DCCLVII.

Both Odes were coldly received at first. "Even my friends," writes
Gray, in a letter to Hurd, Aug. 25, 1757, "tell me they do not
_succeed_, and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In
short, I have heard of nobody but an Actor [Garrick] and a Doctor of
Divinity [Warburton] that profess their esteem for them. Oh yes, a
Lady of quality (a friend of Mason's) who is a great reader. She knew
there was a compliment to Dryden, but never suspected there was
anything said about Shakespeare or Milton, till it was explained to
her, and wishes that there had been titles prefixed to tell what they
were about."[1] In a letter to Dr. Wharton, dated Aug. 17, 1757, he
says: "I hear we are not at all popular. The great objection is
obscurity, nobody knows what we would be at. One man (a Peer) I have
been told of, that thinks the last stanza of the 2d Ode relates to
Charles the First and Oliver Cromwell; in short, the [Greek: Sunetoi]
appear to be still fewer than even I expected." A writer in the
_Critical Review_ thought that "Aeolian lyre" meant the Aeolian harp.
Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes to
Obscurity and Oblivion. Gray finally had to add explanatory notes,
though he intimates that his readers ought not to have needed
them.[2]

[Footnote 1: Forster remarks that Gray might have added to the
admirers of the Odes "the poor monthly critic of _The
Dunciad_"--Oliver Goldsmith, then beginning his London career as a
bookseller's hack. In a review of the Odes in the _London Monthly
Review_ for Sept., 1757, after citing certain passages of _The Bard_,
he says that they "will give as much pleasure to those who relish
this species of composition as anything that has hitherto appeared in
our language, the odes of Dryden himself not excepted."]

[Footnote 2: In a foot-note he says: "When the author first published
this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to
subjoin some few explanatory notes; but had too much respect for the
understanding of his readers to take that liberty."

In a letter to Beattie, dated Feb. 1, 1768, referring to the new
edition of his poems, he says: "As to the notes, I do it out of
spite, because the public did not understand the two Odes (which I
have called Pindaric), though the first was not very dark, and the
second alluded to a few common facts to be found in any sixpenny
history of England, by way of question and answer, for the u