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indulgence, but the honour of his correspondence, &c. As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent, or so correspondent, as they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in wha: form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them and the title must be, Elegy, written in a Country Clurchyard. If he would add a line or two to say it cam into his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the Magazine of Magazines in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this troubl on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone..

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XVI. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

Dec. 19, 1752.

HAE you read Madame de Maintenon's letters? They areundoubtedly genuine; they begin very early in her lif, before she married Scarron, and continue after the kig's death to within a little while of her own: they bar all the marks of a noble spirit (in her adversity prticularly), of virtue and unaffected devotion; insouch, that I am almost persuaded she was actually arried to Lewis the XIV. and never his mistress: and is not out of any policy or ambition, but conscience: for he was what we should call a bigot, yet with great good sense: in short, she was too good for a court. Misfortunes in the beginning of her life had formed her mind (naturally lively and impatient) to reflection and a habit

of piety. She was always miserable while she had the care of Madame de Montespan's children; timid and very cautious of making use of that unlimited power she rose to afterward, for fear of trespassing on the King's friendship for her; and after his death not at all afraid of meeting her own.

I do not know what to say to you with regard to Racine; it sounds to me as if any body should fall upon Shakspeare, who indeed lies infinitely more open to criticism of all kinds; but I should not care to be the person that undertook it. If you do not like Athaliah or Britannicus, there is no more to be said, Ihave done.

Bishop Hall's satires, called Virgidemæ, are lately republished. They are full of spirit and poetry; as much of the first as Dr. Donne, and far more of the latter: they were written at the university then he was about twenty-three years old, and in QueenElizabeth's time.

You do not say whether you have read the Crito.* I only recommend the dramatic part of the Pædo to you, not the argumentative. The subject of the Erastæ is good; it treats of that peculiar character and tun of mind which belongs to a true philosopher, but is shorter than one would wish. The Euthyphro I wald not read at all.

XVII. MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE.

Stoke, Jan. 1753

I AM at present at Stoke, to which place I came at ha an hour's warning upon the news I received of my mo ther's illness, and did not expect to have found he alive; but when I arrived she was much better, and continues so. I shall therefore be very glad to make you a visit at Strawberry-Hill, whenever you give me

* Of Plato.

notice of a convenient time. I am surprised at the print,* which far surpasses my idea of London graving: the drawing itself was so finished, that I suppose it did not require all the art I had imagined to copy it tolerably. My aunts seeing me open your letter, took it to be a burying ticket, and asked whether any body had left me a ring; and so they still conceive it to be, even with all their spectacles on. Heaven forbid they should suspect it to belong to any verses of mine, they would burn me for a poet. On my own part I am satisfied, if this design of yours succeed so well as you intend it; and yet I know it will be accompanied with something not at all agreeable to me.—While I write this, I receive your second letter. Sure you are not out of your wits! This I know, if you suffer my head to be printed, you will infallibly put me out of mine. I conjure you immediately to put a stop to any such design. Who is at the expense of engraving it, I know not; but if it be Dodsley, I will make up the loss to him. The thing as it was, I know, will make me ridiculous enough; but to appear in proper person, at the head of my works, consisting of half a dozen ballads in thirty pages, would be worse than the pillory. I do assure you, if I had received such a book, with such a frontispiece, without any warning, I believe it would have given me a palsy: therefore I rejoice to have received this notice, and shall not be easy till you tell me all thoughts of it are laid aside. I am extremely in earnest, and cannot bear even the idea.

I had written to Dodsley if I had not received yours,

* A proof print of the Cul de Lampe, which Mr. Bentley designed for the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and which represents a village-funeral; this occasioned the pleasant mistake of his two aunts. The remainder of the letter relates entirely to the projected publication of Mr. Bentley's designs, which were printed after by Dodsley this same year. The latter part of it, where he so vehemently declares against having his head prefixed to that work, will appear highly characteristical, to those readers who were personally acquainted with Mr. Gray. The print, which was taken from an original picture, painted by Echart, in Mr.Walpole's possession, was actually more than half engraved; but afterward on this account suppressed.

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While Mr. Bentley was employed in making the designs mentioned in the preceding letter, Mr. Gray, who greatly admired not only the elegance of his fancy, but also the neatness as well as facility of his execution, began a complimentary poem to him, which I shall now insert. Many readers will perhaps think the panegyric carried too far; as I own I did when he first shewed it me. Yet it is but justice to declare, that the original drawings, now in Mr. Walpole's possession, which I have since seen, are so infinitely superior to the published engravings of them, that a person, who has only seen the latter, can by no means judge of the excellencies of the former: besides, there is so much of grotesque fancy in the designs themselves, that it can be no great matter of wonder (even if the engravers had done justice to them) that they failed to please universally. What I have said in defence of the Long Story might easily be applied to these productions of the sister art: but not to detain the reader from the perusal of a fragment, many stanzas of which are equal in poetical merit to the best of his most finished poems, I shall here only add, that it was for the sake of the design which Mr. Bentley made for the Long Story that Mr. Gray permitted it to be printed; yet not without clearly foreseeing that he risked somewhat by the publication of it, as he intimates in the

* See the above-mentioned designs, where the explanations here alluded to are inserted.

preceding letter: and indeed the event shewed his judgment to be true in this particular, as it proved the least popular of all his productions.

STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY.

IN silent gaze the tuneful choir among,

Half pleas'd, half blushing let the Muse admire,
While Bentley leads her sister-art along,
And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.
See, in their course, each transitory thought,
Fix'd by his touch, a lasting essence take;
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought,
To local symmetry and life awake!
The tardy rhymes that us'd to linger on,

To censure cold, and negligent of fame,

In swifter measures animated run,

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame.
Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace,
His quick creation, his unerring line;

The energy of Pope they might efface,

And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.
But not to one in this oenighted age

Is that diviner inspiration giy'n,

That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of heav'n.

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light.
+ Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy impart ;
And as their pleasing influence flows confest,
A sigh of soft reflection hea e the heart.

In the March following Mr. Gray lost that mother for whom, on all occasions, we have seen he shewed so tender a regard. She was buried in the same vault where her sister's remains had been deposited more than three years before. As the inscription on the tombstone (at least the latter part of it) is undoubtedly Mr. Gray's writing, it here would claim a place, even if it had not

† A corner of the only manuscript copy which Mr. Gray left of this fragment is unfortunately torn, and though I have endeavoured to supply the chasm, I am not quite satisfied with the words which I have inserted in the third line. I print my additions in italics, and shall be much pleased if any reader finds a better supplement to this imperfect stanza.

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