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14 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

nor that of the present volume has admitted of giving
together in full the correspondence between Gray and
West. In Walpole's Correspondence as edited by
Cunningham, West thus appears, to the great advan-
tage of lucidity and interest. If the editors of Cicero
excluded from his works the letters of his correspon-
dents, on the plea that they were not Cicero's, classical
scholars would have cause to complain. Letters, more-
over, are more real and life-like when they can be read
as dialogues; the reader is more under the influence of
the spirit in which they were composed. Some figures
are thus preserved in literature, engaging certainly,
yet scarcely strong enough to stand alone; I am not
sure that West is not one of these. The Englishman
thinks as naturally of West in conjunction with Gray,
as the Frenchman thinks of Etieime de la Boetie in
conjunction with Montaigne. It is the light of
friendship which glorifies these relics ; and the true
devotee of literature, who is always something more
than learned or critical, tries to look upon these
unfalfilled promises of the early lost, with the eyes of
those who once loved them. We shall probably be
unable to subscribe to Gray's estimate of West's
Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline; and we
may be quite sure that if the unhappy line

'And tho^} not virtuous, "virtuously inclin'd'
had been Mason's not West's, Gray would have said
of it just what he did say to Mason in a similar



	14 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. nor that of the present volume has admitted of giving together in full the correspondence between Gray and West. In Walpole's Correspondence as edited by Cunningham, West thus appears, to the great advan- tage of lucidity and interest. If the editors of Cicero excluded from his works the letters of his correspon- dents, on the plea that they were not Cicero's, classical scholars would have cause to complain. Letters, more- over, are more real and life-like when they can be read as dialogues; the reader is more under the influence of the spirit in which they were composed. Some figures are thus preserved in literature, engaging certainly, yet scarcely strong enough to stand alone; I am not sure that West is not one of these. The Englishman thinks as naturally of West in conjunction with Gray, as the Frenchman thinks of Etieime de la Boetie in conjunction with Montaigne. It is the light of friendship which glorifies these relics ; and the true devotee of literature, who is always something more than learned or critical, tries to look upon these unfalfilled promises of the early lost, with the eyes of those who once loved them. We shall probably be unable to subscribe to Gray's estimate of West's Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline; and we may be quite sure that if the unhappy line 'And tho^} not virtuous, "virtuously inclin'd' had been Mason's not West's, Gray would have said of it just what he did say to Mason in a similar