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Bridging the Gulf Between: The Poet and the Audience in the Work of Gray

1991; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 58; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2873371

1080-6547

Linda Zionkowski,

Scottish History and National Identity

Contemporary critics of Thomas Gray often felt annoyed by the poet's refusal to act like writer. Gray, it seems, cared little about finishing his poems and getting them into print for readers. Reactions to his indifference ranged from outright disgust to officious impatience. Samuel Johnson, who took pride in his ability to support himself by writing, implicitly censured Gray's desire to be looked upon private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement.' Percivale Stockdale also found hints of the dilettante in Gray, stating that his talents were checked by unmanly timidity to appear, in the character of an Authour, before generous publick.2 Even partisans of Gray like William Mason and Horace Walpole grew annoyed with his reluctance to publish. Mason described the poet's aloofness as foible in his character, arising from a certain degree of pride, which led him, of all other things, to despise the idea of being thought an author professed.3 And Walpole was exasperated by his friend's lack of ambition: Mr Gray often vexed me by finding him heaping notes on an interleaved Linnaeus, instead of pranking on his lyre.4 In being so unwilling to display his talents in print, Gray, it appears, failed to perform in manner expected of authors. Critics today are far more charitable toward the poet than his contemporaries were, but they too believe that he purposely rejected practices common to writers in his time. Recent scholars attribute Gray's reluctance to publish, refusal of the laureateship, and muchnoted obscurity in his later poems either to temperamental instability or to typically pre-Romantic alienation from his age, conventional self-characterization of the poet as a sensitive fugitive from his society.5 Gray's own statements show him rejecting the role of public writer; he relates his distaste for this role, however, to the material circumstances of literary production. In his letters, he disdainfully compares the marketing of his work by Dodsley the bookseller to the marketing of goods: I promised to send him an equal weight of