translations from Propertius, which breathe the very spirit of Dryden, were too fastidiously rejected as translations by Mr. Mason. Some versions also from the Anthologia have all the elegance and simplicity of their beautiful originals. The observations on English metres, rhyme, and the pseudo-rhythmus, have all the precision of a master of Hephaestion and Terentianus Maurus, applying their terms and principles of scansion to English measures. But in the remarks on the poems of Lydgate, more of the soul of Gray shines out than in any of the rest, and leaves us to regret that this part at least of his projected work, which would have served as a noble exordium* to Mr. Warton's History of English Poetry, should have been thrown aside by a caprice, which in the temper and habits of Mr. Gray proved fatal to many great undertakings. The rest of the volume affords but too convincing proof of an opinion unquestionably entertained by the author himself, that his genius, capable on some occasions, and for some short periods, of blazing forth with an effulgence not surpassed by the brightest luminaries of antiquity, could often lie smothering in its own ashes for months together, while powers not greatly surpassing those of ordinary men were employed on the classification of animals, or in the abridgment of ancient geography. That the mind of Gray had a large grasp, was allowed even by Johnson-but he had only seen the effects of it when powerfully exerted it has been reserved for us to see and to deplore that, in the midst of occupation, it was subject to long intervals of remission and repose. Had the notes on Plato been put into the hands of the best critic now alive, without an intimation of their author, it would have been impossible for him to guess that the writer was Gray, or indeed that he was a man of any geYet even this mass of crude and inanimate erudition, had it been kept back for the present, might have been digested and applied with good effect. Should the time ever arrive when, under the patronage of one of our universities, and by the combined exertions of a body of scholars, a general edition of the works of Plato should be undertaken, with notes critical and explanatory, the name of Gray still more perhaps than the transfusion of his matter, would have thrown a lustre over the work; or, if another great literary desideratum should ever be supplied by the diligence and accuracy of this or the next generation, namely, an edition of Strabo, accompanied by a brief and well digested account of modern discoveries, and of the lights which they throw on the vague conjectures or the unexplained hints of that indefatigable ancient, the library of Pembroke-hall might have contributed much solid and original nius. : It is well known that Warton declined entering on the primordia of English poetry, partly from aversion to all very laborious investigation, and partly from his com parative want of acquaintance with the Saxon language. information from the MSS. of Mr. Gray. These are now blown upon-they have been exhibited in all the dry severity of an bard student, arranging and condensing the results of his own reading for his own private use. Or lastly, should it ever occur to some learned zoologist to republish the celebrated work of Aristotle Пp Zway, accompanied by a scientific classification of animals, according to the Linnæan system, he would find, in the illustrations of Mr. Gray, many valuable remains of that master understanding which alone perhaps comprehended, with equal precision, the clear science of the enlightened modern, and the obscure, but original and profound, reflections of the great ancient. We have often thought the physical works of Aristotle entitled to this attention: he was almost the only one of the ancients who seemed to possess the talent of observing, but his peculiar faculty was that of generalizing and abstracting :--Brief, abrupt, obscure, he was always occupied in reasoning from individual appearances to first principles. Now this is the peculiar excellence of modern physiology; an excellence for which they who have carried it to the highest pitch of which it is capable are, with the exception of a few scholars like Mr. Gray, more perhaps indebted to Aristotle than they are aware of. The notes on Aristophanes are precisely such as, for the honour of Mr. Gray, and in the present advanced state of Greek criticism, we should have wished to conceal. They will be extremely useful in enabling moderate scholars to comprehend the text of a difficult writer; but was this an office for Mr. Gray? Was the author of the Bard to be degraded to the rank of a pædagogue? and where was the reverence for a great name, which could endure to exhibit such scraps as the following without reference and without distinctness? 'EQUITES, V. 9. Olympus, the scholar of Marsyas, invented the symphony of flutes-alludes to Euripides.' (Where?)-61. ades de Xpnoμs-alluding to the Sibyl's Oracles.-123. Alluding to the Oracles of Bacis. The scholiast says there were three of that name.282. It seems that Cleon, for his success at Sphacteria had a public maintenance allowed him in the Prytaneum.-399. The sottishness of Cratinus Morsimus, the son of Philocles, wrote tragedy.-404. The Tepia of Simonides acted.' Yet with an unconsciousness, an avid which is perfectly astonishing, can a scholar and a man of sense like the editor, speak of the principle which governed his own selection in the present edition, as follows: 'It never was the opinion of the editor that the remains or fragments of departed genius should be gathered up in such a manner as that no thing should be lost. The splendour of many an illustrious name has been obscured, and the reputation of established excellence has been lessened by the indiscriminate and unthinking, though amiable zeal of posthumous kindness." 'When indeed, with an unequalled and an unaffected modesty, Virgil directed his unfinished neid to be consigned to the flames, all mankind at that period (and it is the united voice of every succeeding age) joined in that impassioned remonstrance which a fond credulity ascribed to the pen of Augustus. Supremis potuit vox improba verbis Tam dirum mandare nefas? Ergo ibit in ignes, Would that it had been the fate of Mr. Mason or Mr. Mathias, by an act of pious disobedience, to rescue from oblivion an epic poem, however unfinished, such as Gray could have written, but which his obstinate exactness in elaborating every line as he proceeded, prevented him from undertaking. How would the gratitude of this and every succeeding age and nation have united to justify and to applaud the deed!