SOURCE: "The Romantic Movement Exemplified in Gray," in The Beginnings of the Romantic Movement: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature, Gordian Press, 1968, pp. 155-70.

A chronological study of Gray's poetry and of the imagination and love of nature displayed in his prose remains, is not only deeply interesting in itself, but is highly important to the history of Romanticism. In him, the greatest literary man of the time, we find the best example of the steady growth of the Romantic movement. But before proceeding to the discussion of this, a word on Gray's sterility is necessary. The view given by Matthew Arnold in his famous essay¹ is entirely without foundation in fact. The reason why Gray wrote so little was not because he was chilled by the public taste of the age; he would probably have written no more had he lived a hundred years before or since. He was not the man to be depressed by an unfavorable environment; for his mind was ever open to new influences, and he welcomed with the utmost eagerness all genuine signs of promise. His correspondence shows how closely and intelligently he followed the course of contemporary literature; he had something to say about every new important book. The causes of his lack of production are simple enough to those who start with no pre-conceived theory, and who prefer a commonplace explanation built on facts to a fanciful one built on phrases. Gray was a scholar, devoted to solitary research, and severely critical, this kind of temperament is not primarily creative, and does not toss off immortal poems every few weeks. The time that Mason spent in production, Gray spent in acquisition, and when he did produce, the critical fastidiousness of the scholar appeared in every line. All his verses bear evidence of the most painstaking labor and rigorous self-criticism. Again, during his whole life he was handicapped by wretched health, which, although never souring him, made his temperament melancholy, and acted as a constant check on what creative activity he really possessed. And finally, he abhorred publicity and popularity. No one who reads his correspondence can doubt this fact. He hated to be dragged out from his scholarly seclusion, and evidently preferred complete obscurity to any noisy public reputation. This reserve was never affected; it was uniformly sincere, like everything else in Gray's character. His reticence was indeed extraordinary, keeping him not only from writing, but from publishing what he did write.² His own friends would have had no difficulty in explaining his scantiness of production. Horace Walpole, writing to George Montagu, Sept. 3, 1748, says: "I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences; his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable." Again, referring to Gray's slowness in composition, Walpole writes to Montagu, May 5, 1761. He is talking about Gray's proposed history of poetry, and he says: "If he rides Pegasus at his usual foot-pace, (he) will finish the first page two years hence." The adjective that perhaps best expresses Gray is Fastidious. He was as severe on the children of his own brain as he was on those of others; he never let them appear in public until he was sure everything was exactly as it should be. Even his greatest poem pleases more by its exquisite finish than by its depth of feeling. These three reasons, then, his scholarly temperament, his bad health, and his dignified reserve, account satisfactorily for his lack of fertility. If we wish to know why so deep and strong a nature produced so little poetry, we must look at the man, and not at his contemporaries. So much for Gray's sterility.³

Although Gray's biographers and critics have very seldom spoken of it, the most interesting thing in a study of his poetry—and the thing, of course, that exclusively concerns us here—is his steady progress in the direction of Romanticism. Beginning as a classicist and disciple of Dryden, he ended in thorough-going Romanticism.⁴ His early poems contain nothing Romantic; his "Elegy" has something of the Romantic mood, but shows many conventional touches; in the Pindaric Odes the Romantic feeling asserts itself boldly; and he ends in enthusiastic study of Norse and Celtic poetry and mythology. Such a steady growth in the mind of the greatest poet of the time shows not only what he learned from the age, but what he taught it. Gray is a much more important factor in the Romantic movement than seems to be commonly supposed. This will appear from a brief examination of his poetry.

While at Florence in the summer of 1740, he began to write an epic poem in Latin, "De Principiis Cogitandi". Only two fragments were written,⁵ but they made a piece of considerable length. This was an attempt to put in poetic form the philosophy of Locke. It shows how little he at that time understood his own future. The Gray of 1760 could no more have done a thing of this sort, than he could have written the Essay on Man. In these early years he was completely a Classicist. In 1748, when he was largely under Dryden's influence, he began a didactic poem in the heroic couplet, "On the Alliance of Education and Government." It is significant that he never finished either of these poems. Mathias said: "When Mr. Nichols once asked Mr. Gray, why he never finished that incomparable Fragment on 'The Alliance between good Government and good Education, in order to produce the happiness of mankind,' he said, he could not; and then explained himself in words of this kind, or to this effect: 'I have been used to write chiefly lyrick poetry, in which, the poems being short, I have accustomed myself to polish every part of them with care; and as this has become a habit, I can scarcely write in any other manner; the labour of this in a long poem would hardly be tolerable.'"⁶ Gray must have perceived early in this task that the game was not worth the candle.

