tone, "Take this: here is such writing as I never before saw in a newspaper." This was the very first letter which appeared under the signature of Junius. In offering information of this nature, it cannot be expected that the present editor should observe any particular method in communicating it; but he hopes that it will be kindly received in the form of recollections, living as they rise, either in his memory or from writing, and expressed in a manner which he considers as best adapted to the end which he proposes, from their interest or from their variety. Mr. Nicholls being once in company with the illustrious author of the Analysis of Ancient Mythology, asked his opinion of Mr. Gray's scholarship when at Eton school. Mr. Bryant said in answer, "Gray was an excellent scholar; I was next boy to him in the school; and at this minute I happen to recollect a line of one of his school exercises, which, if you please, I will repeat, as the expressions are happy; it is on the subject of the freezing and thawing of words in the Spectator: "Pluviæque loquaces Descendêre jugis, et garrulus ingruit imber." One fine morning in the spring, Mr. Nicholls was walking in the neighbourhood of Cambridge with Mr. Gray, who feeling the influence of the season, and cheered with the melody of birds on every bough, turned round to his friend, and expressed himself extempore in these beautiful lines: "There pipes the wood-lark, and the song-thrush there Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air." These verses may remind us of an exquisite stanza, which it is singular that he omitted in his Elegy, as, to the ac count of his morning-walk and of his noontide repose, it completed that of the whole day, by adding his evening saunter: "Him have we seen the greenwood side along, As homeward oft he hied, his labour done, It is impossible, in this and in the preceding stanzas, not to hear the stream of Dorick harmony flowing through the lines: Ιέρον ύδωρ Νυμφαν εξ αντροιο κατειβομενον κελαρύζει. Among the writers of his time Mr. Gray was particularly struck with Rousseau. His Emile, as a system of education, he regarded as ridiculous and impracticable, and always said, that, before it could be adopted, men must begin by creating a new world. But then, (how could it be otherwise?) what Shakspeare terms, "the flashes and outbreaks of a fiery mind," the glowing eloquence, and the wild originality of thought, so often and so vigorously displayed in that singular work, attracted and arrested his attention as a man of genius. His opinion of Rousseau's Nouvelle Eloise he has himself expressed and given in one of his letters. He thought the story ill-composed, the incidents improbable, the characters unnatural and vicious, and the tendency of it immoral and mischievous; which latter defect, in his mind, nothing could redeem. Very different indeed was his judgment of the Clarissa of Richardson. He said, that he knew no instance of a story so well told; and he spoke with high commendation of the strictly dramatick propriety and consistency of the characters, perfectly preserved and supported from the beginning to the end, in all situa E tions and circumstances, in every word, and action, and look. In the delineation of Lovelace alone he thought that the author had failed; for, as he had not lived among persons of that rank, it was not possible for him to give, from the life, the portrait of a profligate man of fashion. Mr. Gray was much pleased with an answer which Dr. Samuel Johnson once gave to a person on the dif ferent and comparative merits of Fielding and of Richardson: Why, sir, Fielding could tell you what o'clock it was; but, as for Richardson, he could make a clock, or a watch." 66 Mr. Gray always considered, that the Encyclopædias and universal Dictionaries of various kinds, with which the world now abounds so much, afforded a very unfavourable symptom of the age in regard to its literature; as no real or profound learning can be obtained but at the fountain-head. Dictionaries like |
