Mute was the music of the air,
The herd stood drooping by:

Their raptures now that wildly flow,
No yesterday, nor morrow know;
'Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward, and reverted eyes.

Smiles on past Misfortune's brow,
Soft Reflection's hand can trace;

And o'er the cheek of Sorrow throw

A melancholy grace:

While hope prolongs our happier hour; Or deepest shades, that dimly lower And blacken round our weary way,

Gilds with a gleam of distant day.

Still, where rosy Pleasure leads,

See a kindred Grief pursue;

Behind the steps that Misery treads
Approaching Comfort view:

The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe;
And blended form, with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life.

See the Wretch, that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,

At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe, and walk again:
The meanest floweret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To Him are opening Paradise.

A third of these ideas I find in his common-place book, on the same page with his argument for the BARD*. I do not believe that he ever even began to compose the Ode itself; but the thought is as follows:

"All that men of power can do for men of genius is "to leave them at their liberty, compared to birds that, "when confined to a cage, do but regret the loss of "their freedom in melancholy strains, and lose the "luscious wildness and happy luxuriance of their notes, "which used to make the woods resound.”

Those, who are conversant in the arrangement of a lyrical composition, will easily perceive, from this short argument, that the Ode would have opened with the simile; which, when adorned with those thoughts that breathe and words that burn, that Mr. Gray's muse could so richly supply, would have been at once a fine

* I have inserted this, with some remarks upon it, in my additional notes to his Poems.

exordium, and at the same time a natural introduction to the truth he meant to impress. This, however, could hardly have been done without some little aid borrowed from satire: For however true his proposition may be, that "all that men of power can do for men of genius is to leave them at liberty;" or, as I should put it, "that their best patronage signifies nothing if it abridges them of that liberty;" yet the fact is, that neither of the parties are convinced of this truth till they have tried the experiment, and find some reason or other (no matter whether good or bad) to think they had better never have tried it. Mons. d'Alembert, who has written an excellent essay on this subject, which Mr. Gray greatly admired, and which perhaps gave him the first idea of this intended Ode, puts one of the more common of these reasons in so lively a manner, that it may not be amiss here to insert it.

"Parmi les grands Seigneurs les plus affables il en "est peu qui se depouillent avec des Gens de lettres de "leur grandeur, vraie ou pretendue, jusqu' au point de "l'oublier tout-a-fait. C'est ce qu'on apperçoit sur "tout dans les conversations, où l'on n'est pas de leur "avis. Il semble qu'a mesure que l'Homme d'Esprit "s'eclipse, l'Homme de Qualité se montre; et paroisse "exiger la deference dont l'Homme d'Esprit avoit "commence par dispenser. Aussi le commerce intime

"des Grands avec les Gens de lettres ne finit que trop "souvent par quelque rupture eclatante; rupture qui "vient presque toujours de l'oubli des regards recipro66 ques auxquelles on a manquè de part ou d'autre, peut "etre même des deux côtés *." However, I think a man of letters ought to have other reasons besides this for breaking such a connection after it has been once formed.

I have now given the reader the best account in my power of what our Author's unfinished lyrical ideas consisted: I believe they are all that he in any sort committed to paper, and probably those which he immediately alluded to in the preceding letter.

* Essai sur la Societé des Grands, avec les Gens de Lettres; "Melanges de Litterature & Philosophie," tom. 2d, p. 134.

LETTER XXI.

MR. GRAY TO MR. STONHEWER*.

August 21, 1755.

I Thank you for your intelligence about Hercula

neum, which was the first news I received of it. I have since turned over Monsignor Baiardi's book †, where I have learned how many grains of modern wheat the Roman Congius, in the Capitol, holds, and how many thousandth parts of an inch the Greek foot consisted of more (or less, for I forgot which) than our own. He proves also by many affecting examples, that an Antiquary may be mistaken: That, for any thing any body knows, this place under ground might be some other place, and not Herculaneum; but nevertheless, that he can shew for certain, that it was this place and no other place; that it is hard to say which of the several Hercules's was the founder;

* Now Auditor of Excise. His friendship with Mr. Gray commenced at College, and continued till the death of the latter.

I believe the book here ridiculed was published by the Authority of the King of Naples. But afterwards, on finding how ill qualified the Author was to execute the task, the business of describing the Antiquities found at Herculaneum was put into other hands; who have certainly, as far as they have gone, performed it much better.