where Gray speaks, referring to Mador's song in Caractacus, of the difference between the lyric style and others, and explains why it cannot be long sustained. A number of letters touch on the Ossianic controversy, on which we find Gray with the will to believe, yet not blind to the evidence against the fragments. Notable, too, is his letter to Bonstetten in which he comments wisely on Plato's portrait of a philosopher. In its essential elements this portrait may well be applied to, and fairly describes, Gray himself. He too was gentle, magnanimous, temperate, generous, accustomed to large views of things. Other qualities he lacked of those necessary for "one who would govern the rest of mankind." But the noblest qualities of true manhood were generously meted out to him, and shine throughout his letters. VI. SUMMARY We may, then, recapitulate thus the points emphasized in this introduction: Gray lived the life of a recluse and a scholar, caring little for society and less for domestic life; absorbed in his books; deeply interested in antiquity, yet not indifferent to the spectacle of contemporary activity; viewing this spectacle, however, without a desire to engage actively in its struggles; caring little for fame and much for virtue. The smallness of his literary product was due not to the frigid atmosphere of the time which some have thought prevented him from "speaking out," but to other causes, lack of stimulus from his friends, the growing predominance of the scholarly temperament and inclination, his highly critical and fastidious taste, his natural reticence, his indolence or aversion to active creative effort, and his lack of ambition. In criticism Gray ranged himself at the start with the Romanticists, and was never bound by tradition or undue veneration for authority. His critical prose is small in bulk but important and significant because of his attitude, that of the learner rather than the judge or arbiter, and because he possessed the qualities necessary for a great critic-disinterestedness, a sense of humor, sound learning, and sympathy. His critical utterances, though fragmentary, are always suggestive, and are among our valuable inheritances from the eighteenth century. VII. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE All of Gray's prose, we have seen, was published posthumously. The letters first appeared in the " Memoirs of His Life and Writings" prefixed by Mason to his edition of Gray's Poems, York, 1775. The Observations on English Metre, the Notes on Aristophanes and Plato, and other prose fragments were first printed by Thomas J. Mathias in his edition of the Works, London, 1814. Gray's correspondence with Norton Nicholls was published by the Rev. John Mitford in 1843; his correspondence with Mason, by the same editor in 1853. The most recent edition of his complete works is that of Mr. Edmund Gosse (4 volumes, London, 1884, revised in 1902), which in matters of detail is somewhat inaccurate. A selection from Gray's poetry and prose, edited by Professor William L. Phelps and including valuable critical matter, was pub lished in Ginn's Athenæum Press Series in 1894. Gray's Letters, admirably edited by Mr. Duncan C. Tovey, are now being published in three volumes in Bohn's Library (vol. i., 1900, vol. ii., 1904). Appended to volume ii. are Nicholls' Reminiscences of Gray, written in 1805. The fullest life of Gray, though very inaccurate, is that by Gosse (English Men of Letters Series, 1882, new edition, 1889). The most trustworthy account of his life is by the late Sir Leslie Stephen (Dictionary of National Biography, xxiii. 2228, 1890). Valuable essays on Gray are by Matthew Arnold (in Ward's English Poets, London, 1880), Lowell (The New Princeton Review, i. 153-177, March, 1886, reprinted in his Latest Literary Essays, 1892), Tovey in Gray and His Friends (Cambridge, 1890), T. H. Warren, “ Gray and Dante" (The Monthly Review, iii. 147-164, June, 1901, reprinted in his Essays of Poets and Poetry, 1909), and Thomas M. Parrott in his Studies of a Book-Lover, 1904. A full bibliography of Gray by the editor of this volume will appear in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. |