though it violate the canons of "Nature methodized"; and ventures to approve of blank verse for epic poetry. In landscape, too, Nature, it is found, does not have to be much helped and regulated," to give pleasure. Addison admires Versailles, but prefers Fontainebleau, "situated among rocks and woods, that give you a fine variety of savage prospects." 1

At the time when Thomas Gray began to read poetry and criticism, the points of dispute between the two schools had become clearly formulated. The poet should follow Nature, indeed; but how should Nature be defined? Should imitation be confined to the ancients? What was the value of poetic justice? Was "the fairy way of writing" justifiable? Should tragedy and comedy be separated? Was the use of blank verse immoral? Could the lyric and epic styles be mixed? Such questions continued to be discussed throughout Gray's lifetime.

In estimating Gray as a critic it must be borne in mind that he made no pretense to critical acumen. "You know I do not love, much less pique myself, on criticism," he writes to Mason, in January, 1758, "and think even a bad verse as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it.' His own critical utterances were all published posthumously, and much of the text in the present volume was doubtless written without thought of publication. If

'The Guardian, No. 101, July 7, 1713. But these "savage prospects" differ widely from those Addison saw in the Alps and the Apennines.

2 The situation is well described by Hamelius, p. 140.

his criticism is important, then, it is so in spite of any ambition cherished by its author, who would doubtless be greatly surprised if he could now return and learn of his reputation as a critic.

Professor Phelps, in his Selections from Gray, p. xxii, says of him: " Beginning as a classicist and disciple of Dryden, he ended in thorough-going Romanticism." Phelps is probably thinking of Gray's poetry; some of his earlier pieces are certainly conventional enough in both style and thought. But his critical utterances at any time show little inclination toward the classical school. From the first we are aware of an independence of thought and tone and a freedom from conventional cant, which point toward the coming and early disappearance of the old standards of taste. From the first, his criticism was of the independent, Romantic order. He was only twenty-three when he wrote to West the celebrated passage referring to the Alps, "Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." At twenty-six we find him saying that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry; except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.' "Further on in the same letter he pays a tribute to the creative genius of Shakespeare and Milton, manifested in enriching our language with borrowed or coined words, and complains of the degeneracy of English. This is only another way of saying that the vocabulary of the NeoClassic poets was worn out and could no longer stimulate the imagination or give pleasure. Gray, then, can

scarcely be said to have been, on principle, a classicist. Although some of his earlier verses conform to the conventional form,' his sympathies were with the independents, who knew that poetic diction must grow and that poetic structure can no more be held in by rules than can a spring freshet.

Gray is not one of those who have left a large body of criticism. He set down no elaborate theory of poetry or prose; he did not attempt to bring Aristotle or Horace "up to date." What he did was, in his letters, to express himself, often casually, and rarely at any length, about writers chiefly contemporary; and in his other pieces, to estimate men and movements—in literature, painting, architecture, theology, and so on with the illuminating common sense of a trained and unbiased scholar. Probably his general cautiousness would have sufficed to prevent him from making many generalizations about our early literature; but it must also be remembered that much of this literature was not easily accessible, indeed, had not yet been printed, and that to obtain any wide acquaintance with it from manuscripts would at that time have been impossible. Now it happens that Gray was especially interested in this literature—in Lydgate, Gawin Douglas, Chaucer -and gave much time to these authors; with his own hand he copied The Palice of Honour entire. Realiz

' It may be noted that of his poems only the following employ the heroic couplet: The Alliance of Education and Government, 1748; Epitaph on a Child, 1758; Comic Lines, 1768; Couplet about Birds; Tophet; · all the above being posthumously published; and the six passages translated from Statius, Tasso, and Propertius. 2 Gosse, Gray, p. 151.

ing to some extent the vastness of the field, and feeling himself but a beginner and a pioneer, Gray, in his utterances on these writers and on subjects connected with them, speaks always with the air of a learner rather than with that of an expert or authority; and assuming this attitude and thus teaching others to assume it was not the least of his services to literary criticism.

We must not, then, look upon Gray as a protagonist in the conflicts of criticism. Yet his chance remarks have a permanent value as coming from an ardent scholar and a sympathetic reader. His whole attitude toward letters served to emphasize the importance to criticism of a sound basis in scholarship and of openness of mind and heart. In general, Arnold's definition of criticism would have suited him; would that he had had more of Arnold's militant ardor in making known what he considered the best that had been thought and written!

Gray holds a high place among the critics of his time partly because of his scholarship. Coming midway between Bentley and Porson (he was twenty-five when Bentley died and forty-three when Porson was born), he bridges the gap between these great lights of Trinity College; and what is more important, his deep interest in Greek studies may be said to herald the dawn of the modern study of Greek literature; with language studies for their own sake Gray was not especially concerned. The study of Greek was

1 Cf. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, iii. 63.

to do much to break down the narrow prejudices of the Neo-Classic creed; hence the importance of Gray's scholarly work and ambitions. His interest, too, in kindred studies history and archeology, the Celtic

and Scandinavian literatures

- is significant of the growing desire to understand the past more fully, to sit at its feet and learn.

IV. HIS QUALIFICATIONS AS A CRITIC

Let us now see what were the qualities of Gray which fitted or unfitted him for the tasks of criticism. We have long heard that the fundamental quality of the true critic is that he is wholly disinterested, has no ax to grind. Surely this was true of Gray. We never find him wedded to a theory; he is never blinded by the brilliance of a particular meteor or comet; he scans the heavens steadily; and the differing magnitudes of the stars are evident to him. He knows all the stars of the first magnitude-Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton-though Homer and Milton, he thinks, have some high-sounding words that mean little. Lydgate is ranked far below his master Chaucer, but is not denied some important merits. If Gray gave the reins to his admiration of any one, it was Dryden, whose sanity and clearness of judgment appealed to Gray's kindred temperament; yet he writes to Mason (December 19, 1757) that Dryden's character disgraced the laureateship. Gray's dislike of Johnson is well known ; we do not of course know when it began or whether he had

1 Cf. Nicholls' Reminiscences, Gray's Letters, ed. Tovey, ii. 278.