-but the editor should have recollected that the comparison which he has instituted is between the preservation of the Eneid and the heavy and interminable avloxediacμaa on Plato and Aristophanes; between a work destined to, and sure of immortality, and the loose memoranda of private reading, the crude contents of a scholar's common-place book. We say the common-place book of a scholar-for had they been the first hints of a poet, which recorded the embryo movements of inspiration, the seminal principles of future excellence, the original conceptions of imagery and description such as meditation would have ripened into perfection, we should have rejoiced to contemplate the primary workings of a mighty genius. But with sorrow we are compelled to repeat, that it is not Gray the poet, or even the reasoner, but the uninspired, pertinacious student and collector who is here exposed. It is not Gray, when his soul was all on fire, and carried extra flammantia monia mundi, but Gray sedate, laborious, and little better than dull, poring, with the pertinacity of a scholiast, over the conceptions of other and far inferior men. Moreover this disclosure leads to other painful and humiliating conclusions. It is truly astonishing that the soul of Gray could by any process, however torpifying, be kept so long in a state of suspended animation. He seems, for the greatest part of his life, to have resembled an eagle, submitting, in drowsy acquiescence, to chains of his own imposing. With ruffled plumes and flagging wing, Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak and lightning of his eye.” Let the reader sit down to the second volume of this bulky work in the expectation of finding what, in spite of the gloom of Calvinism and the virulence of party-spirit, constantly breaks out in the prose works of Milton, bursts of genius not to be suppressed, and vast powers of original intellect exercised on subjects the most unpromising-and how great will be his disappointment! From the 100th page to the 580th there is little which an hundred scholars of his own day, and five hundred of our own, might not have written. Even the present editor seems to have had some secret misgivings on the subject. 'In our own country, who is there that loves the language of the heart and simplicity of diction, who has not felt an unavailing regret that the letters of Cowley were kept from the world by the timid caution of surviving friendship? Surely, whatever writings can in any manner sustain and amplify the character of great departed writers, either as men of virtue, or of ability, or of learning, in their specific or in their varied modes of excellence, may be offered to the world with propriety and with mutual advantage.' This is the major proposition of the editor's syllogisms, and we assent to it in its utmost extent. Not so to the minor and the conclusion, excepting as they refer to the editor's own judgment. The selections which are now presented to the reader, in the judgment of the editor, not only sustain but amplify the character and the fame of Mr. Gray, and therefore he consented to the labour of the selection and the publication.' On this apology for his own undertaking, and the principle on which it was conducted, we shall only offer two remarks; first, that if Mr. Mathias had rescued Gray's Letters from oblivion, the observation would have been applicable. In the next place, we will take leave to suppose that Mr. Mason's inimitable edition of the works of his tuneful friend were annihilated, and that Gray were known to mankind only through the medium of Mr. Mathias's selection, what would be the consequence?—that his fame and character would be amplified ;'-in other words, that he would be more generally known and highly thought of than from the Elegy, the Bard, and the Progress of Poesy! The truth is, that in the discharge of the delicate and important duty which we owe to the memory of men of genius, there is a middle way, from which whoever departs will disgrace, instead of honouring those whom he strives to serve. We blame the reserve of the cautious and courtly Sprat for suppressing the familiar Letters of Cowley.We are grateful to Mr. Mason for the frank and ingenuous manner in which he favoured us with those of Gray, and for the same reason; both, upon comparison, would have been discovered to be transcripts equally faithful of the heads and hearts of their writers. But on the other hand, and for the same reason, we blame this 'indiscriminate and unthinking, though amiable zeal of posthumous kindness.' The new matter in these volumes, with the exception of the first hundred pages in the second volume, contains little of the head, and less of the heart of Gray.* Mr. Mason's truly select and classical edition of the works of Gray consists of somewhat less than five hundred pages, and, had the present editor been contented to print, for the first time, the translations, and about one-fifth part of the original prose, which swells the second volume, we should have hailed his undertaking as tending, if not to amplify the fame' of his author, at least to gratify the curiosity of mankind without impairing it. A variorum edition enriched with so much new matter as was either finished by the author, or had been intended for publication, and illustrated by his own notes, together with those of Wakefield, with whom Mr. Mathias would probably not disdain to associate his labours, might have been comprised in a single volume, and, at a smaller expense to the publisher, have much better consulted the reputa tion of the author and the editor. Neither would it have been altogether unsuitable to the character of a learned and classical editor like the present to revise with some care the notes of Mr. Mason, who, with all his taste and genius, by the original vice of his education at an inferior and obscure seminary, knew little of the quantity of the Latin language. This is, indeed, his own modest and candid acknowledgment; yet a vigilant editor must have detected the following strange misapprehension.-p. 19. 'Et modo nata mala vellere poma manu.' 'So the original.-There is a peculiar blemish in the line arising from the synonimes mala and poma.' For the credit of Mr. Mason this should have been expunged. The slightest knowledge of Latin quantity would have taught him that mala and poma are not there synonymous. The extensive erudition of Mr. Gray-the various and distant Sources from which he derived his allusions, and the felicity, or the dexterity with which he melted them down into a mingled and scarcely distinguishable mass with his own conceptions, entitle his poetry perhaps, above that of every modern, to what we have already hinted at-a variorum edition. That many allusions have escaped his last industrious and learned editor, the following specimens will prove, while they will render it probable at least, that by a scholar who, in so many languages and on so many subjects, To our other regrets we have to add, that the spirited and highly finished head of the poet drawn from memory by Mason and B. Wilson is, with respect to the uninteresting scratch prefixed to these volumes, 'Hyperion to a satyr.' |