English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century [pp. 30-50]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
untimely clouding of'his mind and his early death; Gray because of his weak health, depressed spirits, and natural fastidiousness. In all these things they resemble each other, and are
unlike the other poets of their day. But when we look closely
into the texture of their verse marked differences are seen.
While in Gray we admire the dignity and the stately march
of his odes, we cannot but observe that their structure is artificial rather than natural. The scholar has so carefully manipulated sentiments that originally came from the heart that the
scholarly varnish often conceals the real feeling. His diction is
still encumbered by not a few of the frigid classicisms of the
time. Wordsworth in one of his prefaces has borne a little too
hardly on the diction of Gray. Still the faults which he notes
are no doubt there. Why, for instance, in so perfect a piece as
the Hymn to Adversity should she be made daughter of Jove?
The studied classicalism and the too elaborate ornamentation of
The Bard and The Progress of Poetry, even the evidently sincere
Ode to Adversity, leave us cold. It is only in The Elegy, perhaps, that the poet and the critic are so happily blended that
the art never interferes with, only serves to heighten, the pathos
of the natural sentiments.
In Collins, while the scholar is present, he is kept well in the
background, and the poet in those best pieces already named
sings out his heart in a language at once educated and natural,
direct and transparent, and with a fluent melody which neither
Gray nor any other poet of the century ever attained to. So
we see by the middle of the century the genuine singing birds
were piping in spite of the frigid atmosphere and the prosaic
age.
In the time of Gray another strain of pure human-heartedness
crept into English poetry in the two well-known poems of Goldsmith. Still retaining Pope's heroic couplet, he moulded it to
quite other uses, passing with easy grace from grave to gay,
from description to natural reflection, and blending humor and
pathos with a delicate touch peculiarly his own. For, as has
been well said, "No one like Goldsmith knew how to be at once
natural and exquisite, innocent and wise, a man and still a child."
If we wish to see what different effects can be produced by the
same measure, we have but to compare Pope's Windsor Forest,
46