In 1742 Gray wrote three Odes: "On the Spring," "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College," and "To Adversity." These well-known pieces contain little intimation of Gray's later work. They have nothing of the spirit of Romanticism, and might have been written by any Augustan of sufficient talent. The moralizing is wholly conventional, and the abundance of personified abstractions was in the height of fashion. The poems thus far mentioned represent Gray's first period. He was a disciple of Dryden, and a great admirer of Pope, for writing to Walpole in 1746, he calls Pope "the finest writer, one of them, we ever had."⁷

Gray's second period is represented by the "Elegy," which he began in 1742 and finished in June, 1750.⁸ He was in no haste to print it; the manuscript circulated among his friends, and was first printed anonymously, with a preface by Horace Walpole, February 16, 1751. How long Gray meant to keep the "Elegy" from the public is uncertain; circumstances compelled its publication. On February 10, 1751, the editor of the Magazine of Magazines requested permission to print it. This alarmed Gray; he flatly refused the editor's request, and wrote instantly to Walpole, asking him to get Dodsley to print it as soon as possible.⁹

The "Elegy" is not a Romantic poem; its moralizing is conventional, and pleased eighteenth century readers for that very reason. Scores of poems were written at that time in which the thought was neither above nor below that of the "Elegy," and these poems have nearly all perished. What has kept Gray's contribution to the Church-yard school alive and popular through all changes in taste, is its absolute perfection of language. There are few poems in English literature that express the sentiment of the author with such felicity and beauty. This insures its immortality; and it is this fact that deservedly gives it the first place in Gray's literary productions.

But although the "Elegy" is not strictly Romantic, it is different from Gray's earlier work. It is Romantic in its mood, and stands as a transition between his period of Classicism and his more highly imaginative poetry. It was the culmination of the Il Penseroso school, and as I have shown, that school was in several ways intimately connected with the growth of the Romantic movement. There is one highly significant fact about the composition of the "Elegy," which shows with perfect distinctness that its author was passing through a period of transition. One of its most famous stanzas Gray originally wrote as follows:—

The fact that Gray should originally have put down the Latin names, and afterwards inserted in their place the three names Hampden, Milton, Cromwell—taken from comparatively recent English history—is something certainly worth attention. It marks the transition from Classicism to Nationalism. In this stanza he shook off the shackles of pseudo-classicism; he made up his mind that English historical examples were equal in dignity to those taken from Latin literature. It was a long step forward, and although perhaps a small thing in itself, is an index to a profound change going on in Gray's mind.¹⁰

Gray's next work shows him well on the way toward Romanticism. In 1754 he wrote "The Progress of Poesy," and in the same year began "The Bard," which he finished in 1757. Both these Pindaric Odes were first printed in 1757, on Horace Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill—the first and the best things ever published there. These two odes, especially the latter, are the most imaginative poetry Gray ever produced, and were distinctly in advance of the age. They were above the popular conception of poetry, and their obscurity was increased by their allusiveness. The public did not take to them kindly; many people regarded them as we see Browning and Wagner regarded to-day. Their obscurity was ridiculed, and they were freely parodied.¹¹ Gray was a little hurt by all this, but he had foreseen their probable reception. He had written to Walpole, "I don't know but I may send him (Dodsley) very soon … an ode to his own tooth, a high Pindaric upon stilts, which one must be a better scholar than he is to understand a line of, and the very best scholars will understand but a little matter here and there."¹² Horace Walpole never forgave the age for its attitude toward Gray's odes. Again and again he refers to it in his correspondence, and it had much to do with his dislike for Dr. Johnson.¹³ Walpole called the Odes "Shakspearian," "Pindaric," and "Sublime," and said they were "in the first rank of genius and poetry." But Walpole's opinions were largely influenced in this matter by personal pride, for his own taste was not at all reliable. He said Gray's "Eton Ode" was "far superior" to the "Elegy."¹⁴

In the Pindaric Odes, Gray ceased to follow the age; he struck out ahead of it, and helped to mould its literary taste. From this time people began to regard him as a Romanticist, and to look for wild and extravagant productions from his pen. When the Castle of Otranto appeared in 1764, Gray was by many believed to be the author. The Odes became much more popular after Gray's death—a sign of growth in public taste. This made Dr. Johnson angry, and had much to do with his satirical treatment of the Odes in his wretched Life of Gray. He did not like to think that Gray had really taught the people anything, and so he declared that the admiration for Gray was all hypocrisy, just as many honest people to-day make fun of those who admire Wagner's music. Johnson said that in Gray's Odes "many were content to be shewn beauties which they could not see." Undoubtedly Gray and Wagner have hypocrites among their admirers; but the fact that each helped to set a fashion is significant of a change in taste.

We now enter upon the last period of Gray's literary production. In 1755 Mallet's Introduction a l' Histoire de Dannemarck appeared. This had a powerful effect on Gray, and aroused his interest in Northern mythology, which he studied with the utmost enthusiasm. In 1761, Gray wrote "The Fatal Sisters. From the Norse Tongue"; also "The Descent of Odin." Evans's book on Welsh poetry, the Specimens (1764), stirred him up again, and he wrote "The Triumphs of Owen." These three poems were published in 1768, in the edition of his writings revised by himself. All this work, of course, is strictly Romantic.¹⁵ In 1760, when the Ossianic Fragments appeared, Gray was wonderfully aroused. His friends knew he would be excited, for Walpole, writing to Dalrymple, April 4, 1760, said, "You originally pointed him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old Irish poetry you sent me." On receiving some specimens, Gray immediately wrote to Walpole as follows: "I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them and should wish to see a few lines of the original, that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measures, and the rhythm."¹⁶ He then proceeds to make further comments. His own Romantic tastes come out strikingly in the following letter to Stonehewer, June, 1760. "I have received another Scotch packet with a third specimen, inferior in kind … but yet full of nature and noble wild feeling…. 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 Aeolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit."¹⁷ Gray continued to correspond with his friends about Ossian, saying that he had "gone mad" about it.¹⁸

The best way to show the growth toward Romanticism in Gray's poetry is to quote successively short passages from poems representative of all his periods of production. They will explain themselves.

From the "Ode on the Spring," written 1742:—

From "The Alliance of Education and Government," written in 1748:—

As sickly Plants betray a niggard earth,
Whose barren bosom starves her gen'rous birth,
Nor genial warmth, nor genial juice retains
Their roots to feed, and fill their verdant veins;
And as in climes, where Winter holds his reign,
The soil, tho' fertile, will not teem in vain,
Forbids her gems to swell, her shades to rise,
Nor trusts her blossoms to the churlish skies;
So draw Mankind in vain the vital airs,
Unform'd, unfriended, by those kindly cares,
That health and vigour to the soul impart,
Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart;
So fond Instruction

etc. From the "Elegy," 1742-50:—

From "The Progress of Poesy," written 1754:—

From "The Bard," written 1754-7:—

From "The Fatal Sisters," written 1761:—

From "The Descent of Odin," written 1761:—

In the caverns of the west,
By Odin's fierce embrace comprest,
A wond'rous Boy shall Rinda bear,
Who ne'er shall comb his raven-hair,
Nor wash his visage in the stream,
Nor see the sun's departing beam;
Till he on Hoder's corse shall smile
Flaming on the fun'ral pile.
Now my weary lips I close:
Leave me, leave me to repose.

The significance of the above quotations is apparent at a glance. "The Descent of Odin" is about as different from the "Ode on the Spring" as can well be imagined.

As he advanced in life, Gray's ideas of poetry grew free in theory as well as in practise. His "Observations on English Metre," written probably in 1760-61, and published in 1814, contains much interesting matter. Gray had planned to write a History of English poetry, but when he heard that Thomas Warton was engaged in that work, he gave up the idea, and handed over his material and general scheme to Warton. If Gray had completed a history of this kind, it would certainly have been more accurate than Warton's, and would probably have done as much service to Romanticism. A few words may be quoted from the "Observations," to show how far Gray had advanced in his ideas since 1740. Speaking of Milton, he says, "The more we attend to the composition of Milton's harmony, the more we shall be sensible how he loved to vary his pauses, his measures and his feet, which gives that enchanting air of freedom and wildness to his versification, unconfined by any rules but those which his own feeling and the nature of his subject demands."¹⁹

Gray's prose remains are deeply interesting to the student of Romanticism. He was one of the first men in Europe who had any real appreciation of wild and Romantic scenery. It has now become so fashionable to be fond of mountains, and lakes, and picturesque landscapes, that it seems difficult to believe that all this is a modern taste. To-day the average summer traveler speaks enthusiastically of precipices, mountain cascades and shaded glens, and even to some extent interprets them by the imagination, but the average eighteenth century sojourner neither could nor would do anything of the sort. This appreciation of the picturesque in external nature has a close kinship with the Romantic movement in literature; for the same emotions are at the foundation of each.

