388 POPE. 



of the popular hurdy-gurdy, it was the prevailing blast 

 of Gray's trumpet that more than anything else called 

 men back to the legitimate standard.* Another poet, 

 Dyer, whose " Fleece " was published in 1 753, both in 

 the choice of his subject and his treatment of it gives 

 further proof of the tendency among the younger gen- 

 eration to revert to simpler and purer models. Plainly 



* Wordsworth, who recognized forerunners in Thomson, Collins, 

 Dyer, and Burns, and who chimes in with the popular superstition 

 about Chatterton, is always somewhat niggardly in his appreciation 

 of Gray. Yet he owed him not a little. Without Gray's tune in his 

 ears, his own noblest Ode would have missed the varied modulation 

 which is one of its main charms. Where he forgets Gray, his verse 

 sinks to something like the measure of a jig. Perhaps the suggestion 

 of one of his own finest lines, 



(" The light that never was on land or sea,") 



was due to Gray's 



" Orient hues unborrowed of the sun." 



I believe it has not been noticed that among the verses in Gray's 

 ■' Sonnet on the Death of West," which Wordsworth condemns as of 

 no value, the second — 



" And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fires" — 



is one of Gray's happy reminiscences from a poet in some respects 

 greater than either of them: — 



Jamque rubrurn tremulis jubar ignibus erigere alte 

 Cum cceptat natura. 



Llcret., iv. 404, 405. 



Gray's taste was a sensitive divining-rod of the sources whether of 

 pleasing or profound 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 soli- 

 tude 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 lifetime, 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." 



