The process which the Spirit employed for effecting this great change was a simple one; indeed, we have almost summed up his inspiration in the oracular admonition, _Antiquam exquirite matrem_. For more than two hundred years literary criticism had been insolently or ignorantly neglecting its mother, the Middle Age—now with a tacit assumption that this period _ought_ to be neglected, now with an open and expressed scorn of it. But, as usually happens, a return had begun to be made just when the opposite progress seemed to have reached its highest point. Dryden himself had “translated” and warmly praised Chaucer; Addison had patronised _Chevy Chase_. But before the death of Pope much larger and more audacious explorations had been attempted. In Scotland—whether consciously stung or not by the disgrace of a century almost barren of literature—Watson the printer[97] and Allan Ramsay[98] had, in 1706-11 and 1724-40, unearthed a good deal of old poetry. In England the anonymous compiler[99] of the _Ballads_ of 1723 had done something, and Oldys the antiquary, under the shelter of “Mrs Cooper’s” petticoat, had done more with the _Muses’ Library_ of 1737. These examples[100] were followed out, not without a little cheap contempt from those who would be in the fashion, and knew not that this fashion had received warning. But they _were_ followed, and their most remarkable result, in criticism and creation combined, is the work of Gray. [Sidenote: _Gray _] We have not so very many fairer figures in our “fair” herd than Gray, though the fairness may be somewhat like that of Crispa,[101] visible chiefly to a lover of criticism itself. His actual critical performance is, in proportion, scantier even than his poetical; and the scantiness may at first sight seem even stranger, since a man can but poetise when he can, but may, if he has the critical faculty, criticise almost when he will and has the opportunity. That opportunity (again at first sight) Gray may seem to have had, as scarcely another man in our whole long history has had it. He had nothing else to do, and was not inclined to do anything else. He had sufficient means, no professional avocations, the knowledge, the circumstances, the _locale_, the wits, the taste, even the velleity—everything but, in the full sense, the will. This indeed he might, in all circumstances and at all times, have lacked, for Mr Arnold showed himself no philosophic student of humanity when he said that at the date of Milton, or at the date of Keats, Gray would have been a different man. His _work_ would doubtless have been a different work; but that is another matter. At all times, probably, Gray would have had the same fastidiousness, the same liability to be “put off”; and if his preliminary difficulties had been lightened by the provision, in times nearer our own, of the necessary rough-hewing and first research by others, yet this very provision would probably have