It  takes  some  time,  perhaps,  before   this  curious
diversion  of  possible  books  into  actual  letters  is  per-
ceived ;    there  have  been  notices  of  Gray's
correspondence   in   which  it  comes   in   for
literature  and  hardly   any   attention. But  the  saturation
of  the  Letters  themselves  with  it  is  a  fact ;
and  it  brings  about  in  them  an  equally  curious  com-


246  LETTER-WRITERS

bination  of  the  Letter  and  the  Diary. The  famous
motto  of  Sibi  et  amicis  applies  no  doubt  to  most  good
letters,  more  or  less  ;  but  it  applies  to  few  better  than
to  Gray's,  and  to  his  perhaps  earliest  of  all  English
examples. One  takes  a  volume  up — absolutely  and
honestly  at  random — and  opens  on  Letter  Two
Hundred,  addressed  to  Wharton. It  begins  with  a
more  or  less  striking  reflection — at  any  rate  rather  an
original  one — that  to  find  oneself  business  is  the  great
art  of  life,  with  the  corollary — a  little  amusing  now
that  we  have  changed  all  that — that  women  have  always
something  to  do  because  they  can  sew. Then  there  is
some  scandal  about  the  Duke  of  Cleveland  and  his
family,  then  a  duel  with  another  duke  in  it,  then  an
account  of  Lord  George  Sackville's  trial  and  sentence,
then  (it  is  true  that  the  hour  helped  the  man  with  extra-
ordinary liberality  in  this  instance)  one  of  that  of  Lord
Ferrers,  with,  in  it,  mention  of  the  nickname  "  Rugged
[Gray  has  Ragged]  and  Dangerous,"  of  which  Scott
made  one  of  his  felicitous  uses  in  Redgauntlet. Fred-
erick the  Great's  shoddy  poetry  and  Tristram  Shandy
turn  the  subject  to  letters  in  the  other  sense  ;  and  the
epistle  closes  with  Miss  Speed's  lucky  thirty-thousand-
pound  legacy,  and  some  gossip  about  friends  and
weather. Of  course,  as  has  just  been  said,  accident —
it  was  perfectly  genuine  accident — brought  a  bumper
here  to  the  sors  Graiana. But  a  letter  or  two  before  we
have  a  first-hand  outburst  of  enthusiasm  for  an  "  Ossi-
anic  "  specimen,  chequered  by  a  touch  of  Gray's  almost
infallible  criticism  as  to  its  possible  spuriousness ;  and
the  very  next  one  to  this  has  curious  details  about  non-
inflammable  silk-rag  paper  for  writing  and  hanging
rooms ;  and  the  very  next  after  CC. contains  a  placid
enough  notice  of  Colman's  and  Lloyd's  poor  parodies
on  his  own  Odes. 