Thomas Gray is a much more important figure than Collins in the intellectual history of his generations; but this superior importance does not rest entirely upon his verse, which is hardly more abundant than Collins’, though of a higher finish.  His letters, journals, and other prose remains, posthumously published, first showed how long an arc his mind had subtended on the circle of art and thought.  He was sensitive to all fine influences that were in the literary air.  One of the greatest scholars among English poets, his taste was equal to his acquisitions.  He was a sound critic of poetry, music, architecture, and painting.  His mind and character both had distinction; and if there was something a trifle finical and old-maidish about his personality—­which led the young Cantabs on one occasion to take a rather brutal advantage of his nervous dread of fire—­there was also that nice reserve which gave to Milton, when he was at Cambridge, the nickname of the “lady of Christ’s.”

A few of Gray’s simpler odes, the “Ode on the Spring,” the “Hymn to Adversity” and the Eton College ode, were written in 1742 and printed in Dodsley’s collection in 1748.  The “Elegy” was published in 1751; the two “sister odes,” “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,” were struck off from Horace Walpole’s private press at Strawberry Hill in 1757.  Gray’s popular fame rests, and will always rest, upon his immortal “Elegy.”  He himself denied somewhat impatiently that it was his best poem, and thought that its popularity was owing to its subject.  There are not wanting critics of authority, such as Lowell and Matthew Arnold, who have pronounced Gray’s odes higher poetry than his “Elegy.” “’The Progress of Poesy,’” says Lowell, “overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle. . .  It was the prevailing blast of Gray’s trumpet that, more than anything else, called men back to the legitimate standard."[31] With all deference to such distinguished judges, I venture to think that the popular instinct on this point is right, and even that Dr. Johnson is not so wrong as usual.  Johnson disliked Gray and spoke of him with surly injustice.  Gray, in turn, could not abide Johnson, whom he called Ursa major.  Johnson said that Gray’s odes were forced plants, raised in a hot-house, and poor plants at that.  “Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet.  He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words.  The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime.  His ‘Elegy in a Churchyard’ has a happy selection of images, but I don’t like what are called his great things.”  “He attacked Gray, calling him a ‘dull fellow.’  Boswell:  ’I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry.’  Johnson:  ’Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere.  He was dull in a new way and that made many people think him GREAT.  He was a mechanical poet.’  He then repeated some ludicrous lines, which have escaped my memory, and said, ’Is not that GREAT, like his odes?’. . .  ’No, sir, there are but two good stanzas in Gray’s poetry, which are in his “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”  He then repeated the stanza—­