LETTER XXVI. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON. London, June 22, 1760. I AM not sorry to hear you are exceeding busy, except as it has deprived me of the pleasure I should have of hearing often from you; and as it has been occasioned by a little vexation and disappointment. To find one's self business, I am persuaded, is the great art of life; I am never so angry, as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery, as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of other people than at one's own; and as if they could not go unless they were wound up: yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius (more than common) is required to teach a man how to employ himself: I say a man; for women, commonly speaking, never feel this distemper, they have always something to do; time hangs not on their hands (unless they be fine ladies); a variety of small inventions and occupations fill up the void, and their eyes are never open in vain. As to myself, I have again found rest for the sole of my gouty foot in your old dining-room*, * The house in Southampton-row, where Mr. Gray lodged, had been tenanted by Dr. Wharton; who, on account of his ill bealth, left London the year before, and was removed to his paternal estate at Old-Park, near Durham, and hope that you will find at least an equal satisfaction at Old-Park; if your bog prove as comfortable as my oven I shall see no occasion to pity you, and only wish you may brew no worse than I bake. You totally mistake my talents, when you impute to me any magical skill in planting roses: I know I am no conjurer in these things; when they are done I can find fault, and that is all. Now this is the very reverse of genius, and I feel my own littleness. Reasonable people know themselves better than is commonly imagined; and therefore (though I never saw any instance of it) I believe Mason when he tells me that he understands these things. The prophetic eye of taste (as Mr. Pitt called it) sees all the beauties that a place is susceptible of, long before they are born; and when it plants a seedling, already sits under the shadow of it, and enjoys the effect it will have from every point of view that lies in prospect. You must therefore invoke Caractacus, and be will send his spirits from the top of Snowdon to Crossfall or Warden-law. I am much obliged to you for your antique news. Froissard is a favourite book of mine (though I have not attentively read him, but only dipped here and there); and it is strange to me that people who would give thousands for a dozen portraits (originals of that time) to furnish a gal lery, should never cast an eye on so many moving pictures of the life, actions, manners, and thoughts of their ancestors, done on the spot, and in strong, though simple colours. In the succeeding century Froissard, I find, was read with great satisfaction by every body that could read; and on the same footing with king Arthur, sir Tristram, and archbishop Turpin; not because they thought him a fabulous writer, but because they took them all for true and authentic historians; to so little purpose was it in that age for a man to be at the pains of writing truth. Pray, are you come to the four Irish kings that went to school to king Richard the Second's master of the ceremonies, and the man who informed Froissard of all he had seen in St. Patrick's purgatory? The town are reading the king of Prussia's poetry (La Philosophe sans Souci), and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am: it is all the scum of Voltaire and lord Bolingbroke, the crambe-recocta of our worst freethinkers, tossed up in German-French rhyme. Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book: one is invited to dinner, where he dined a fortnight before: as to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed. Have you read his Sermons, with his own comic figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them? They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience. VOL. V. LETTER XXVII. MR. GRAY TO MR. STONEHEWER. London, June 29, 1760, THOUGH you have bad but a melancholy employment, it is worthy of envy, and (I hope) will have all the success it deserves*. It was the best and most natural method of cure, and such as could not have been administered by any but your gentle hand. I thank you for communicating to me what must give you so much satisfaction. I too was reading M. D'Alembert, and (like you) am totally disappointed in his Elements. I could only taste a little of the first course: it was dry as a stick, hard as a stone, and cold as a cucumber. But then the letter to Rousseau is like himself; and the discourses on elocution, and on the liberty of music, are divine. He has added to his translations from Tacitus; and (what is remarkable) though that author's manner more nearly resembles the best French writers of the present age, than any thing, he totally fails in the attempt. Is it his fault, or that of the language? I have received another Scotch packet with a third specimen, inferior in kind (because it is merely description), but yet full of nature and noble wild imagination. Five bards pass the night at the castle of a chief (himself a principal bard); each goes in his turn to observe the face of things, * Mr. Stonehewer was now at Houghton-le-Spring, in the bishoprick of Durham, attending on his sick father, rector of that parish. and returns with an extempore picture of the changes he has seen (it is an October night, the harvest month of the Highlands). This is the whole plan! yet there is a contrivance, and a preparation of ideas, that you would not expect. The oddest thing is, that every one of them sees ghosts (more or less). The idea that struck and surprised me most, is the following. One of them (describing a storm of wind and rain) says: Ghosts ride on the tempest to night! Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind; Their songs are of other worlds! Did you never observe (while rocking winds are piping loud) that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Æolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit. Thomson had an ear sometimes: he was not deaf to this; and has described it gloriously, but given it another different turn, and of more horror. I cannot repeat the lines: it is in his Winter. There is another very fine picture in one of them. It describes the breaking of the clouds after the storm, before it is settled into a calm, and when the moon is seen by short intervals. The waves are tumbling on the lake, And lash the rocky sides: The boat is brimful in the cove, The oars on the recking tide. Sad sits a maid beneath a cliff, She saw his boat (when it was evening) on the lake; Are these his groans in the gale? Is this his broken boat on the shore? |