not do as he pleases upon the strength of the "Rose and Crown" and universal benevolence. By an inn, however, we do not mean any inn; no, not even with companions who can make us forget everything else; for on their account also we desire an inn perfect of its kind; and this, we take it, is an old inn that has been a country-house, with at least a bit of the old garden to it, parterres of flowers, lavender, &c., and good sized oldfashioned rooms, with smaller ones in corners, to choose according as you are few or many, or wish to be roomy or snug. Hazlitt, who loved to escape from his irritabilities into an inn, has noticed such a one in a charming passage. He is speaking of the delight of reading favorite authors. "The last time," he says, "I tasted this luxury in its full perfection, was one day after a sultry day's walk between Farnham and Alton. I was fairly tired out; I walked into an inn-yard (I think at the latter place); I was shown by the waiter to what looked at first like common out-houses at the other end of it, but they turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably a hundred years old-the one I entered opened into an old-fashioned garden, embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury; it was wainscoted, and there was a gravelooking dark-colored portrait of Charles II. hanging up over the tiled chimney-piece. I had Love for Love in my pocket, and began to read; coffee was brought in, in a silver coffee-pot; the cream, the bread and butter, everything was excellent, and the flavor of Congreve's style prevailed over all. I prolonged the entertainment till a late hour, and relished this divine comedy better even than when I used to see it played by Miss Mellon, as Miss Prue; Bob Palmer, as Tattle; and Bannister as honest Ben. This circumstance happened just five years ago, and it seems like yesterday. If I count my life so, by lustres, it will soon glide away; yet I shall not have to repine, if, while it lasts, it is enriched by a few such recollections."* The Henley at which Shenstone wrote his lines on an inn was the Henley on the road to Stratford-on-Avon. Johnson slept at it one night with Boswell, and had quoted a stanza from the lines in the course of the day, when they were dining at an "excellent inn at Chapelhouse." "We dined," Boswell says, "at an excellent inn at Chapelhouse, where he (Johnson) expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns * Plain Speaker, vol. i. p. 302. and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life. 'There is no private house,' said he, 'in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that everybody should be easy, in the nature of things it cannot be; there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's house, as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by men, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.' He then repeated with great emotion Shenstone's lines: "Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, His warmest welcome at an inn.'"* Johnson was so fond of this little poem, that Miss Reynolds (sister of Sir Joshua) said she had learnt it by heart from hearing him repeat it. Some exclusive admirers of great poetry would see nothing in it; but let them try to write as good a one, and they would discover that some portion of the poetical facility was necessary to express and modulate even thoughts like these. O thee, fair Freedom! I retire, То From flattery, cards, and dice, and din; Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot or humble Inn. 'Tis here with boundless power I reign; * Boswell, Murray's Edition, vol. vi. p. 81. Converts dull port to bright champagne; I fly from pomp, I fly from plate! Here, waiter, take my sordid ore, Which lackeys else might hope to win; Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, Five Letters of Gray. GRAY appears to us to be the best letter-writer in the language. Others equal him in particular qualities, and surpass him in amount of entertainment; but none are so nearly faultless. Chesterfield wants heart, and even his boasted" delicacy;" Bolingbroke and Pope want simplicity; Cowper is more lively than strong; Shenstone reminds you of too many rainy days, Swift of too many things which he affected to despise, Gibbon too much of the formalist and the littérateur. The most amusing of all our letter-writers are Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but though they had abundance of wit, sense, and animal spirits, you are not always sure of their veracity. Now, "the first quality in a companion," as Sir William Temple observes, "is truth ;" and Gray's truth is as manifest as his other good qualities. He has sincerity, modesty, manliness (in spite of a somewhat effeminate body), learning, good-nature, playfulness, a perfect style; and if an air of pensiveness breathes over all, it is only of that resigned and contemplative sort which completes our sympathy with the writer. Mark what he says in these letters about his sitting in the forest; about Southern; about lords and their school-days; about Shaftesbury; about having a "garding" of one's own; about Akenside compared with himself; about the Southampton Abbot, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, &c. &c.; and about sunrise-wondering "whether anybody ever saw it before," he is so astonished at their not having said more on the subject. Gray is the "melancholy Jaques" of English literature, without the sullenness or causticity. His melancholy is of the diviner sort of Milton and Beaumont, and is always ready to assume a kindly cheerfulness. I TO HORACE WALPOLE.* [A FOX-HUNTER-A POET'S SOLITUDE-SOUTHERN THE SEPTEMBER, 1737. WAS hindered in my last, and so could not give you all the trouble I would have done. The description of road which your coach-wheels have so often honored, it would be needless to give you. Suffice it, that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination. His dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him galloping after them in the field, yet he continues to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have, at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common), all my own; at least as good as so, 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 *Walpole and Gray had been school-fellows at Eton; and, though differing greatly in some respects, had tastes alike in others, particularly a love for romantic fiction and Gothic architecture. Their differences were found to render them unsuitable as fellow-travellers, when they visited Italy; but they renewed their intercourse at home, and continued correspondents as long as Gray lived. At the date of the letter before us, Walpole was a youth of twenty, residing with his father, Sir Robert, at Haughton; Gray, twenty-one, on a visit to an uncle, at Burnham, in Buckinghamshire. The reader will observe the mature manliness of his style. † Some readers of the present day might suppose that coarse habits are here but coarsely described by the delicate young poet. But such language was not considered coarse in the time of Gray. |