structure disables it from being abstractly, and in this sense strictly, theoretical; it necessitates its being practical as well. But it is precisely through its intimate union of theory with practice on the one hand and with mystical insight on the other that Activism makes to many of us so profound an appeal. We stand in need of a practical philosophy of life, of a philosophy which takes us as we are, heirs of the past and makers of the future, places us in our historical and cultural setting, shows up the great organised movements out of which our civilisation has arisen and within which it is still operative for good or for evil, sets before us a clear live option between the rule of Nature and the rule of Spirit, and calls us to register our decision daily and hourly, if need be, in token of continuous loyalty to spiritual ideals.

Eucken's philosophy is precisely of this kind, and it is lit up from first to last with a profound belief in the reality, intrinsic supremacy, and full independence of the Spiritual Life. It is the privilege of philosophy, as here conceived, to make this vision convincing to the reason, to instil theoretical illumination into the warmth of practical conviction, and to infuse itself into life in such a way that reasoning over the fundamentals of existence, instead of having a withering influence on behaviour— as it so easily tends to have-shall become, in theological language, a means of grace strengthening the sinews of action. Philosophy, as Eucken conceives it, is no mere reflection upon life, as though life were of itself complete without the reflection. It is rather a vital function of our spiritual activity. It is that form of spiritual vitality which brings to coherent expression the intuitions of experience. As such we welcome it, and Eucken's own exposition of it in particular, as the most suitable rallying-point for the deeper thought of the present day.

W. R. BOYCE GIBSON.

Art. 6.-THE LETTERS OF THOMAS GRAY.

1. The Poems of Mr Gray, to which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings. By W. Mason, M.A. York: Todd; London: Dodsley, 1775.

2. The Works of Thomas Gray. Edited by Edmund Gosse. Four vols. London: Macmillan, 1884.

3. Gray and his Friends. Letters and Relics in great part hitherto unpublished. By Duncan C. Tovey. Cambridge University Press, 1890.

:

4. Gray's English Poems. Edited with Introduction and Notes by D. C. Tovey. Cambridge: University Press, 1898.

5. Gray's Poems, Select Letters and Essays. Introduction by John Drinkwater. (Everyman's Library.) London: Dent, 1912.

6. The Letters of Thomas Gray, including the Correspondence of Gray and Mason. Edited by D. C. Tovey. Three vols. London: Bell, 1900-1912.

7. Gray. By D. C. Tovey. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. x. Cambridge: University Press, 1913. 8. Essays and Criticisms by Thomas Gray. Edited with Introduction and Notes by C. S. Northup. Boston, U.S.A. Heath, 1911.

9. A Concordance to the English Poems of Thomas Gray. By A. S. Cook. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908.

And other works.

'IT has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters. . . . Not only for the interest of a biographer, but for arriving at the inside of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they assign motives, they conjecture feelings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are facts.'

So wrote that most acute of disputants and dialecticians, yet withal that most sincere of souls, Cardinal Newman. Are letters always facts? Is Cardinal Newman's statement a truism? What does another even more typical, if very different Englishman say?

"There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of conversation the first emotions of the mind

often burst out before they are considered; in the tumult of business interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.'

Such is the language of Dr Johnson weighing the testimony of Pope's letters-of which Gray by the way said they were not good letters but better things-and challenging the view which he says has been so long advanced as to be commonly believed,' that the true character of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart open before him.' Which is the true or the truer statement? The Oxford prose-writers, whether saint or sage, disagree; the truth has been beautifully and characteristically conveyed by a Cambridge poet. It is the same poet who in his youth had graphically described the letters of his lost friend Arthur Hallam, as

'Those fall'n leaves which kept their green,

The noble letters of the dead :'

speaking, fifty years later, after life's full experience, of letters generally. In his old age, Tennyson wrote the fine Sonnet, intended originally to form the prelude to his 'Becket,' which very appropriately appears at the head of his son's Preface to his own Life.

