Gray, the marketplace, and the masculine poet - Thomas Gray

Criticism, Fall, 1993 by Linda Zionkowski

The criticisms that Campbell raises concerning poets and their verse are by no means idiosyncratic. During the eighteenth century, many discussions appeared in print about poets' commercial sale of their work and about the influence of poetry on the tenor of public life. Gray, furthermore, was not an unrepresentative poet, despite the eccentric character that Campbell bestows upon him. Rather, the problem of effeminacy that Campbell ascribes to Gray, including the supposedly trivial and ineffectual nature of his verses, echoes the complaints about contemporary poetry circulating in the literary culture at large. Several explanations have been offered for the increasing marginality of poets and poetry, including the separation of beauty from knowledge in eighteenth-century aesthetics and prose fiction's appropriation of "history" as its subject matter.(8) But the "classic to romantic" shift can also be contextualized in more materialist terms. I argue here that the commercial market in texts (part of the growing trade in commodities) led to a redefinition of the poet's status in English culture, a status expressed in terms of a new concept of masculine conduct. For Augustan writers, participation in the book trade had compromised poets' authority and masculinity, for it rendered them hacks, or literary prostitutes; dependent upon and subjected to the desires of others (particularly booksellers and readers), commercial writers in no way resembled the self-sufficient, disinterested gentlemen who formed the aristocratic ideal of civic virtue.(9) Later in the century, however, the decline of patronage as a viable means of support for writers and the expansion of the commercial book trade made cultural attitudes toward involvement in the literary market more complicated, particularly through the emergence of different sexual tropes for authors. While the link between writing for pay and prostitution still remained intact (especially among those with some connection to the patronage system), critics and writers, regardless of their class backgrounds or political allegiances, frequently began to associate masculinity and cultural power with commercial success, while characterizing poets' detachment from the market as an infantile, or effeminate, dependence upon others. (Samuel Johnson and Charles Churchill exemplify this trend; although he detested Churchill's politics and disliked his verse, Johnson admired his productivity: "a tree that produces a great many crabs is better than a tree which produces only a few."(10)) The following pages will suggest how Gray's literary career illustrates these cultural tensions, and will investigate his attempts to resist the emerging sexual and economic models of authorship.

1

Authors, like maids at fifteen years,

Are full of wishes, full of fears.

One might by pleasant thoughts be led

To lose a trifling maiden-head;

But 'tis a terrible vexation

To give it up with reputation.

These verses from Robert Lloyd's "To George Colman, Esq."(11) (1762) implicitly compare the act of writing to sexual intercourse, the audience being the male partner in the act and the author being the female. And, predictably, it is the "masculine" audience - the receiver of the "feminine" writer's offerings - who determines the worth of the text, with either praise or disgrace. Like women bestowing sexual favors, writers must also avoid being too forthcoming with their works, since excessive circulation cheapens the goods. Poets such as William Whitehead (who, as laureate, enjoyed royal patronage) and Edward Young (who tried repeatedly to secure a steady patron) joined Lloyd in cautioning against the perils of publication, and offered sound sexual/economic advice about supply and demand. According to Whitehead, a privately circulated manuscript seduces its readers into approval, whereas a text printed and sold only repulses them with its demands for attention: