GRAY AND HIS FRIENDS.*

Ix these days of gathering up the fragments, when the collection of literary and biographical scraps—too often rub- bish—has almost become a mania, it is at first startling to meet with another book on Gray. But Mr. Tovey's charming little volume is not long in justifying its existence. There is nothing of book-making about it. The preface alone, clear and graceful, would have suggested that it was worth reading ; and then every one to whom Gray is an interesting character as well .as a classic writer, is glad to know more of his friendships, with their ups and downs, of the melancholy story of West, of Gray's communications with Mr. Chute, with Percy, of the Beliques, and Brockett, the Professor of History. The " Notes of Travel," too, though Mr. Goose may be right in

• Gray and his /Friends. Letters and Relics in great part hitherto unpub- lished. Edited by Duncan 0. Tovey, M.A., Trinity College. Cambridge : at the University Press. 1890.

calling them " rather dry and impersonal," are by no means without interest.

The Quadruple Alliance, as it was called, between Gray, Walpole, West, and Ashton, and the quarrel between Gray and Walpole, in which Ashton took Walpole's part, which sadly brought this affiance to an end, is further illustrated here by letters that passed between these three. Gray's style justifies the publication of every scrap he ever wrote. Wal- pole's letters are always interesting and lively. Ashton's prove him to have been what he has always been thought, in every way the inferior member of the alliance. Mr. Tovey truly says in his preface : " Letters are not interesting simply because they are old ; and distance lends no enchantment to dullness." Under this conviction, at which we rejoice, he gives us only enough of Ashton's letters to connect the story and to make his place in the friendship clear. His extreme affection for Walpole, shown especially in a letter written after Walpole's recovery from a serious illness abroad, may

perhaps have been partly owing to " a certain disposition to toadyism," as Mr. Tovey suggests ; but, in any case,

explains his being so strongly on Walpole's side in the quarrel with Gray. Such language as the following may be very truly described as " strangely fulsome and exaggerated : "—

" My dear Walpole, I speak sincerely to you. I would not for the world go over that time again, which I have passed since you

left England. I would not, I do assure you I am like a man who has been tossed about a long winter's night, in uneasy dreams. I have been dragged through rivers and thrown down precipices. Oh ! it has been a weary night. Come, dear Walpole, and bring the day."

Even in early days, before quarrels were thought of, Gray's letters to Ashton seem to us to contain a spice of friendly

contempt. Neither, we imagine, did Walpole, who wrote to his faithful admirer, as " Dear Child," respect him very highly. Is it not possible that this "ponderous young person," as Mr. Tovey calls him, may have suffered under a touch of irony when the nickname of " Plato " was given him by his Eton friends ?

Much has been written about the unfortunate quarrel between Gray and Walpole, which yet seems to us very easy to be understood. The young men were entirely different in character and in tastes,—one, to quote Mason, " curious, pensive, and philosophical;" the other, " gay, lively, and inconsiderate." In the last hundred and fifty years, how many pairs of friends have gone abroad together—dangerous experiment—and under these circumstances have found their characters unsuited to each other, and their friendship ruined beyond redemption. For no outward reconciliation can ever really heal this sort of wound. We believe that Horace Walpole honestly regretted the difference, and was quite ready to blame himself ; but there is something very painful in Gray's scornful account of their reconciliation, though he was glad that it should take place. " There has been," he says, " in appearance, the same kindness and confidence almost as of old I neither repent, nor rejoice overmuch, but I am pleased." Contempt for Ashton, Walpole's follower, comes out as strongly in the following as lingering anger with Walpole :-

" I wrote a note the night I came (to Stoke), and immediately received a very civil answer. I went the following evening to see the party (as Mrs. Foible says) ; was something abashed at his confidence ; he came to meet me, kissed me on both sides with all the ease of one who receives an acquaintance just come out of the country, squatted me into a Fauteuil, begun to talk of the town and this and that and t'other, and continued with little interruption for three hours, when I took my leave very indif- ferently pleased, but treated with wondrous good breeding. I supped with him next night (as he desired). Ashton was there, whose formalities tickled me inwardly, for I found he was to be angry about the letter I had wrote him. However, in going home together our hackney-coach jumbled us into a sort of reconcilia- tion ; he hammered out somewhat like an excuse; and I received it very readily, because I cared not twopence whether it were true or not. So we grew the best acquaintance imaginable, and I sat with him on Sunday some hours alone, when he informed me of abundance of anecdotes much to my satisfaction, and in short opened (I really believe) his heart to me with that sincerity, that I found I had still less reason to have a good opinion of him, than (if possible) I ever had before."

