the changes he has seen (it is an October night, the harvest-month of the Highlands). This is the whole plan; yet there is a contrivance, and a preparation of ideas, that you would not expect. The oddest thing is, that every one of them sees ghosts (more or less). The idea that struck and surprised me most, is the following. One of them (describing a storm of wind and rain) says,

Ghosts ride on the tempest to-night:

Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind;
Their songs are of other worlds!

Did you never observe (while rocking winds are piping loud) that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Eolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit. Thomson had an ear sometimes: he was not deaf to this; and has described it gloriously, but given it another different turn, and of more horror. I cannot repeat the lines: it is in his Winter. There is another very fine picture in one of them. It describes the breaking of the clouds after the storm, before it is settled into a calm, and when the moon is seen by short intervals.

The waves are tumbling on the lake,

And lash the rocky sides.

The boat is brim-full in the cove,

The oars on the rocking tide.

Sad sits a maid beneath a cliff,

And eyes the rolling stream:

Her lover promised to come,

She saw his boat (when it was evening) on the lake;

T

Are these his groans in the gale?

Is this his broken boat on the shore ?*

LETTER XXXVIII.

MR. GRAY TO DR. CLARKE.†

Pembroke-hall, Aug. 12, 1760.

Not knowing whether you are yet returned from your sea-water, I write at random to you. For me, I am come to my resting-place, and find it very necessary, after living for a month in a house with three women that laughed from morning to night, and would allow nothing to the sulkiness of my disposition. Company and cards at home, parties by land and water abroad, and (what they call) doing something, that is, racketting about from morning to night, are occupations, I find, that wear out my spirits; especially in a situation where one might sit still, and be alone with pleasure; for the place was a hill like Clifden, opening to a very extensive and diversified landscape, with the Thames, which is navigable, running at its foot.

I would wish to continue here (in a very dif

* The whole of this descriptive piece has been since published in a note to a poem, entitled CROMA, (see Ossian's Poems, vol. I. p. 350, 8vo.) It is somewhat remarkable that the manuscript, in the translator's own hand, which I have in my possession, varies considerably from the printed copy. Some images are omitted, and others added. I will mention one which is not in the manuscript, the spirit of the mountain shrieks. In the tragedy of Douglas, published at least three years before, I always admired this fine line, the angry spirit of the water shriek'd. Quere, Did Mr. Home take this sublime image from Ossian, or has the translator of Ossian since borrowed it from Mr. Home?

+ Physician at Epsom. With this gentleman Mr. Gray commenced an early acquaintance at college.

+ Near Henley.

ferent scene, it must be confessed) till Michaelmas; but I fear I must come to town much sooner. Cambridge is a delight of a place, now there is nobody in it. I do believe you would like it, if

་ ་ ཎྜ་ན

I knew what it washout inhabitants. It is they, I assure you, that get it an ill name and spoil all. Our friend Dr. **(one of its nuisances) is not expected here again in a hurry. He is gone to his grave with five fine mackarel (large and full of roe) in his belly. He eat them all at one dinner; but his fate was a turbot on Trinity Sunday, of which he left little for the company besides bones. He had not been hearty all the week; but after this sixth fish he never held up his head more, and a violent looseness carried him off. -They said he made a very good end.

Have you seen the Erse fragments since they were printed? I am more puzzled than ever about their antiquity, though I still incline (against every body's opinion) to believe them old. Those you have already seen are the best; though there are some others that are excellent too.

LETTER XXXIX.

MR. GRAY TO MR. MASON.

Cambridge, Aug. 20, 1760.

desired

I HAVE Sent Museus* back as you me, scratched here and there. And with it also a

+ Vide Letter XI. of this Section.

* I had desired Mr. Gray to revise my Monody on Mr. Pope's Death, in order that I might correct it for the edition I was then preparing of my Poems.

bloody satire,* written against no less persons than you and I by name. I concluded at first it was Mr. ***, because he is your friend and my humble servant; but then I thought he knew the world too well to call us the favourite minions of taste and of fashion, especially as to odes. For to them his ridicule is confined; so it is not he, but Mr. Colman, nephew to Lady Bath, author of the Connoisseur, a member of one of the inns of court, and a particular acquaintance of Mr. Garrick. What have you done to him? for I never heard his name before; he makes very tolerable fun with me where I understand him (which is not every where); but seems more angry with you. Lest people should not understand the humour of the thing (which indeed to do they must have our lyricisms at their finger ends) letters come out in Lloyd's Evening Post to tell them who and what it was that he meant, and says it is like to produce a great combustion in the literary world. So if have you any mind to combustle about it well and good; for me, I am neither so literary nor so combustible. The Monthly Review, I see, just now has much stuff about us on this occasion. It says one of us at least has always borne his faculties meekly. I leave you to guess which of us that is; I think I know. You simpleton you! you must be meek, must you? and see what you get by it.

* The parodies in question, entitled Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion, were written by Mess. Lloyd and Colman, and have been reprinted since in Mr. Lloyd's Poems.

+ Had Mr. Pope sat as easy to the sarcasms of the many writers that endeavoured to eclipse his poetical fame, as Mr. Gray here appears to have done, the world would not have been possessed of a Dunciad; but it would have been impressed with a more amiable idea of its author's temper. It is for the sake of shewing how Mr. Gray felt on such occasions, that I publish this letter.

I do not like your improvements at Aston, it looks so like settling: if I come I will set fire to it. I will never believe the B**s and the C**s are dead, though I smelt them; that sort of people always live to a good old age. I dare swear they are only gone to Ireland, and we shall soon hear they are bishops.

The Erse fragments have been published five weeks ago in Scotland, though I had them not (by a mistake) till the other day. As you tell me new things do not reach you soon at Aston, I inclose what I can; the rest shall follow, when you tell me whether you have not got the pamphlet already. I send the two to Mr. Wood which I had before, because he has not the affectation of not admiring. I have another from Mr. Macpherson, which he has not printed; it is mere description, but excellent too in its kind. If you are good and will learn to admire, I will transcribe and send it.

As to their authenticity, I have made many inquiries, and have lately procured a letter from Mr. David Hume, (the historian) which is more satisfactory than any thing I have yet met with on that subject. He says,

"Certain it is that these poems are in every body's mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son, and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition. Adam Smith, the celebrated professor in Glasgow, told me, that the piper of the Argyleshire militia repeated to him

* It was rather a want of credulity than admiration that Mr. Gray should have laid to my charge. I suspected that, whether the fragments were genuine or not, they were by no means literally translated. I suspect so still; and a former note gives a sufficient cause for that suspicion. See page 278,