And now hear Wordsworth's account just after he had crossed the Alps : The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, And in the narrow rent at every turn Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first and last, and midst, and without end.* Early in November, 1739, Gray and Walpole finally crossed the Alps into Italy. Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples, then Florence again in these cities of endless delights and beauties the travellers stayed leisurely for nearly a year and a-half, till May, 1741. At Genoa, Gray was enchanted by the palaces, gardens and marble terraces, the orange and cypress trees, the blue Mediterranean flecked with ships of all sorts and sizes; at Florence, with the "antique statues, such as the whole world cannot match, besides the vast collection of paintings, medals and precious stones, such as no other prince was ever master of." Of Rome he writes: "As high as my expectation was raised, I confess, the magnificence of this city infinitely surpasses it. You cannot pass along a street but you have views of some palace, or church, or square, or fountain, the most picturesque and noble one can imagine. . . . St. Peter's I saw the day after we arrived, and was struck dumb with wonder." At Naples he is impressed *"The Prelude," Book VI. Gray is at his best in describing the Grande Chartreuse, Wordsworth the descent from the Alps, and I therefore compare them at their best; the reader who desires to compare the Alpine expeditions of both poets in detail should read the whole of Book VI. of "The Prelude " and all Gray's letters of the latter part of 1739. "The Prelude " was not substantially begun till 1798-9 and was finished in 1805. with the throng of jolly humanity, all day bustling and working, and then in the evening taking their lute or guitar, "little brown children jumping about stark naked, and the bigger ones dancing with castanets, while others play on the cymbals to them," and all on the shore of "the most lovely bay of the world.” I do not know of any letters which convey more immediately than Gray's the sense of wonder and praise, the excitement of travel, the thrill of intellectual beauty, the intimate impression of sensuous and spiritual things; so that the smell of orange trees mixes with the sight of the sea; and then everything is changed as in a dream, and one is walking in St. Peter's on Good Friday watching endless processions with crucifixes and tapers. And behind all the outward show there is "the still, sad music of humanity "-West, far away in England, too soon to die, and Gray trying to rouse him from diffidence and depression with the genius of his sympathy. It is time to leave Italy-to return to West, to England, and the Elegy." Nevertheless, before returning, it is necessary to refer to the quarrel between Walpole and Gray which caused them to separate in May, 1741. This quarrel, it will be remembered, arose out of a wave of youthful vanity which reached its crest at Reggio. Walpole has taken the whole blame with that real humility of character which, despite superficial and purely temporary appearances giving a different impression, is an essential aspect of the charm of his many-sided personality. It was all very natural and easy to understand. Walpole was rather selfish and was too conscious that he was son of the Prime Minister, and Gray was too conscious, perhaps, of his own personality and was "not conciliating." not conciliating." "I treated him insolently," said Walpole; "he loved me and I did not think he did." The story is told officially and adequately in Mason's "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. Gray," a work justly admired in the eighteenth century; it was the model from which Boswell developed his superb creation,* and very uncritically abused in the nineteenth century. Unofficially, and in greater *"I have resolved (says Boswell in his 'Life of Johnson') to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason in his 'Memoirs of Gray.'" Mason's book appeared in 1775. detail for curious posterity, the story is told by Walpole in his letter to Mason of March 2, 1773.* The quarrel is notable, not in itself, but in its effect on Gray. We cannot doubt that it gave an emotional shock to him which, added to other things, was in reality fortunate in its creative reactions. The year 1742 was the springtime of Gray's poetic genius. In that year he wrote a third part of that small, almost minute output which comprises his serious poetry, and he began the "Elegy." This year of poetry, we suggest, is the combined consequence of deep emotional experiences of happiness-in the two and a-half years of wonderful travel in France, the Alps, and Italy; of unhappiness-firstly in the quarrel with Walpole which was not healed for four years, and secondly in the sudden death of West on June 1, 1742. Even Dr. Johnson, who did not like Gray or appreciate his poetry-except the "Hymn to Adversity" and the " Elegy "-partly understood his character: "He was a man," he said, "likely to love much where he loved at all." After the parting with Walpole at Reggio, Gray visited Venice, and then returned to England, reaching London on September 1, 1741. On his way back he had again visited his spiritual home, the Grande