Amongst all the English poets there has probably never been one, even when we think of Tennyson, more careful and meticulous (or “curiously elaborate,” as Wordsworth styled it) about the diction of his verses, the very words themselves, than Gray. This fact, and not Matthew Arnold’s opinion that it was because Gray had fallen on an “age of prose,” may perhaps be regarded as sufficient to explain the comparative scantiness of his literary production. He himself, in a famous letter, has clearly stated his ideal of literary expression: “Extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical, is one of the grand beauties of lyrical poetry.”[75] Hence all his verses bear evidence of the most painstaking labour and rigorous self-criticism, almost as if every word had been weighed and assessed before being allowed to appear. His correspondence with Mason and Beattie, referred to in the previous chapter, shows the same fastidiousness with regard to the work of others. Gray indeed, drawing freely upon Milton and Dryden, created for himself a special poetic language which in its way can become almost as much an abuse as the otiosities of many of his predecessors and contemporaries—the “cumbrous splendour” of which Johnson complained. Yet he is never entirely free from the influence of the “classical” diction which, for Johnson, represented the ideal. His earliest work is almost entirely conventional in its descriptions, the prevailing tone being exemplified in such phrases as _the purple year_, _the Attic Warbler pours her throat_ (Ode on “The Spring”), whilst in the “Progress of Poesy,” lines like Through verdant vales and Ceres’ golden reign are not uncommon, though of course the possibility of the direct influence of the classics, bringing with it the added flavour of reminiscence, is not to be ignored in this sort of diction. Moreover, a couplet from the fragmentary “Alliance of Education and Government”: Scent the new fragrance of _the breathing rose_ And quaff _the pendent vintage_ as it grows— is almost typical, apart from the freshness of the epithet _breathing_, of what Wordsworth wished to abolish. Even the “Elegy” has not escaped the contagion: _storied urn_ or _animated bust_ is perilously akin to the pedantic periphrases of the Augustans.