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 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 still made greater from the echo of 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 river below, and many other particulars impossible to describe, you will conclude we had no occasion to repent our pains." Even then Gray at times used the language of his day. Thus, Nov. 7, 1739: “The winter was so far advanced as in great measure to spoil the beauty of the prospect; however, there was still somewhat fine remaining amidst the savageness and horror of the place." 66 And Dec. 19 of the same year, he speaks of the Apennines as not so horrid as the Alps, though pretty near as high." Horrid, of course, as with Addison and others, had not its present common meaning of odious, but rather that of awful. His warmest utterance is this, Nov. 16, 1739: “I own I have not as yet met anywhere those grand and simple works of art that are to amaze one, and whose sight one is to be 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." : Gray here tasted emotions which were scarcely to be shared with any one for many years. He was, in this respect, nearly half a century in advance of most of his contemporaries.* *See Gray's correspondence with Rev. Norton Nicholls and Dr. Wharton, in 1769, concerning the English lakes, which he was among the first to visit, and his "Tour in the Lakes." There was by this time general interest in the beauties of the landscapes. William Gilpin's "Observations and Artistical Remarks on the Picturesque Beauty of Various Parts of England, Wales, and Scotland," began to appear; the remarks on the Lake country in 1789, though "written about fifteen years before they were published. They were at first thrown together, warm from the subject, each evening, after the scene of the day had been presented " (vide preface). It was the MS. of Gilpin's "Tour down the Wye" which Gray annotated shortly before his death. We have seen that Defoe's "Tour through Britain" showed the writer's fondness for Gothic architecture. Mountains he enjoyed less. Thus, iii. 258 (4th ed. 1748): "I now entered Westmoreland, a county eminent only for being the wildest, most barren, and frightful of any that I have passed over in England or in Wales. . . . It must be owned, however, that here are some very pleasant manufacturing Towns, and consequently populous;" yet from Lonsdale "we have a very fine Prospect of the Mountains at a vast Distance and of the beautiful Course of the River Lone, in a Valley far beneath us." Earlier, however, "As these hills were lofty, so they had an aspect of Terror. Here were no rich pleasant valleys between them, as among the Alps; no Lead Mines and Veins of rich Ore, as in the Peak; no Coal-pits, as in the Hills about Halifax, but all barren and wild, and of no Use either to Man or Beast." Of the "Winander Mere" he says, merely, it "is famous for producing the char-fish. . . . It is a curious Fish, and, as a Dainty, is polled and sent far and near by way of Present." In the "Beauties of England and Wales," xv. pt. 2, p. 26, under Westmoreland, "We find, indeed, a writer of considerable taste describing his visit to Winandermere, in 1748, with that glow of language which such scenes are calculated to suggest to persons living in cities or campaign As Mr. Arnold has shown, Gray was a victim to the age in which he lived. We every day see men ruined by some fatal defect of character, by some overmastering vice, but countries. We came,' says he, 'upon a high promontory, that gave us a full view of the bright lake, which, spreading itself under us, in the midst of the mountains, presented one of the most glorious appearances that ever struck the eye of the traveller with transport." Vide, also, Dr. Dalton's "Descriptive Poem: Addressed to Two Ladies on their Return from Viewing the Mines near Whitehaven,” in Pearch's "Collection" (succeeding Dodsley's), vol. i. This poem was written in 1755. After praising the beauty of the lake, the author says: "Supreme of mountains, Skiddaw, hail! To whom all Britain sinks a vale! Lo, his imperial brow I see Boldly to scale his top sublime," etc. Page 52, in the notes, see the enthusiasm of "the late ingenious Dr. Brown," in a letter to a friend. "On the opposite shore, you will find rocks and cliffs of stupendous height hanging broken over the lake in horrible grandeur." The "Description of the Neighbourhood of Keswick " was published in 1767; Hutchinson's "Excursion to the Lakes," in 1774; West's Guide, in 1778. Cumberland, in his "Memoirs" (Am. ed.), p. 195, speaking of a journey to the lakes of Cumberland with the Earl of Warwick, says, "He took with him Mr. Smith, well known to the public for his elegant designs after nature in Switzerland, Italy, and elsewhere." A few German writers mention Haller's poem, "die Alpen," as a turningpoint in the popular taste for mountains, but this is exaggeration (vide Adolf Frey's "Alb. von Haller," p. 174). Haller held the utilitarian ideas of his day and generation about mountains-thus: "Wo nichts, was nöthig, fehlt, und nur was nutzet, blüht. -"Poems," p. 44. This note has already swollen beyond all measure, or it would be well to quote passages from Rousseau's "Nouvelle Héloïse," which fairly threw the mountains open to the world. Vide, also, Petrarch's account of his we are less disposed to acknowledge the irresistible influence of an uncongenial time. Every age appears with a certain set of moulds into which it is necessary that those should fit who are to attain success, and those who fail to accommodate themselves to these conditions are thrown out. They may perform some work which their contemporaries will spurn, but which another generation may admire; yet we shall always have to regret their incompleteness, their tragic loneliness. If all the world is a stage, a good many people are cast into the wrong parts, and Gray was a melancholy example of this uncongeniality. He was continually groping for a subject; and the whole endeavor of his life was to find something more truly poetical than the display of wit and reason. Goldsmith's remarks, already quoted, show this, and you will notice the dexterity with which he taunts those who take "pains to involve [the language] into pristine barbarity." The remote past was tabooed, and the obvious horrors of the tomb were chanted with cloying monotony, while the elegiac beauty of Gray's short poem was almost the single valuable contribution to poetry for many years.* The only other prominent example was Collins's beautiful odes (1746), which have that rare touch of classic beauty which is precision without pedantry, beauty without exaggeration, simplicity without commonness. They had no following, however, in their own time. ascent of Mt. Ventoux, "De Rebus Familiaribus," lib. iv. ep. 1. See Quarterly Review, July, 1882. * Gray is often mentioned as the first of English poets to return to old Norse themes (thus Gosse, "Gray," English Men of Letters Series, p. 163). But see Dryden's "Miscellany Poems," vi. 387 (ed. 1716), for a translation from the Hervarer Saga. This collection contains numerous old songs and ballads, and selections from Ben Jonson and Donne CHAPTER IX. I. I HAVE already spoken of Goldsmith's taunts about those who formed the new school, and he frequently expressed very genuine impatience with his contemporaries. Sometimes he seems to have written as if Dr. Johnson were looking over his shoulder, and there is an air of solemnity and authority about him which can scarcely have been natural. Yet his position on the conservative side in the literary controversies made him assume the tone of a teacher, and his own work is full of the influences of his time. It is not surprising that he was vexed with the somewhat formless utterances of his fellow-bards, for in his hands the measure which had already been employed by so many poets acquired new grace. The "Traveller" (1765) leaves us cold, although there are good lines here and there for we no longer seek "to find that happiest spot below," nor could we rest satisfied with the lingering optimism which persuaded Goldsmith that, And that, "perhaps, if countries we compare, And estimate the blessings which they share, 66 every state to one lov'd blessing prone, Each to the favorite happiness attends, |