He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason, being elected fellow of Pembroke Hall, brought him a companion who was afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled in him a zeal of admiration which cannot be reasonably expected from the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critic. In his retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the "Death of Mr. Walpole's Cat ;" and the year afterwards attempted a poem, of more importance, on "Government and Education," of which the fragments which remain have many excellent lines. His next production (1750) was his far-famed "Elegy in the Churchyard," which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I believe, made him known to the public. An invitation from Lady Cobham about this time gave occasion to an odd composition called "A Long Story," which adds little to Gray's character. His constitution was weak, and, believing that his health was promoted by exercise and change of place, he undertook (1765) a journey into Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious and elegant: for, as his comprehension was ample, his curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man. The Mareschal College at Aberdeen offered him the degree of doctor of laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to refuse. What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last given him without solicitation. The professorship of history became again vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the Duke of Grafton. He accepted and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never appearing reading them; uneasy at his neglect of duty, and appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found himself unable to discharge it. Several of his pieces were published (1753) Ill health made another journey necessary, with designs by Mr. Bentley: and that they and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cummight in some form or other make a book, only berland. He that reads his epistolary narration one side of each leaf was printed. I believe the wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had poems and the plates recommended each other so been more of his employment; but it is by studywell, that the whole impression was soon bought.ing at home that we must obtain the ability of This year he lost his mother. Some time afterwards (1756) some young men of the college, whose chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by frequent and troublesome noises, and as is said, by pranks yet more offensive and contemptuous. This insolence, having endured it a while, he represented to the governors of the society, among whom perhaps he had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed himself to Pembroke Hall. In 1757 he published "The Progress of Poetry," and "The Bard," two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as well as the works of Milton and Shakspeare, which it is the fashion to admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions undertook to rescue them from neglect ; and in a short time many were content to be shown beauties which they could not see. Gray's reputation was now so high, that, after the death of Cibber, he had the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr. Whitehead. His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading and transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by two odes on "Oblivion" and "Obscurity," in which his lyric performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity. When the professor of modern history at Cambridge died, he was, as he says, "cockered and spirited up," till he asked it of Lord Bute, who sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the tutor of Sir James Lowther. travelling with intelligence and improvement. His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, of which he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which (July 30, 1771) terminated in death. His character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend, Mr. Boswell, by the Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true. "Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his study; voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining: but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his, was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress that they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered merely as a man of letters; and, though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement. Per-nothing new. There has of late arisen a prachaps it may be said, What signifies so much tice of giving to adjectives derived from substan knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it tives the termination of participles; such as the worth taking so much pains to leave no memo-cultured plain, the daisied bank; but I was sorry rials but a few poems? But let it be considered to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the that Mr. Gray was to others at least innocently honied Spring. The morality is natural, but too employed; to himself certainly beneficially. His stale; the conclusion is pretty. time passed agreeably: he was every day making some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened, his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us." To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of Gray's skill in zoology. He has remarked that Gray's effeminacy was affected most "before those whom he did not wish to please;" and that he is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference, as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be good. What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his Letters in which my undertaking has engaged me is, that his mind had a large grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; that he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he was fastidious and hard to please. His contempt, however, is often employed where I hope it will be approved, upon skepticism and infidelity. His short account of Shaftesbury I will insert. "You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a philosopher in vogue: I will tell you; first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe any thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads no where; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in the matter; for a new road has become an old one." Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that, though Gray was poor, he was not eager of money; and that, out of the little that he had, he was very willing to help the necessitous. The poem "On the Cat" was doubtless by its Author considered as a trifle; but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza, "the azure flowers that blow" show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it cannot easily be found. Selima, the Cat, is called a nymph, with some violence both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it when it is done; for of the two lines, What female heart can gold despise? the first relates merely to the nymph, and the The "Prospect of Eton College" suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His epithet "buxom health" is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word. Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common use; finding in Dryden "honey redolent of Spring," an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making "gales" to be "redolent of joy and youth." Of the "Ode on Adversity" the hint was at first taken from "O Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium;" but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his sentiments, and by their moral application. Of this piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not, by slight objections, violate the dignity. My process has now brought me to the wonderful Wonder of Wonders," the two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of "The Progress of Poetry." As a writer he had this peculiarity, that he did not write his pieces first rudely, and then correct them, but laboured every line as it arose Gray seems in his rapture to confound the in the train of composition; and he had a no-images of "spreading sound and running wation not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastic foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and virtue wishes him to have been superior. Gray's poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less pleasure than his life. His ode "On Spring" has something poetical, both in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have ter." A "stream of music" may be allowed ; but where does "music," however "smooth and strong," after having visited the "verdant vales, roll down the steep amain," so as that "rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar?" If this be said of music, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose. The second stanza, exhibiting Mars' car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his common-places. To the third it may likewise be objected, that it is drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia's "velvet green" has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. "Many-twinkling" was formerly censured as not analogical; we may say "many-spotted," but scarcely "manyspotting." This stanza, however, has something pleasing. Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion: the second describes well enough the universal prevalence of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not arise from the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are not the residences of "Glory and generous Shame." But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing, that I can forgive him who resolves to think it true. The third stanza sounds big with "Delphi," and "Egean," and "Ilissus," and "Meander," and with "hallowed fountains," and "solemn sound;" but in all Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrous splendour which we wish away. His position is at last false: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school of Poetry, Italy was overrun by "tyrant power;” and “coward vice" nor was our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts. Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakspeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is not said happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the genuine. measures, and consequently before it can receive pleasure from their consonance and recurrence. Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated: but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the ballad of "Johnny Armstrong." Is there ever a man in all Scotland The initial resemblances, or alliterations, "ruin, ruthless, helm or hauberk," are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity. In the second stanza the Bard is well described; but in the third we have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that "Cadwallo hush'd the stormy main," and that "Modred made huge Plialimmon bow his cloudtopp'd head," attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn. as he owns, from the Northern Bards: but their The weaving of the win ling sheet he borrowed, texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life is another mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to "Weave the warp, and weave the woof," perhaps with no great propriety; for it is by crossing the woof with the warp that men weave the by the admission of its wret hed correspondent, web or piece; and the first line was dearly bought "Give ample room and verge enough."