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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 27

been a hint to him not to write odes to the King
at all/

. "Born in the same year with Milton, Gray" we
are told " would have been another man, born in the
same year with Burns, he would have been another
man." On the contrary, he would have been the
same man, but a less finished artist, if he had been
born in 1608. He would have been no more stirred
by that eminently stirring time, than Sir Thomas
Browne. In the year of Naseby Fight he might have
been discussing with Browne whether the lion is
afraid of the cock, and whether earwigs have wings.
If he had loved young Edward Bang, we know
already what sort of 'Lycidas' his would have been.
The author would have bewailed his ^e learned friend *
but he would never ' by occasion, have foretold the
ruin of our corrupted clergy then in their height/
In whatever age he had lived it was not in the man
to link private sorrow with public calamity. When
he feels most acutely he cannot even moralize, in that
tenderly human spirit of his which never grows old;
he can only complain. If we whose many con-
ventionalisms are not only conventional but hideous,
can forget for a moment that Gray in his Sonnet on
the Death of "West calls the sun 'Phoebus', it will be
redeemed for us by this one touch of absolute sin-
cerity, that it is only a cry of pain, real though
disguised in music now a little trite to us. And



	INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 27 been a hint to him not to write odes to the King at all/ . "Born in the same year with Milton, Gray" we are told " would have been another man, born in the same year with Burns, he would have been another man." On the contrary, he would have been the same man, but a less finished artist, if he had been born in 1608. He would have been no more stirred by that eminently stirring time, than Sir Thomas Browne. In the year of Naseby Fight he might have been discussing with Browne whether the lion is afraid of the cock, and whether earwigs have wings. If he had loved young Edward Bang, we know already what sort of 'Lycidas' his would have been. The author would have bewailed his ^e learned friend * but he would never ' by occasion, have foretold the ruin of our corrupted clergy then in their height/ In whatever age he had lived it was not in the man to link private sorrow with public calamity. When he feels most acutely he cannot even moralize, in that tenderly human spirit of his which never grows old; he can only complain. If we whose many con- ventionalisms are not only conventional but hideous, can forget for a moment that Gray in his Sonnet on the Death of "West calls the sun 'Phoebus', it will be redeemed for us by this one touch of absolute sin- cerity, that it is only a cry of pain, real though disguised in music now a little trite to us. And