Letters

Thomas Gray, the poet and author of the “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,” was born on December 26, 1716, in London, and was the only survivor of twelve children. At Eton he formed friendships with Horace Walpole, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West, who were later his chief correspondents. At Cambridge, where Gray took no degree, he began to make experiments in poetry. In 1739 and 1740 he travelled in Europe, and in 1742 he had established himself at Peterhouse, Cambridge, without University position or recognition of any kind. Here he plunged into the study of classical literature, and began to work on the “Elegy,” which was published in 1751. He was a shy, sensitive man of very wide learning. Couched in graceful language, the letters are typical of the best in the best age of letter-writing, and not only are they fascinating for the tender and affectionate nature they reveal, but also for the gleam of real humour which Walpole declared was the poet’s most natural vein. He died on July 30, 1771.

I.-The Student’s Freedom

TO RICHARD WEST

Peterhouse, December, 1736. After this term I shall have nothing more of college impertinences to undergo. I have endured lectures daily and hourly since I came last, supported by the hopes of being shortly at liberty to give myself up to my friends and classical companions, who, poor souls, though I see them fallen into great contempt with most people here, yet I cannot help sticking to them.

Indeed, what can I do else? Must I plunge into metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark. Nature has not furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in too much light. I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly; and if these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it. The people I behold all around me, it seems, know all this, and more, and yet I do not know one of them who inspires me with any ambition of being like him. Surely it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke when he said, “The wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall build there and satyrs shall dance there.” You see, here is a pretty collection of desolate animals, which is verified in this town to a tittle.

TO HORACE WALPOLE

Burnham, September, 1737. I have at the distance of half a mile through a green lane a forest all my own, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds. At the foot of one of these squat I, “Il penseroso,” and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I do not think he read Virgil, as I commonly do there.

II.-Travels with Horace Walpole

TO HIS MOTHER

Amiens, April, 1739. We left Dover at noon, and with a pretty brisk gale reached Calais by five. This is an exceeding old, but very pretty town, and we hardly saw anything there that was not so new and so different from England that it surprised us agreeably. We went the next morning to the great church, and were at high mass, it being Easter Monday. In the afternoon we took a post-chaise for Boulogne, which was only eighteen miles further.

This chaise is a strange sort of conveyance, resembling an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening before, instead of the side; three horses draw it, one between the shafts, and the other two on each side, on one of which the postillion rides and drives, too. This vehicle will, upon occasion, go fourscore miles a day; but Mr. Walpole, being in no hurry, chooses to make easy journeys of it, and we go about six miles an hour. They are no very graceful steeds, but they go well, and through roads which they say are bad for France, but to me they seem gravel walks and bowling greens. In short, it would be the finest travelling in the world were it not for the inns, which are most terrible places indeed.

The country we have passed through hitherto has been flat, open, but agreeably diversified with villages, fields well cultivated, and little rivers. On every hillock is a windmill, a crucifix, or a Virgin Mary dressed in flowers and a sarcenet robe; one sees not many people or carriages on the road; now and then, indeed, you meet a strolling friar, a countryman, or a woman riding astride on a little ass, with short petticoats and a great headdress of blue wool.

TO THOMAS ASHTON

Paris, April, 1739. Here there are infinite swarms of inhabitants and more coaches than men. The women in general dress in sacs, flat hoops of five yards wide, nosegays of artificial flowers on one shoulder, and faces dyed in scarlet up to the eyes. The men in bags, roll-ups, muffs, and solitaires.

We had, at first arrival, an inundation of visits pouring in upon us, for all the English are acquainted, and herd much together, and it is no easy matter to disengage oneself from them, so that one sees but little of the French themselves. To be introduced to people of high quality it is absolutely necessary to be master of the language. There is not a house where they do not play, nor is any one at all acceptable unless he does so, too, a professed gamester being the most advantageous character a man can have at Paris. The abbés and men of learning are of easy access enough, but few English that travel have knowledge enough to take any great pleasure in that company.

We are exceedingly unsettled and irresolute; don’t know our own minds for two moments together, and try to bring ourselves to a state of perfect apathy. In short, I think the greatest evil that could have happened to us is our liberty, for we are not at all capable to determine our own actions.

TO HIS MOTHER

Lyons, October 13, 1739. We have been to see a famous monastery, called the Grand Chartreuse, and had no reason to think our time lost. After having travelled seven days, very slow (for we did not change horses, it being impossible for a chaise to go post in these roads), we arrived at a little village among the mountains of Savoy, called Échelles; from thence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes is tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on the other hand, the cascades that in many places throw themselves from the very summit down into the vale and the river below.

