previous operation of other minds. Yet who but Gray could have formed them into so new and perfect a whole? Let it not be supposed that he sought these artificial aids at the hour of composition; they had already been gradually amalgamated in his mind; and when the moment of inspiration came, they involuntarily sprung up into their present shape. The Elegy, the Ode to Spring, the Ode on Eton College, and the Hymn to Adversity, seem to have been all written under one impression of feelings. The same affecting and sublime melancholy pervades the whole.

Unhappy indeed is the author in whom there is no good; from whom there is no pleasure or information to be gleaned. Even a slight ray of genius will add some value to a composition. We daily meet with readers who confine themselves to a few authors, by whom they consider all excellence to be engrossed. They pride themselves on the choiceness of their judgment; and hang over the same strains till almost superhuman merit would tire. When all the numerous, and varying colours of the rainbow are displayed to our sight, shall we content ourselves with preferring one or two simple tints, however beautiful?

March 18, 1808.

N° XXIX.

Traits in the character of Gray the Poet.

CAN we judge of a man's actions by the hues of his mind? I am afraid that we cannot with any reasonable certainty. They who are bold in intellect are often timid in conduct; and imbecility, or, at least, a morbid delicacy, marks the personal character of many, whose abstract sentiments are constantly distinguished by vigour and energy. Instead of withdrawing on this account our admiration from individuals, we must only lament the inconsistencies of our weak and imperfect nature!

These remarks have immediately resulted from contemplating the mental and moral traits of Gray, the poet. His faculties were endowed with uncommon strength; he thought with a manly nervousness; and he penetrated forcibly to the bottom of every subject, which engaged his attention. But his petty manners were disagreeably effeminate and fastidious; his habits wanted courage and hardiness; and his temper and spirits were a prey to feebleness, indolence, and trivial derangements. His heart was pure; and his conduct, I firmly believe, stained

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with no crime. He loved virtue for its own sake, and felt a just, and never slackened indignation at vice. But the little irritations of his daily temper were too much affected by trifles; he loved to assume the character of the fine gentleman; a mean and odious ambition in any one; but scarcely to be forgiven in a man of genius. He would shrug his shoulders, and distort his voice into fastidious tones; and take upon him the airs of what folly is pleased to call high company.

High company! What is it? By whom is the name so impudently engrossed? Perhaps in any country it is a distinction of little value; at least it is beneath a man of genius; but in this country, in the sense which it is meant to convey, it does not exist! Mere wealth, however got, has been so long allowed to obtain admission, and to form a large portion among the upper orders of society, that it does not even imply a prevalence of well-educated, and early polished manners! From the changes produced by commerce, the revenues of the old and permanent families are inadequate to the purposes of luxuries; and adventurers and placemen enjoy, for the most part, the preeminence derived from the splendour of money.

Gray in early life had lived much, and travelled, with his intimate friend and school-fellow, Horace Walpole; and I am afraid that there was some

little tinge of adulation in his manners towards him; notwithstanding Gray's love of independence triumphed, and separated them abroad. It was Walpole's misfortune to be a coxcomb; and though brought up under a father, who, whatever were his merits and importance, had certainly no pretensions to refined and polished manners, he much affected, as new nobility are apt to do, what is vulgarly called the haut ton: his love of literature and his talents (for his talents were of no mean order) were constantly teaching him a better lesson; the whispers of authorship at times soothed him with the hopes of a more honourable distinction; but his struggles are apparent, and often ridiculous; and he could never separate the claims of the man of fashion from those of the writer; nor of the writer from those of the man of fashion.

But Gray, as Mason well observes, had no pretensions to the paltry superiority either of birth or fortune; in him therefore it was a still more lamentable foible to indulge any vanity of this kind. Or rather to assume the first appearance of such a weakness; for his friends who knew him intimately, say that on a nearer inspection it wore off! He was excessively shy and reserved; and was content to let it take the dress of pride and reserve.

We expect in one whose "mind is his kingdom," a manner careless of little observances,

absent, silent or talkative by fits, indifferent to petty distinctions, scorning puffed-up rank, ardent in opinion, and eloquent and forcible, if unequal, in language. Too vehement for affectation or precision, we expect to see him with a neglected person, and eyes beaming an irregular and fearful fire. If there should enter one in a habit neat and studied, with a formal and " travelled" and artificial address; an effeminate voice; and looks rolling warily, as if to catch minute breaches of form; should we believe that man to be a poet?

In the freedom of the closet, in the hours of unrestrained solitude, the little vile passions of artificial society never mingled themselves with the purity of Gray's thoughts. There his expanded soul contemplated nature in its general operations; and studied the movements of the human bosom independent of the casual effects of particular seasons and places. The sentiments of the Elegy in the Churchyard must be delightful to all ranks and conditions, in every country, and in every state of our civilized nature.

It seems extraordinary that one, who could write so well, should have written so little: nor am I sure that he can be quite acquitted of having hidden that talent, which is not given to be hidden. "Of him to whom much is given, much shall be required." The larger portion, and the best, of his.