284 



Fleece was published in 1753, both in the choice of his subject 

 and his treatment of it gives further proof of the tendency among 

 the younger generation to revert to simpler and purer models. 

 Plainly enough, Thomson had been his chief model, though 

 there are also traces of a careful study of Milton. 



Pope had died in 1744, at the height of his renown, the 

 acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Voltaire when 

 the excitement and exposure of his coronation ceremonies at 

 Paris hastened his end a generation later. His fame, like 

 Voltaire s, was European, and the style which he had carried 

 to perfection was paramount throughout the cultivated world. 

 The new edition of the * Dunciad, with the Fourth Book added, 

 published the year before his death, though the substitution of 

 Gibber for Theobald made the poem incoherent, had yet in 

 creased his reputation and confirmed the sway of the school 

 whose recognised head he was, by the poignancy of its satire, 

 the lucidity of its wit, and the resounding, if somewhat uniform 

 march, of its numbers. He had been translated into other 

 languages living and dead. Voltaire had long before pro 

 nounced him the best poet of England, and at present of all 

 the world. * It was the apotheosis of clearness, point, and 

 technical skill, of the ease that comes of practice, not of the 

 fulness of original power. And yet, as we have seen, while he 

 was in the very plenitude of his power, there was already a 

 widespread discontent, a feeling that what comes nearest/ as 

 Phillips calls it, may yet be infinitely far from giving those 

 profounder and incalculable satisfactions of which the soul is 

 capable in poetry. A movement was gathering strength which 

 prompted 



is one of Gray s happy reminiscences from a poet in some respects greater than either 

 of them : 



Jamque rubmim tremulis jubar igttSna erigere alte 

 Cum coeptat natura. 



LUCRET. iv. 404, 405. 



Gray s taste was a sensitive divining-rod of the sources whether of pleasing or pro 

 found emotion in poetry. Though he prized pomp, he did not undervalue simplicity 

 of subject or treatment, if only the witch Imagination had cast her spell there. 

 Wordsworth loved solitude in his appreciations as well as in his daily life, and was the 

 readier to find merit in obscurity, because it gave him the pleasure of being a first 

 discoverer all by himself. Thus he addresses a sonnet to John Dyer. But Gray 

 was one of the pure and powerful minds who had discovered Dyer during his life 

 time, when the discovery of poets is more difficult. In 1753 he writes to Walpole : 

 Mr. Dyer has more poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number, but 

 rough and injudicious, Dyer has one fine verse 



On the dark level of adversity. 



* MS. letter of Voltaire, cited by Warburton in his edition of Pope, vol. iv. p. 38, 

 note. The date is 15^ October, 1726. I do not fipd it in Voltaire s Correspondence. 



