling touches of sublimity and beauty are consistent with great indistinctness of images and conceptions. Indeed, it is hardly to be believed, before making the experiment, that we should be so much affected as we are, by passages which convey no definite picture to the mind. To those who are insensible to Gray's curious junction of phrases and hardy personifications, we recommend the study of this chapter of Burke. There they will see, that the effect of poetical expression depends more upon particular and indefinable associations, than upon the

Thus, of Gray's

precise images which the words convey. poetry, the effect, like that of Milton's finest passages in the Allegro and Penseroso, is to raise a glow, which it is not easy to describe; but the beauty of a passage, when we attempt to analyze it, seems to consist in a certain exquisite felicity of terms, fraught with pictures which it is impossible to transfer with perfect exactness to the canvass.

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If the perfection of poetry consists in imparting every impression to the mind in the most exquisite degree, and the ode has, by the consent of critics in all ages, been indulged in irregularities which are not pardonable in other kinds of verse, because it is supposed to follow the rapid and unrestrained passage of images through the mind, it is surely enough to satisfy even Aristotle himself, that in Gray's odes the subject is never entirely deserted, and that a continued succession of sublime or beautiful impressions is conveyed to the mind, in language the most grateful to the ear which our English tongue can furnish. For my own part, I take as much delight in contemplating the rich hues that succeed one another without order in a deep cloud in the west, which has no prescribed shape, as in viewing the seven colours of the rainbow disposed in a form exactly semicircular. The truth is, that, after having read any poem once, we recur to it afterwards not as a whole, but for the beauty of particular passages.

It would be easy to reply in order to the invidious and contemptible criticisms of Johnson on particular passages in these odes, and to show their captious futility. This, however, has been frequently and successfully attempted. Those faults, which must at last be admitted in Gray's poetry, detract little from his merit. That only two flat lines should be found in a whole volume of poems, is an honour which even Virgil might be permitted to envy He who can endure to dwell upon these petty blemishes in the full stream of Gray's enthusiasm, must be as insensible to the pomp and grandeur of poetic phrase, as that traveller would be to the sentiment of the sublime in nature, who could sit coolly by the cataract of Niagara, spec

ulating upon the chips and straws that were carried over the fall.

That his digressions are sometimes abrupt, is a character which he shares with his Grecian master; and that an obscurity sometimes broods over his sublimest images, is not to be denied. But violence of transition, if it is a fault in this kind of poetry, must be excused by those laws of lyrical composition, which we have hitherto been content to receive, like the laws of the drama and the epic, implicitly from the ancients; and the obscurity of Gray is never invincible. It is not the fog of dulness; but, like the darkness which the eye at first perceives in excessive brightness, it vanishes the longer it is contemplated, and when the eye is accommodated to the flood of light.

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The distinguishing excellence of Gray's poetry is, think, to be found in the astonishing force and beauty of his epithets. In other poets, if you are endeavouring to recollect a passage, and find that a single word still eludes you, it is not impossible to supply it occcasionally with something equivalent or superior. But let any man attempt this in Gray's poetry, and he will find that he does not even approach the beauty of the original. Like the single window in Aladdin's palace, which the grand vizier undertook to finish with diamonds equal to the rest, but found, after a long trial, that he was not rich enough to furnish the jewels, nor ingenious enough to dispose them, so there are lines in Gray, which critics and poets might labour forever to supply, and without success. This wonderful richness of expression has perhaps injured his fame. For sometimes a single word, by giving rise to a succession of images, which preoccupy the mind, obscures the lustre of the succeeding epithets. The mind is fatigued and retarded by the crowd of beauties, soliciting the attention at the same moment to different graces of thought and expression. Overpowered by the blaze of embellishment, we cry out with Horace, "Parce, Liber! parce! gravi metuende thyrso." Hence Gray, more than any other lyric poet, will endure to be read in detached portions, and again and again.

Another characteristic of Gray, which, while it detracts something from his originality, increases the charm of his verse, is the classical raciness of his diction. Milton is the only English poet who rivals him in the remote learning of his allusions, and this has greatly restrained the number of their admirers. The meaning of the word rage, in this line of the Elegy, a poem which all profess to relish and admire,

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"Chill penury repressed their noble rage,"

cannot be understood without reverting to a common use of the word opyn among the Greeks, to which Gray refers, signifying a strong bent of genius. The Progress of Poesy is peculiarly full of allusions to the Heathen Mythology. The sublime imitation of Pindar, in the description of the bird of Jupiter, in the second stanza, is almost worth the learning of Greek to understand.

His

The last perfection of verse, in which Gray is unrivalled, is the power of his numbers. These have an irresistible charm even with those, who understand not his meaning, and without this musical enchantment, it is doubtful whether he would have surmounted the ignorance and insensibility, with which he was at first received. rhythm and cadences afford a perpetual pleasure, which, in the full contemplation of his other charms, we sometimes forget to acknowledge. There is nothing, surely, in the whole compass of English versification, to be compared in musical structure with the third stanza of his ode on the Progress of Poesy. The change of movement, in the six last lines, is inexpressibly fine. The effect of these varied cadences and measures is, to my ear at least, full as great as that of an adagio in music immediately following a rondo; and I admire in silent rapture the genius of that man, who could so mould our untractable language as to produce all the effect of the great masters of musical composition. If the ancient lyrics contained many specimens of numerous verse equal to this, we need no longer wonder that they were always accompanied with music. Poetry never approached nearer to painting, than verse does in this stanza to the most ravishing melody.

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