This place St. Bruno chose to retire to, and upon its very top founded the convent, which is the superior of the whole order. When we came there, the two fathers who are commissioned to entertain strangers (for the rest must neither speak to one another nor to anyone else) received us very kindly, and set before us a repast of dried fish, eggs, butter, and fruits, all excellent in their kind, and extremely neat. They pressed us to spend the night there, and to stay some days with them; but this we could not do, so they led us about their house, which is like a little city, for there are 100 fathers, besides 300 servants, that make their clothes, grind their corn, press their wine, and do everything among themselves. The whole is quite orderly and simple; nothing of finery, but the wonderful decency and the strange situation more than supply the place of it.

TO THE SAME

Turin, November 7, 1739. I am this night arrived here, and have just set down to rest me after eight days tiresome journey. On the seventh day we came to Lanebourg, the last town in Savoy; it lies at the foot of the famous Mount Cenis, which is so situated as to allow no room for any way but over the very top of it. Here the chaise was forced to be pulled to pieces, and the baggage and that to be carried by mules. We ourselves were wrapped up in our furs, and seated upon a sort of matted chair without legs, which is carried upon poles in the manner of a bier, and so began to ascend by the help of eight men.

It was six miles to the top, where a plain opens itself about as many more in breadth, covered perpetually with very deep snow, and in the midst of that a great lake of unfathomable depth, from whence a river takes its rise, and tumbles over monstrous rocks quite down the other side of the mountain. The descent is six miles more, but infinitely more steep than the going up; and here the men perfectly fly down with you, stepping from stone to stone with incredible swiftness, in places where none but they could go three places without falling. The immensity of the precipices, the roaring of the river and torrents that run into it, the huge crags covered with ice and snow, and the clouds below you and about you, are objects it is impossible to conceive without seeing them. We were but five hours in performing the whole, from which you may judge of the rapidity of the men’s motion.

TO THE SAME

Rome, April 2, 1740. The first entrance of Rome is prodigiously striking. It is by a noble gate, designed by Michael Angelo, and adorned with statues; this brings you into a large square, in the midst of which is a large block of granite, and in front you have at one view two churches of a handsome architecture, and so much alike that they are called the twins; with three streets, the middle-most of which is one of the longest in Rome. As high as my expectation was raised, I confess, the magnificence of this city infinitely surpasses it. You cannot pass along a street but you have views of some palace, or church, or square, or fountain, the most picturesque and noble one can imagine.

III.-The Birth of the “Elegy"

TO HORACE WALPOLE

January, 1747. I am very sorry to hear you treat philosophy and her followers like a parcel of monks and hermits, and think myself obliged to vindicate a profession I honour. The first man that ever bore the name used to say that life was like the Olympic games, where some came to show the strength and agility of their bodies; others, as the musicians, orators, poets, and historians, to show their excellence in those arts; the traders to get money; and the better sort, to enjoy the spectacle and judge of all these. They did not then run away from society for fear of its temptations; they passed their days in the midst of it, conversation was their business; they cultivated the arts of persuasion, on purpose to show men it was their interest, as well as their duty, not to be foolish and false and unjust; and that, too, in many instances with success; which is not very strange, for they showed by their life that their lessons were not impracticable.

TO THE SAME

Cambridge, February 11, 1751. As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can. Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen who have taken the “Magazine of Magazines” into their hands. They tell me that an “ingenious” poem, called “Reflections in a Country Church- yard,” has been communicated to them, which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the “excellent” author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his “indulgence,” but the “honour” of his correspondence, etc.

As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent or so correspondent as they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week’s time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character. He must correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be, “Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard.” If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better.

TO STONEHEWER

Cambridge, August 18, 1758. I am as sorry as you seem to be that our acquaintance harped so much on the subject of materialism when I saw him with you in town. That we are indeed mechanical and dependent beings, I need no other proof than my own feelings; and from the same feelings I learn with equal conviction that we are not merely such; that there is a power within that struggles against the force and bias of that mechanism, commands its motion, and, by frequent practice, reduces it to that ready obedience which we call “habit”; and all this in conformity to a preconceived opinion, to that least material of all agents, a thought.

I have known many in his case who, while they thought they were conquering an old prejudice, did not perceive they were under the influence of one far more dangerous; one that furnishes us with a ready apology for all our worst actions, and opens to us a full licence for doing whatever we please; and yet these very people were not at all the more indulgent to other men, as they should have been; their indignation to such as offended them was nothing mitigated. In short, the truth is, they wished to be persuaded of that opinion for the sake of its convenience, but were not so in their heart.

TO HORACE WALPOLE

1760. I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry (Macpherson’s) that I cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them.

Is there anything known of the author or authors, and of what antiquity they are supposed to be? Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching to it? I have often been told that the poem called “Hardycanute,” which I always admired, and still admire, was the work of somebody that lived a few years ago. This I do not at all believe, though it has evidently been retouched in places by some modern hand; but, however, I am authorised by this report to ask whether the two poems in question are certainly antique and genuine. I make this inquiry in quality of an antiquary, and am not otherwise concerned about it; for, if I were sure that anyone now living in Scotland had written them to divert himself, and laugh at the credulity of the world, I would undertake a journey into the Highlands only for the pleasure of seeing him.