ins (with whom he was familiar) with a
tradesman's eye. He reproached the poet with idleness, not because he
was lingering and losing his time on the road to fame, but because he
omitted to get money by his pen. "To raise a present subsistence," says
Ragsdale, "he set about writing his Odes; and having a general
invitation to my house, he frequently passed whole days there, which he
employed in writing them, and as frequently burning what he had written
after he had read them to me: many of them, which pleased me, I
struggled to preserve, but without effect; for, pretending he would
alter them, he got them from me, and thrust them into the fire." That he
wrote the Odes to gain a present subsistence is but the tradesman's
mistaken comment.

Gray was about four years older than Collins, and he survived him twelve
years; he appears to have spent these years in gloominess and spleen;
but we know not what intense pleasures he received from his solitary
studies, from the improvement of his mind, from that exquisite taste and
increasing erudition of which every day added to the stores. The
enthusiasm of Collins was more active and adventurous, and his erudition
probably more acute. Timidity and fastidiousness were great defects in
Gray; they kept down his invention, and made him resort to the wealth of
others, when he could better have relied upon himself. But as to
borrowing expressions and simple materials, no genius ever did
otherwise; it is the new and happy combination in which lies the
invention. It may be doubted which are now most popular, the Odes of
Collins or of Gray. On the one hand, what is most abstract is least
calculated for the general reader; on the other hand, the variety of
learned allusions in Gray renders the style and thoughts of his most
celebrated Odes less simple, less direct, and less easily comprehended
at once; but then his deep morality, the touching strokes which go
immediately to the heart, his sensibility to the common sorrows of human
life, his powerful reflection of the sentiments which "come home to
every one's business and bosom," form an attraction which perhaps turns
the scale in his favour. Of both these sublime poets the correctness of
composition renders the writings a national good.

The French Revolution, which affected and partly reversed the minds of
all Europe, produced a new era in our literature. There was good as well
as evil in the new force thus infused into the human intell