'Ye know that History is half dream-ay even

The man's life in the letters of the man.

There lies the letter, but it is not he

As he retires into himself and is:

Sender and sent-to go to make up this,
Their offspring of this union.'

Lord Tennyson's son, after quoting these lines, declares that the real life of his father is to be found in his poems. 'In these we must look,' he says, 'for the innermost sanctuary of his being.' The real Tennyson, then, his son tells us, is more truly to be found in his poems than in his letters. But is the real Gray, it may be asked, to be found more truly in his letters or in his poems?

The truth of letters, it is obvious, must depend mainly on the sincerity and directness of the writer. Language was given us,' as we all know, 'to conceal our thoughts';

and the pen would certainly seem to have been given to some men to paint themselves very differently from what they really are. 'In Gray's Letters,' writes Mr Duncan Tovey, his life lies spread out before us. They are the only absolutely trustworthy record for his biographers.' Is that so? the reader will enquire. Was Gray a sincere, direct, truthful person? His own sketch of his own character, written in 1761 when he was 45, and found in his pocket-book, is well known.

'Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune;

He had not the method of making a fortune;

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd; No very great wit, he believed in a God:

A place or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.'

His poems are few and brief, many are fragmentary, some are translations, of many of them much is imitation. The letters are certainly greater in bulk and touch on a far larger variety of subjects. Shorter or longer, however, it will be found in the end, that about their author the two tell essentially the same tale. Gray never spoke out.' This chance phrase, used upon the instant by his friend and executor Brown, Master of Pembroke, just after the poet's death, and meant probably only to explain the unpreparedness of his friends for that sad and sudden event, has been made famous by Matthew Arnold. He employed it more suo as the text for his well-known disquisition on Gray's poetry. In his poems, as Arnold reiterates and ingeminates, Gray never spoke out.' Did he then speak out more clearly in his letters? The question is the more interesting when it is considered what Gray really is among poets. He is the most polished yet the most popular, the most scholarly and yet the most sincere of them all. That he should be the former seems natural. He was learned, fastidious; he was the very ne plus ultra of what is called 'academic.' About the fact of his popularity there is, it may be assumed, no doubt. Yet even this is easier to assume than to prove.

Gray's Poems are, as all know, a school-book; but school-books are not always popular, though they may, because they are so well suited to their function, have an immense vogue. There are, of course, some notable

testimonies to his popularity. There is the famous story of Wolfe reciting the 'Elegy' on the eve of capturing Quebec, and saying to his brother officers that he would rather have written it than take the town-a story which received recently, by the discovery of Wolfe's own copy of the 'Elegy,' very interesting support. But soldiers are often the simplest of men, and have been known to admire very poor, not to say bad, poetry. Tyrtæus, though he served his turn, is not perhaps in the first rank of the immortals. There is the testimony of that other Cambridge scholar and critic of more recent days, a poet himself and writer of scholarly letters, an academic virtuoso among non-residents, as Gray was among residents. Edward FitzGerald loved Gray and writes often about him. He speaks, as everyone does, about the incomparable merit of the 'Elegy.'

'As to Gray-Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while & Co. are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men's, a something which we all love to keep ever about us.'

A year earlier FitzGerald had written to Professor Cowell about the 'Elegy.' 'Plenty of faults: but one doats on almost every line, every line being a Proverb now.' And again in those More Letters,' which the Vice-Master of Trinity accorded later to a delighted and still unsated public, FitzGerald writes:

'Mr Lowell lately observed in a letter to me, what a Pity that so few were of Gray's mind in seeing how much better was too little than too much. But I fancy Gray would have written and published more had his ideas been more copious and his expression more easy to him. Dickens said that never did a poet come down to posterity with so little a Book under his Arm. But the Elegy is worth many Volumes.'

This is a good criticism, but another probably even better is made, in FitzGerald's quiet obiter dictum kind of way, and is about a poem less universally admired, 'The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.' FitzGerald has been to Windsor and he writes: