Chapter 14

“Cambridge, April 12, 1770.

“Never did I feel, my dear Bonstettin, to what a tedious length the few short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and expectation, till you had left me: nor ever knew before with so strong a conviction how much this frail body sympathises with the inquietude of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks, like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head into a vessel of water, and take it out again, as the standers-by affirmed, at the command of a Dervise, and found he had passed many years in captivity, and begot a large family of children. The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to you are only owing to your last letter, a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows when it may shine again. I did not conceive till now, I own, what it was to lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own condition before I possessed the happiness of your friendship.

“But enough of this—I return to your letter. It proves at least that, in the midst of your new gaieties, I still hold some place in your memory; and, what pleases me above all, it has an air of undissembled sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable friend, to show me your heart simply, and without the shadow of disguise, and leave me to weep over it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.”

“April 19, 1770.

“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read, ‘Ce n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that remembrance is the only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your shadow—the known sound of your voice still rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the fender, you are standing, or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on the sofa. Do you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before I can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have my answer; and that all that time I am employed, with more than Herculean toil, in pushing the tedious hours along, and wishing to annihilate them: the more I strive, the heavier they move, and the longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have spent many tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.

“May 9, 1770.

“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible for me to dissemble with you: such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”

These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.

We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?

We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless. Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised, perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler, but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance. The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel, that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian, some large and useful task.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

1.Life in Abyssinia; being Notes collected during Three Years’ Residence and Travels in that Country.ByMansfield Parkyns. In Two Volumes. London: 1853.

2. A young Mahommedan, now resident at Adoua, was robbed one night of the scalp of one side of his head.—Parkyns, ii. 293.

3.Blackwood’s Magazinefor September 1851.

4. “Τὸ μὲν οὖν κολακεύειν, αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον.”—Dem. Phal. de Elocutione.

5. Not such asphaltum as is now commonly used; he had a method of preparing it to render it innocuous.

6. We owe it to Mr Stansfield to say, that had the authority we quoted given, with Mr Stansfield’s answers, the subsequent explanation of them, we should not have used such an expression as that he “confessed an astonishing indifference.” We therefore quote his explanation. He is asked, (Question3628,) “You have stated that you have not studied these pictures in the National Gallery much; that you were not very conversant with the works of the old masters; and that you had not studied those pictures in particular; so you, from your previous knowledge of them, feel competent to give an opinion whether or not they have been injured in the minute details to which reference has been made? Yes. I think I may; because when I spoke of my ignorance, I did it in reference to my not possessing the information that I know many gentlemen belonging to the Academy have. I should refer to Mr Dyce at once as a very great authority, and also to Sir Charles Eastlake himself. I have not their experience in Italian works of art, but still the pictures that are before us I have looked at with admiration, and I know that if there is any material injury done to them I should detect it as soon as any one.”

7. Gen. x. 3; Ezek. xxvii. 14, xxxviii. 6; Herod, iv. 5.

8.Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses voyages de l’Inde, depuis l’an 629 jusqu’en 645.Par Hoei II. et Yen-thsong. Traduite du Chinois par Stanislas Julien. Paris: 1853.

9.Speeches of the Right HonourableT. B. Macaulay,M.P.Corrected by himself.London, 1854.

10.Funfzig Jahre in beiden Hemisphären.Reminiscences of a Merchant’s Life. ByVincent Nolte. 2 volumes. Hamburg: Perthes-Besser. London: Williams and Norgate. 1853.

11.Memoires de G. J. Ouvrard.Paris, 1826.

12.The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon.ByS. W. Baker, Esq. London: 1854.

13.The Correspondence ofThomas GrayandWilliam Mason,with Notes and Illustrations.By the Rev.John Mitford, Vicar of Benhall.Gray’sWorks.Aldine Edition.

13.The Correspondence ofThomas GrayandWilliam Mason,with Notes and Illustrations.By the Rev.John Mitford, Vicar of Benhall.

Gray’sWorks.Aldine Edition.

14.Gray’sWorks, Appendix, vol. i. p. 112.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESPageChanged fromChanged to171αἰχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾷν, ἐπισαφλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐχηματισμένον—Dem. Phil.αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον—Dem. Phal.178not dry brush, a glaze, and he mayhot dry brush, a glaze, and he may188A judge sate in the centre ofA judge sat in the centre ofTypos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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