* He has, however, no other line as bad. The third stanza of the second ternary is com mended, I think, beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and Hunger are not alike; and their features, to make the His account of Milton's blindness, if we sup- We are told, in the same stanza, how "towers imagery perfect, should have been discriminated. pose it caused by study in the formation of his are fed." But I will no longer look for particu poern, a supposition surely allowable, is poctilar faults; yet let it be observed that the ode cally true, and happily imagined. But the car of might have been concluded with an action of Dryden, with his two coursers, has nothing in it better example; but suicide is always to be had, peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider without expense of thought. may be placed. These odes are marked by glittering accumu "The Bard" appears, at the first view, to be, lations of ungraceful ornaments; they strike, as Algarotti and others have remarked, an imi- rather than please; the images are magnified by tation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti affectation; the language is laboured into harshthinks it superior to its original; and, if prefe-ness. The mind of the writer seems to work rence depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right.There is in "The Bard" more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Ho race was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. Incredulus odi. To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that "The Bard" promotes any truth, moral or political. His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its with unnatural violence. "Double, double, toil just; a man like him, of great learning and great His translations of Northern and Welsh Poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved, perhaps often improved; but the language is unlike the language of other poets. "I have a soul that like an ample hield any thing easily, but things of humour" and added, that In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to con- | ments to which every bosom returns an echo.cur with the common reader; for by the com- The four stanzas, beginning "Yet even these mon sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary bones," are to me original: I have never seen prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety the notions in any other place; yet he that reads and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally them here persuades himself that he has always decided all claim to poetical honours. The felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it had Churchyard" abounds with images which been vain to blame, and useless to praise him. find a mirror in every mind, and with senti LYTTELTON. GEORGE LITTELTON, the son of Sir Thomas | poem, called "The Trial of Selim;" for which Lyttelton, of Hagley, in Worcestershire, was he was paid with kind words, which, as is comborn in 1709. He was educated at. Eton, where mon, raised great hopes, that were at last dishe was so much distinguished, that his exercises appointed. were recommended as models to his schoolfellows. From Eton he went to Christchurch, where he retained the same reputation of superiority, and displayed his abilities to the public in a poem on "Blenheim.” He was a very early writer, both in verse and prose. His "Progress of Love," and his "Persian Letters," were both written when he was very young; and indeed the character of a young man is very visible in both. The Verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers; and the Letters have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward. Lyttelton now stood in the first rank of opposition; and Pope, who was incited, it is not easy to say how, to increase the clamour against the ministry, commended him among the other patriots. This drew upon him the reproaches of Fox, who, in the house, imputed to him as a crime his intimacy with a lampooner so unjust and licentious. Lyttelton supported his friend; and replied, that he thought it an honour to he received into the familiarity of so great a poet. While he was thus conspicuous, he married (1741) Miss Lucy Fortescue of Devonshire, by whom he had a son, the late Lord Lyttelton, and two daughters, and with whom he appears to have lived in the highest degree of connubial felicity: but human pleasures are short: she died in childbed about five years afterwards; and he solaced himself by writing a long poem He stayed not long in Oxford; for in 1728 he began his travels, and saw France and Italy.to her memory. When he returned, he obtained a seat in parliament, and soon distinguished himself among the most eager opponents of Sir Robert Walpole, though his father, who was commissioner of the admiralty, always voted with the court. For many years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every debate in the House of Commons. He opposed the standing army; he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the King to remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as violent, but as acrimonious and malignant; and when Walpole was at last hunted from his places, every effort was made by his friends, and many friends he had, to exclude Lyttelton from the secret committee. He did not, however, condemn himself to perpetual solitude and sorrow; for, after a while, he was content to seek happiness again by a second marriage with the daughter of Sir Robert Rich; but the experiment was unsuccessful. At length, after a long struggle, Walpole gave way, and honour and profit were distributed among his conquerors. Lyttelton was made (1744) one of the Lords of the Treasury; and from that time was engaged in supporting the schemes of the ministry. Politics did not, however, so much engage him as to withhold his thoughts from things of more importance. He had in the pride of juve nile confidence, with the help of corrupt con versation, entertained doubts of the truth of The Prince of Wales, being (1737) driven Christianity; but he thought the time now come from St. James's, kept a separate court, and when it was no longer fit to doubt or believe by opened his arms to the opponents of the minis- chance, and applied himself seriously to the try. Mr. Lyttelton became his secretary, and great question. His studies being honest, ended was supposed to have great influence in the di- in conviction. He found that religion was true; rection of his conduct. He persuaded his mas- and what he had learned he endeavoured to ter, whose business it was now to be popular, teach (1747) by “Observations on the Conver that he would advance his character by patron- sion of St. Paul;" a treatise to which infidelity age. Mallet was made under-secretary with has never been able to fabricate a specious antwo hundred pounds; and Thomson had a pen-swer. This book his father had the happiness sion of one hundred pounds a year. For Thom- of seeing, and expressed his pleasure in a letter son, Lyttelton always retained his kindness, and which deserves to be inserted. was able at last to place him at ease. Moore courted his favour by an apologetical "I