Chartreuse, and it was then, Mason says, that he wrote, in the Album of the Fathers, his beautiful Alcaic Ode, "O Tu, severi Religio loci." A translation of this Ode by Mr. R. E. E. Warburton, which appeared originally on June 9, 1883, in Notes and Queries, is given by Tovey in a footnote to the first volume of his admirable edition of Gray's Letters. The translation is so fine, and so little known that it may appropriately be quoted here, specially as the reader will immediately recognise in it a sort of prelude to the "Elegy " :— Oh, thou! the Spirit 'mid these scenes abiding, Whate'er the name by which thy power be known (Surely no mean divinity presiding These native streams, these ancient forests own; *Those who desire to know all the facts will find them set out with excellent clarity in Dr. Paget Toynbee's "The Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West and Ashton," Vol. I, xxiv-xxix (Clarendon Press, 1915). I am sure it will be welcome news that Dr. Paget Toynbee is now engaged on a complete edition of the whole of Gray's correspondence, to include the letters written to him, as far as they can be recovered. VOL. 244. NO. 497. And here on pathless rock or mountain height, Than if resplendent 'neath the cedar beam Grant to my youth-my wearied youth-repose. But if, though willing, 'tis denied to share During the year following his return from travel, that is to say from the autumn of 1741 to the autumn of 1742, Gray lived partly at Stoke Poges with his mother and her two sisters, and partly in London; but it was at Stoke, says Mason, that "he writ a considerable part of his more finished poems," in the spring and summer of 1742. These poems (again Mason is the authority) were the "Ode to Spring," the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," the " Hymn to Adversity," the Sonnet in Memory of West, and the beginning, at least, of the " Elegy."t "I am inclined to believe," says Mason, "that the Elegy in a country Churchyard was begun, if not concluded, at this time also." *This last stanza clearly containing the genesis of the famous line in the Elegy," Far from the madding crowds' ignoble strife," must be given in its original Latin :— Saltem remoto des, Pater, angulo Horas senectae ducere liberas ; Surripias, hominumque curis. +Mason's belief as to the date at which the "Elegy " was begun, and his association of its origin with the death of West does not seem to be reasonably open to question. Sir Edmund Gosse, however, (Gray, p. 66) conjectures that the first impulse to the "Elegy " was the death of Gray's Uncle, Jonathan Rogers, at Stoke Poges, on October 21, 1742. Whatever may be said for questioning the year 1742-Walpole at first questioned it, but was finally satisfied by Mason-there seems really nothing to be said for accepting the year, and then ousting West in favour of Uncle Rogers. A The "Elegy Elegy " was not published till eight and a-half years later, and between 1742 and 1750 it was revised and perfected by Gray. Its success was immediate with both the critical and the reading public, and in the century and a-half which has elapsed since Gray's death it has become, perhaps, the most universally known of English poems. Editions are numberless, and it has been translated into Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, French, German, Welsh, Portuguese, Sanskrit verse and Bengali prose.† The question has now to be considered-has public opinion been too generous to Gray? Is he a poet of the first order of poets, or is he " after all, but a second-rate poet," as Mr. Saintsbury calls him? Mr. Saintsbury, as becomes the best critic of our time, and one of the best critics of any time, does full justice to Gray's forward-looking mind, to his wide scholarship, to his brilliant gifts of expression in prose and poetry. Nevertheless, as a poet, he considers Gray second-rate. It seems to the present writer that Matthew Arnold's judgment is juster: "He is the scantiest and frailest of classics in our poetry, but he is a classic."§ Perhaps we may put it in another way if Poetry is a principal part of the City of God, then surely Gray dwells therein, and not merely on the outskirts or in the suburbs. After all, public opinion, however liable to err in the short run, is generally right in the long run. Bad art may survive a generation, but it will seldom survive two generations, and never, or hardly ever, three. Of the good art that survives clearly there are many degrees of classifiable excellence. The place of *On February 16, 1751, by Dodsley. †This list is almost certainly not exhaustive; it is based on the catalogue (under Gray) in the British Museum, but I much doubt if the B.M. contains editions of all translations. "A Short History of English Literature," p. 576, 13th edition. S" Essays in Criticism," 2nd series (The Study of Poetry), p. 42; Eversley edition. || Public opinion in the long run is an amalgam of at least three elements, the best expert, the best educated, and the best plain opinion. Taking expert opinion alone, in the case of Gray it is noteworthy that three poets so different both in period and outlook as Cowper, Byron, and Tennyson, have adjudged him great. Cowper says: "I have been reading Gray's "Works" and think him the only poet since Shakespeare |