The Classicists had no more love for wild nature than they had for Gothic architecture or Romantic poetry. Let us take Addison as a conspicuous example. "In one of his letters, dated December, 1701, he wrote that he had reached Geneva after 'a very troublesome journey over the Alps. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices; and you can't imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain!' This little phrase is a good illustration of the contempt for mountains, of the way they were regarded as wild, barbaric, useless excrescences…. The love of mountains is something really of modern, very modern, growth, the first traces of which we shall come across towards the middle of the last century. Before that time we find mountains spoken of in terms of the severest reprobation."²⁰

Mountains and wild scenery were considered as objects not of beauty or grandeur, but of horror. But in Gray's letters we hear the modern tone.

In this respect he was even more in advance of his contemporaries than in his Romantic poetry. From first to last he was always a lover of wild nature; and, as this taste was so unfashionable, we may be sure of his sincerity. Toward the close of his life, this feeling in Gray becomes more and more noticeable. His Lake Journal is a marvel when we consider its date, for it is written in the true spirit of Wordsworth. But his early letters and journals show that he knew how to appreciate Romantic scenery. Take two extracts from his Journal in France (1739).²¹ These words are interesting simply as showing what attracted Gray's attention: "Beautiful way, commonly on the side of a hill, cover'd with woods, the river Marne winding in the vale below, and Côteaux, cover'd with vines, riseing gently on the other side; fine prospect of the town of Joinville, with the castle on the top of the mountain, overlooking it…. Ruins of an old castle on the brow of a mountain, whose sides are cover'd with woods."²² Again, describing the journey to Geneva: "The road runs over a Mountain, which gives you the first tast of the Alps, in it's magnificent rudeness, and steep precipices; set out from Echelles on horseback, to see the Grande Chartreuse, the way to it up a vast mountain, in many places the road not 2 yards broad; on one side the rock hanging over you, & on the other side a monstrous precipice. In the bottom runs a torrent … that works its way among the rocks with a mighty noise, and frequent Falls. You here meet with all the beauties so savage and horrid²³ a place can present you with; Rocks of various and uncouth figures, cascades pouring down from an immense height out of hanging Groves of Pine-Trees, & the solemn Sound of the Stream, that roars below, all concur to form one of the most poetical scenes imaginable."²⁴

All this is remarkable language for the year 1739. Probably very few private journals of the eighteenth century can show anything similar to it; for Gray's feelings were, at that time, almost exclusively his own. One more remark of his on Alpine scenery may be quoted. He wrote to Richard West, November 16, 1739: "I own I have not, as yet, anywhere met with those grand and simple works of Art, that are to amaze one, and whose sight one is to be the better for; but those of Nature have astonished me beyond expression. In our little journey up to the Grande Chartreuse, I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation, that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument. One need not have a very fantastic imagination, to see spirits there at noonday; you have Death perpetually before your eyes, only so far removed, as to compose the mind without frightening it."²⁵

Just thirty years later, Gray wrote another journal, which shows that he had progressed as rapidly in his appreciation of Nature as he had in his love of wild and passionate poetry. This is the Journal in the Lakes, written in 1769, and published in 1775. This document is of great value, as throwing light on the purely imaginative side of Gray's nature. He took this Lake trip alone, and wrote the Journal simply to amuse his friend, Dr. Wharton. Here we have a very different view of nature from that given by Dyer, Thomson and even by the Wartons. This remarkable Journal is written in the true Wordsworthian spirit. Gray not only observes but spiritually interprets nature. Two quotations will suffice to show how far Gray's taste had advanced since 1739: "Behind you are the magnificent heights of Walla-crag; opposite lie the thick hanging woods of Lord Egremont, and Newland valley, with green and smiling fields embosomed in the dark cliffs; to the left the jaws of Borrodale, with that turbulent chaos of mountain behind mountain, rolled in confusion; beneath you, and stretching far away to the right, the shining purity of the Lake, just ruffled by the breeze, enough to show it is alive, reflecting rocks, woods, fields, and inverted tops of mountains."²⁶

The following passage is perhaps the most striking thing Gray ever wrote about nature: "In the evening walked alone down to the Lake by the side of Crow-Park after sun-set and saw the solemn colouring of night draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hilltops, the deep serene of the waters, and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them, till they nearly touched the hithermost shore. At distance heard the murmur of many water-falls not audible in the daytime. Wished for the Moon, but she was dark to me and silent, hid in her vacant interlunar cave."

Mitford said: "No man was a greater admirer of nature than Mr. Gray, nor admired it with better taste." Perhaps Walpole had partly in mind Gray's superior appreciation of Alpine scenery when he wrote, in 1775: "We rode over the Alps in the same chaise, but Pegasus drew on his side, and a cart-horse on mine."²⁸ There is something noble and truly beautiful in the way in which Walpole always insisted on his own inferiority to Gray. His attitude in this was never cringing; it was a pure tribute of admiration, and that, too, from a sensitive man who had been repeatedly snubbed by the very object of his praise.

