he wants the highest
intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he
must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager
for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is
never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of
originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by
his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the
conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be
of _malice prepense_: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear
his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is
obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original,
as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.--_The
Saturday Review_.

NOTES

THOMAS GRAY

When Gray's _Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard_ appeared in 1751,
the _Monthly Rev._, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious
notice:--"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the _Elegy_
established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his _Odes_ (1757) were
received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely
different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing _The Progress
of Poesy_ and _The Bard_ (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that
edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill,
and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to
Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great
objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:--"Even
my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have
heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton]
that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's
_Works_, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.

Our review, which is reprinted from _Monthly Rev._, XVII (239-243)
(September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in
most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically
wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it
is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time--certainly far superior
to the general standard of the _Monthly Review_. While recognizing the
scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the
Odes could not become popular. A more favora