is perfectly right in saying that
Collins is too harsh and obscure, too apt to lose his way "in quest of
mistaken beauties": where he is wrong is in not saying that he produced
one of the most perfect Odes in our own or any other language. And
even in Gray's case, where he is at his worst, there are things which
an intelligent lover of Gray is the better for reading. There had been
a good deal of unintelligent and too promiscuous admiration of Gray's
_Odes_ in Johnson's day: and he performed a service, which is still a
service, by pointing out that there is in some of their phrases a
certain element of affectation and artificiality. It is true, and
still necessary to be said, that Gray's "art and struggle are too
visible, and that there is in his _Odes_ too little appearance of ease
and nature." The object of criticism is the whole of truth: and to see
only the imaginative power, the metrical learning and skill, the gift
of language, the gift of emotion, in Gray, is not to see the whole. It
is more important to see these things than {228} to see what Johnson
saw: but in a complete criticism of Gray room must be found for an
allusion to that element in him of which Johnson says, with some truth
as well as malice: "he has a kind of strutting dignity and is tall by
walking on tiptoe." In these matters we may listen with advantage to
Johnson's instinct for reality; as we also may to his knowledge of the
art of letters, when he points out quite truly that _Samson Agonistes_
has no plot, and when he puts his finger at once on that central defect
of _Paradise Lost_ that "it comprises neither human actions nor human
manners." That is too broadly stated no doubt: but it is true that the
subject of poetry is the free play of human life, and that, from
supernatural interference and from the peculiar position of Adam and
Eve, there is far too little of this in _Paradise Lost_. Nor was it
likely that a man of Johnson's learning and power of mind would confine
himself in a book of this kind to the mere praise and blame of a
succession of writers. That is his principal business: but of course
he constantly overflows into general topics bearing upon literature or
poetry as a whole. In these everybody who cares to think about the art
of writing or analyse the pleasures of reading will find his account:
they come in everywhere, of course. Now he makes some shrewd remarks,
{229} not so much needed by the poets of his day as by th