Lord Lyttelton's Poems are the works of a man of literature and judgment devoting part of his time to versification. They have nothing to be despised, and little to be admired. Of his Progress of Love,' it is sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral. His blank verse in Blenheim' has neither much force nor much elegance. His little performances, whether Songs 25 or Epigrams, are sometimes sprightly, and sometimes insipid. His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which cannot much tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or surprises. But from this censure ought to be excepted his Advice to Belinda,' which, though for the most part written when he was very young, contains much truth and much prudence, very elegantly and vigorously expressed, and shows a mind attentive to life, and a power of poetry which cultivation. might have raised to excellence.26 25 Lord Lyttelton's Delia was a Mrs. Boughton. See Walpole to Mann, Sept. 10, 1761. 26 Bolingbroke's idea of a Patriot King was originally written in the form of a letter to Lyttelton. The letter was meant for Frederick Prince of Wales, in whose service Lyttelton then was. The only good portrait of Lyttelton is at Hagley; a Kitcat by Sir Joshua Reynolds. “Have you seen Lyttelton's Monody on his wife's death? There are parts of it too stiff and poetical; but others truly tender and elegiac, as one would wish." -GRAY to Wharton, Nov. 30, 1747. "I am not totally of your mind as to Mr. Lyttelton's Elegy, though I love kids and fawns as little as you do. If it were all like the fourth stanza, I should be excessively pleased."—GRAY to Walpole (n. d.). In vain I look around O'er all the well-known ground, My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry! Where oft in tender talk We saw the summer sun go down the sky; Nor by yon fountain's side, Nor where its waters glide Along the valley, can she now be found: In all the wide-stretch'd prospect's ample bound No more my mournful eye Can aught of her espy, But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie. LYTTELTON: Monody, st. 4. Johnson should have said a word in praise of Lyttelton's Prologue to Thom son's last play: one of the best Prologues in the English language. GRAY. 1716-1771. Born in Cornhill, London Educated at Eton and Cambridge Accom panies Horace Walpole into Italy - His Quarrel with Pope- Publishes his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' - Its immediate popu larity - Publishes his Odes Refuses the Laurel Made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge - Death, and Burial at Stoke Pogeis in Buckinghamshire Works and Character. THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother,' then assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge. The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the Common Law, he took no degree. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it 2 1 Mr. William Antrobus died at Everden, Northamptonshire, 22nd May, 1742, and was buried in the chancel of that church. 2 They quarrelled at Reggio. told that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a 3 "I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me the fault was mine. I was too young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me; of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one whom presumption and folly, perhaps, made me deem not my superior then in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him insolently: he loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from conviction of knowing he was my superior; I often disregarded his wishes of seeing places which I would not quit other amusements to visit, though I offered to send him to them without me. Forgive me if I say that his temper was not conciliating. At the same time that I will confess to you that he acted a more friendly part, had I had the sense to take advantage of it; he freely told me of my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine, the breach must have grown wider, till we became incompatible. After this confession, I fear you will think I fall far short of the justice I promised him in the words which I should wish to have substituted to some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter, and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory."-WALPOLE to Mason, March 2, 1773. The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraint of the university, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, &c., whilst I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."-WALPOLE: Walpoli ma, vol. i. p. 95, art. ex. Mr. Roberts, of the Pell Office, who was likely to be well informed, told me at Mr. Deacon's, 19th April, 1799, that the quarrel between Gray and Walpole was occasioned by a suspicion Mr. Walpole entertained that Mr. Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England. To ascertain this he clandestinely opened a letter and re-sealed it, which Mr. Gray with great propriety resented: there seems to have been but little cordiality afterwards between them.-ISAAC REED: MS, Note in Wakefield's Life of Gray; Mitford's Gray, ii. 175. Compare Norton Nicholls's Reminiscences in Mitford's Gray,' v. 48. |