It is interesting to notice the strange and strong contrast between the shy, reserved temperament of Gray, and the pronounced radicalism of his literary tastes. Had he been a demonstrative and gushing person like Mason, his utterances about mountains and Ossianic poetry would not seem so singular; but that this secluded scholar, who spent most of his hours over his books in Cambridge and the manuscripts in the British Museum, and who was always slow to speak, should have quietly cultivated tastes so distinctly Romantic—this is a noteworthy fact. It seems to show that the one-man power counts for something in literary developments. Gray influenced the age more than the age influenced him; he led rather than followed. In addition to all the various forces that we have observed as silently working in the Romantic movement, we must add the direct influence of the courage and genius of Gray.

Notes

¹ Ward's English Poets, Vol. III., p. 302. Both Mr. Perry and Mr. Gosse seem to support Arnold's view, but I am unable to see anything in it.

² He wrote, in English and Latin, more than 60 poems, but only 12 appeared in print during his lifetime; and his prose is all posthumous.

³ After I had fully reached this conclusion, I read Mr. Tovey's recent book, Gray and His Friends. The Introduction to that book is the most judicious essay on Gray that I have ever seen in print, though Mr. Tovey does not discuss his connection with Romanticism. I was pleased to find that my view of Gray's sterility was very similar to Mr. Tovey's, who completely disposes of Arnold's theory.

⁴ He never despised Dryden, however, though he went far beyond him. Oct. 2, 1765, he wrote to Beattie, "Remember Dryden, and be blind to all his faults." Gray's Works, Vol. III., p. 221.

⁵ The second in 1742.

⁶Mathias's Observations (1815), page 52. This passage in itself goes a long way toward explaining Gray's sterility.

⁷Gray's Works, Vol. II., page 130.

⁸ Gray's interesting letter to Walpole about the Elegy, June 12, 1750, may be found in his Works, Vol. II., page 209. He says: "You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writings have wanted." He evidently felt the fragmentary nature of his previous work.

⁹ This letter is in Gray's Works, Vol. II., page 210. It contains minute instructions about the printing of the poem, and says it must be published anonymously.

¹⁰ This point is fully and suggestively treated in the Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, in an article called A Lesson from Gray's Elegy.

¹¹ Dr. Johnson said they were "two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement." In 1783, Dr. Johnson was violently attacked for this by the Rev. R. Potter, an enthusiastic admirer of Gray. Potter said that Gray's Bard, with its "wild and romantic scenery," etc., was "the finest ode in the world."

¹²Works, Vol. II, page 218.

¹³ For Walpole's remarks on Gray's Odes, see his letters to Horace Mann, August 4, 1757, and to Lyttleton, August 25, 1757. See especially his letter to Mason, January 27, 1781, on Johnson's Life of Gray. Walpole afterward spoke of Johnson as a "babbling old woman." and a "wight on stilts."

¹⁴ Letter to Lyttleton, August 25, 1757.

¹⁵ Gosse says in his Life of Gray, page 163, that Gray not only takes precedence of English poets in the revival of Norse mythology, but even of the Scandinavian writers. But this is going too far. Mallet, in his Histoire de Dannemarck, Vol. II, page 309, speaks of a book on the "exploits des rois et des héros du Nord" published at Stockholm in 1737.

¹⁶Works, Vol. III., page 45.

¹⁷Gray's Works, Vol. III., page 47.

¹⁸ Mr. Gosse has some interesting remarks on Gray and Ossian in his Life of Gray, page 149.

¹⁹Works, Vol. I., page 332.

²⁰Perry's Eighteenth Century Literature, page 145. But much of our modern love for mountains and precipices is doubtless due to the circumstances in which we view them. Carried to the top of the Rigi in a comfortable car, we are in a condition to enjoy to the utmost the glorious view; but if the Rigi represented an obstacle, something that must be passed over with infinite discomfort and even peril, in order to reach a destination on the other side, I am sure we should not appreciate the view so keenly. This was the attitude in which Addison looked at the Alps.

²¹ This was printed from the first time by Mr. Gosse in Vol. I. of his edition of Gray's Works.

²²Works, Vol. I., page 240.

²³ The word sounds conventional, more like Augustan style; but what Gray goes on to say shows that it appealed to his own feelings in a very different way.

²⁴Works, Vol. I., page 244.

²⁵Works, Vol. II, page 44.

²⁶Works, Vol. I., page 254.

²⁷Works, Vol. I., page 258.

²⁸ Letter to Cole, December 10, 1775.