Mr. Tovey is not inclined to believe the story of Walpole's having opened a letter of Gray's and sealed it up again. And

certainly we cannot imagine that a proud and sensitive man like Gray could ever, even outwardly, have forgiven such an offence, even if Horace Walpole could have been guilty of it,

which also passes imagination. It is far more likely that Walpole became impatient of his companion's studious habits. Those "Notes of Travel," first printed in this volume, were written at this time; and there are many signs in Walpole's letters that his friend was too much occupied with these and other studies to be a perfectly amusing fellow-traveller for a young man of the world like himself. Any one not quite ignorant of human nature must know that this is explanation enough.

Next to Gray, the most interesting member of the Quad- ruple Alliance seems certainly to have been Richard West ; and one of the objects of Mr. Tovey's book is to collect all memorials of this gifted and unfortunate young man. Several of the letters preserved here have not before been published, especially those written to West by his friends. Mr. Tovey rightly thinks that "letters are more real and lifelike when they can be read as dialogues :"—

" Some figures are thus preserved in literature, engaging certainly, yet scarcely strong enough to stand alone; I am not sure that West is not one of these. The Englishman thinks as naturally of West in conjunction with Gray, as the Frenchman thinks of Etienne de In Batie in conjunction with Montaigne. It is the light of friendship which glorifies these relics ; and the true devotee of literature, who is always something more than learned or critical, tries to look upon these unfulfilled promises of the early lost, with the eyes of those who once loved them."

These letters of West's have a charm and a grace entirely their own, and their touch of melancholy, shadowed as the writer's life was by failing health and terrible family troubles, gives them even a tragic interest. Gray's own melancholy, which mingles so often with his cheerful. ness, is, in his own words, "a white Melancholy, or rather

Lencocholy for the moat part a good easy sort of state." West's sorrows, which ended his life at twenty-six, were something very real' in comparison with those of his friends. At the same time, the brightness of his spirit, the lightness of his touch, especially in the earlier letters, stand out in singular contrast to Ashton's attempts in the same style. Several of Ashton's letters appeal in this part of the book ; he writes to West, in the earlier days, as " thrice highest Zephyrille," and ends in the style of "yours eternally;" most of the substance of his letters being strained in the same fashion. Here, even more than elsewhere, Ashton's inferiority to his friends becomes evident Mr. Tovey does not seem entirely to agree with Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the charming essay we all know, where Brown's words, " He never spoke out," are made the text of such a wonderful dissertation on Gray's character and genius. Mr. Tovey does not find quite so much " high seriousness " in Gray's way of looking at things. He quotes Mr. Lowell : "Responsibility for the universe had not yet been invented." This, to him, is the explanation of Gray's attitude of mind— which no one studying his letters can call very deeply earnest —towards contemporary events and politics. And yet he does not agree with Mr. Arnold that Gray, born at another time, would have been a different man or a more outspoken poet. He " has the student's imagination," and this in every age means a certain remoteness, a certain critical way of looking at all work, including his own :- " Perhaps, after all, he will survive by what we call his limitations, inasmuch as that poetry is the most securely immortal which has gained nothing and can lose nothing by the vicissi-

tudes of sentiment and opinion A mind searching in so many directions, sensitive to so many influences, yet seeking in the first place its own satisfaction in a manner uniformly careful and artistic, is almost foredoomed to give very little to the world ; it must be content, as the excellent Matthias says, to be its own exmecling great reward.' But what is given is a little gold instead of much silver ; a legal tender at any time, though it has never been soiled in the market. He claims our honour as one of those few who in any age have lived in the pursuit of the absolute best, and who help us to mistrust the glib facility with which we are apt to characterise epochs. In all that he has left, there is inde- pendence, sincerity, thoroughness; the highest exemplar of the critical spirit ; a type of how good work of any kind should be done."

Such an extract as this, from Mr. Tovey's excellent and interesting preface, shows that Gray's fame is here in worthy hands. The differing views of the best critics do not perhaps matter much to humanity in general, if only they agree in what is essential, in giving honour where honour is due.