have read your religious treatise with in finite pleasure and satisfaction. The style is fine and clear, the arguments close, cogent, and irresistible. May the King of kings, whose glorious cause you have so well defended, reward your pious labours, and grant that I may be found worthy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to be an eye-witness of that happiness which I don't doubt he will bountifully bestow upon you. In the mean time I shall never cease glorifying God, for having endowed you with such useful talents, and giving me so good a son. "Your affectionate father, "THOMAS LYTTELTON." A few years afterwards, (1751,) by the death of his father, he inherited a baronet's title with a large estate, which, though perhaps he did not augment, he was careful to adorn, by a house of great elegance and expense, and by much attention to the decoration of his park. As he continued his activity in parliament, he was gradually advancing his claim to profit and preferment; and accordingly was made in time (1754) cofferer and privy counsellor: this place he exchanged next year for the great office of chancellor of the Exchequer; an office, however, that required some qualifications which he soon perceived himself to want. The year after, his curiosity led him into Wales; of which he has given an account, perhaps rather with too much affectation of delight, to Archibald Bower, a man of whom he had conceived an opinion more favourable than he seems to have deserved, and whom, having once espoused his interest and fame, he was never persuaded to disown. Bower, whatever was his moral character, did not want abilities; attacked as he was by a universal outcry, and that outcry, as it seems, the echo of truth, he kept his ground; at last, when his defences began to fail him, he sallied out upon his adversaries, and his adversaries retreated. About this time Lyttelton published his "Dialogues of the Dead," which were very eagerly read, though the production rather, as it seems, of leisure than of study: rather effusions than compositions. The names of his persons too often enable the reader to anticipate their conversation; and when they have met, they too often part without any conclusion. He has copied Fenelon more than Fontenelle. When they were first published, they were kindly commended by the "Critical Reviewers:" and poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned in a note which I have read, acknowledgments which can never be proper, since they must be paid either for flattery or for justice. When, in the latter part of the last reign, the inauspicious commencement of the war made the dissolution of the ministry unavoidable, Sir George Lyttelton, losing with the rest his employment, was recompensed with a peerage; and rested from political turbulence in the House of Lords. His last literary production was his "History of Henry the Second," elaborated by the searches and deliberations of twenty years, and published with such anxiety as vanity can dictate. The story of this publication is remarkable. The whole work was printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times. The booksellers paid for the first impression; but the charges and repeated opera tions of the press were at the expense of the author, whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thousand pounds. He began to print in 1755. Three volumes appeared in 1764, a second edition of them in 1767, a third edition in 1768, and the conclusion in 1771. Andrew Reid, a man not without considerable abilities, and not unacquainted with letters of with life, undertook to persuade Lyttelton, as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret of punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know not at what price, to point the pages of "Henry the Second." The book was at last pointed and printed, and sent into the world. Lyttelton took money for his copy, of which, when he had paid the printer, he probably gave the rest away; for he was very liberal to the indigent. When time brought the History to a third edition, Reid was either dead or discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punc tuation was committed to a man orginally a comb-maker, but then known by the style of Doctor. Something uncommon was probably expected, and something uncommon was at last done; for to the Doctor's edition is appended, what the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in nineteen pages. But to politics and literature there must be an end. Lord Lyttelton had never the appearance of a strong or of a healthy man; he had a slender uncompacted frame, and a meagre face; he lasted however sixty years, and was then seized with his last illness. Of his death a very affecting and instructive account has been given by his physician, which will spare me the task of his moral character. "On Sunday evening the symptoms of his Lordship's disorder, which for a week past had alarmed us, put on a fatal appearance, and his Lordship believed himself to be a dying man. From this time he suffered by restlessness rather than pain; though his nerves were apparently much fluttered, his mental faculties never seemed stronger, when he was thoroughly awake. "His Lordship's bilious and hepatic complaints seemed alone not equal to the expected mournful event; his long want of sleep, whether the consequence of the irritation in the bowels, or, which is more probable, of causes of a different kind, accounts for his loss of strength, and for his death, very sufficiently. "Though his Lordship wished his approaching dissolution not to be lingering, he waited for it with resignation. He said, 'It is a folly, a keeping me in misery, now to attempt to prolong life;' yet he was easily persuaded, for the satisfaction of others, to do or take any thing thought proper for him. On Saturday he had been remarkably better, and we were not without some hopes of his recovery. "On Sunday about eleven in the forenoon, his Lordship sent for me, and said he felt a great flurry, and wished to have a little conversation with me in order to divert it. He then proceeded to open the fountain of that heart, from whence goodness had so long flowed, as from a copious spring. 'Doctor,' said he, 'you shall be my confessor: when I first set out |