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Selections from the poetry and prose of Thomas Gray
Selections from the poetry and prose of Thomas Gray Author:Thomas Gray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: little, but still it is not well, nor gives any idea of the determined virtues of his heart. It just serves to help the reader to an image of the person, whose g... more »enius and integrity they must admire, if they are so happy as to have a taste for either." II. GRAY'S STERILITY. Very few of the world's great poets have made it easier for the general public to read their " Complete Works " than Gray. The temptation to scribble and to print is one that assails not only the would-be, but the genuine poets. This accounts for the bulky volumes which the student of a later age must buy and con, but which the rank and file of even intelligent readers pass by silently, content to have samples in place of the entire stock. Nor does the student always wish that the master had written more. We wish he had written more in his best vein, but the chances are even that he would not have written in his best. vein. There are many of Wordsworth's sonnets which the world has willingly let die ; their titles in the Tables of Contents are merely the headstones of their graves. The Excursion — let it be said softly and with a timid glance over the shoulder — is long enough. With a man like Gray — there are not very many men like Gray—the case is different. His sterility is so surprising that it becomes necessary at the outset not only to call attention to it — the price of his "Complete Poetical Works" will do that — but to attempt to explain it. This can be done without resorting to any subtle theories. The view given by Matthew Arnold in his famous essay1 is entirely without foundation in fact. It is true that there is a curious lack of 1 Ward's English Poets, III, 302. harmony between Gray's cold, classical style and the Romantic subjects he treated ; this no doubt often made articulation extr...« less