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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 31

with, that stanza from any consideration of structure.
But the nineteenth, century, which has learnt from
him that Poetry is an inspiration, will still return to
Gray to learn that it is also an art. To Gray, it may
be, rather than to Pope; because the character of
Gray's thought and themes belongs less to the occa-
sional and the transient.

It is scarcely a paradox to say that he has left much
that is incomplete, but nothing that is unfinished.
His handwriting represents his mind; I have seen and
transcribed many and many a page of it, but I do not
recollect to have noticed a single carelessly written
word, or even letter. The mere sight of it suggests re-
finement, order, and infinite pains. A mind searching
in so many directions, sensitive to so many influences,
yet seeking in the first place its own satisfaction in a
manner uniformly careful and artistic, is almost fore-
doomed to give very little to the world; it must be
content, as the excellent Matthias says, to be ' its own
exceeding great reward/ But what is given is a
little gold instead of much silver; a legal tender at
any time, though it has never been soiled in the
market. He claims our honour as one of those few
who in any age have lived in the pursuit of the abso-
lute best, and who help us to mistrust the glib facility
with which we are apt to characterize epochs. In all
that he has left, there is independence, sincerity,
thoroughness; the highest exemplar of the critical



	INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 31 with, that stanza from any consideration of structure. But the nineteenth, century, which has learnt from him that Poetry is an inspiration, will still return to Gray to learn that it is also an art. To Gray, it may be, rather than to Pope; because the character of Gray's thought and themes belongs less to the occa- sional and the transient. It is scarcely a paradox to say that he has left much that is incomplete, but nothing that is unfinished. His handwriting represents his mind; I have seen and transcribed many and many a page of it, but I do not recollect to have noticed a single carelessly written word, or even letter. The mere sight of it suggests re- finement, order, and infinite pains. A mind searching in so many directions, sensitive to so many influences, yet seeking in the first place its own satisfaction in a manner uniformly careful and artistic, is almost fore- doomed to give very little to the world; it must be content, as the excellent Matthias says, to be ' its own exceeding great reward/ But what is given is a little gold instead of much silver; a legal tender at any time, though it has never been soiled in the market. He claims our honour as one of those few who in any age have lived in the pursuit of the abso- lute best, and who help us to mistrust the glib facility with which we are apt to characterize epochs. In all that he has left, there is independence, sincerity, thoroughness; the highest exemplar of the critical