Thomas Gray on Tour: New Views on Much-Known Lands

Maria Grazia Dongu

Second

2024-01-01

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Abstract

My paper purports to locate Thomas Gray in the History of British Travel Literature. He wrote, and never published, his letters written when on the Grand Tour with his friend Horace Walpole, in 1739-40. Sterne was far from writing his famous taxonomy of travel writers in the Sentimental Journey (1768). Still, Thomas Gray expressed here his need to write something new, different from usual descriptive reports on France, Switzerland and Italy. He duly took notes on monuments and paintings but erased any reference to them in his letters. In them, he created fragments of reality caught while travelling throughout the countryside or walking through cities and towns. His style is remarkable. Notwithstanding he paid homage to the masterpieces of travel literature, he managed to find his approach to such a popular genre. As a poet, he was a master of visual metaphors and this sensitivity to shapes and colours, impressive views and prospects structures his letters. Struggling to find the unsaid and put it in words, he focused on the streets of the towns, on inns, on people he met. His stance is not patronising, although he retreats to isolated corners of meetings, choosing to be the detached observer. Gray’s letters were composed long before Samuel Sharp went to Italy, writing mordant commentaries on the peninsula, till to excite Baretti’s protests. Gray’s acid commentaries are on himself, always found inadequate to the situation, entirely himself when absorbed in the contemplation of nature and people seen in their proper setting. Everybody knows Gray’s sublime description of the Alps, but equally impressive is the locals’ image, as well as the picture of the lands loved by Horatius, the meeting with a singer, very famous in England, with friars, authorities and so on. He was young but very learned. He does not remember any meeting with scholars, but it is clear that he perfected his competence in both French, Italian and Latin in the two years spent on the continent. It meant so much to him to face foreign cultures. Already conversant with French and Italian literature when in England, he interspersed some words in the two languages in his letters, translated Italian poems, or wrote in Italian, imitating Italian vogue for sonnets. Unlike Walpole, he did not go back to France or Italy again, but his knowledge of both these cultures was impressive. The number of quotations in his poems, letters, essays testifies to this. Guillory says, and he is convincing, that the poet was trained to imitate, to memorise quotes at the University. His great achievement was to vernacularise the texts that were part of his knowledge. To write was always translating from other languages and cultures for Gray. My last point is, then, that Gray’s knowledge of other countries and past cultures enabled him to think comparatively. I think for instance of his plan for a history of poesy, which is inclusive and partly expressed in his Ode The Progress of Poetry, which shows the vitality of the English tradition. I think of the contrasting analysis of the opera, and its perception in Italy and England. I think of his translations from Welsh. To know the past, whatever past, he always proceeded comparing, translating, seeing with a punctilious, but not unfair, eye.