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Engineering Materials
Syed Shahabuddin
Adarsh Kumar Pandey
Mohammad Khalid
Priyanka Jagadish Editors
Advances
in Hybrid
Conducting
Polymer
Technology
Engineering Materials
This series provides topical information on innovative, structural and functional
materials and composites with applications in optical, electrical, mechanical, civil,
aeronautical, medical, bio- and nano-engineering. The individual volumes are
complete, comprehensive monographs covering the structure, properties, manufac-
turing process and applications of these materials. This multidisciplinary series is
devoted to professionals, students and all those interested in the latest developments
in the Materials Science field, that look for a carefully selected collection of high
quality review articles on their respective field of expertise.
Editors
Advances in Hybrid
Conducting Polymer
Technology
123
Editors
Syed Shahabuddin Adarsh Kumar Pandey
Department of Science, School of Research Centre for Nano-Materials
Technology and Energy Technology (RCNMET), School
Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University of Engineering and Technology
Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India Sunway University
Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Mohammad Khalid
Graphene and Advanced 2D Materials Priyanka Jagadish
Research Group (GAMRG), School of Graphene and Advanced 2D Materials
Engineering and Technology Research Group (GAMRG), School of
Sunway University Engineering and Technology
Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia Sunway University
Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
v
vi Preface
Lastly, this book has been the final product of the outstanding work of many
experts, distinguished researchers and renowned scientists. They have provided
their expertise and efforts in compilation of the state-of-the-art chapters. We
appreciate the valuable time, hard work and efforts of all the contributing authors.
As a matter of fact, perfection is an assumption. The authors and the editors can
never be satisfied with their final efforts. Albeit the book chapters and final draft
have been comprehensively reviewed by authors, reviewers and editors, there is
always a window to enhance and modify various sections of the chapters, providing
an opportunity for improvement in the quality and quantity of the contents.
Therefore, the readers of this book are welcome to recommend the errors, omissions
and lack of inclusion of some important information. The recommendations from
students, researchers, scientists and academicians will be highly appreciated.
vii
viii Contents
Abstract In recent years, the research about Conducting Polymers (CPs) have seen
exponential growth due to their versatile applications. The widespread attention on
CPs is due to its extraordinary properties such as simple preparation step, low cost
of monomers, environmentally benign, and most importantly the high conducting
properties like metals. In addition, lightweight of CPs and non-corrosive nature,
have made it one of the versatile polymers in the materials group. These remarkable
properties of CPs have made it to be easily integrated with the latest applications
on photocatalyst, sensors, and actuators, solar cells, energy devices, and batteries.
However, many have not realised the historical background of these versatile CPs.
Hence, this chapter is an attempt to address the forgotten history of CPs with respect
to certain selected well-known CPs.
1 Introduction
Over the years, the concept of conducting polymers (CPs) continues to fascinate the
scientific community as several research papers regarding this material have been
annually increased. CP is an organic macromolecule that integrates both conven-
tional polymers and metal properties into one system. This “synthetic metal” was
S. Shahabuddin (B)
Department of Science, School of Technology, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University,
Knowledge Corridor, Raisan Village, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382007, India
e-mail: [email protected]
N. A. Mazlan
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, National Orthopaedic Centre of
Excellence for Research & Learning (NOCERAL) University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
S. N. A. Baharin · K. P. Sambasevam
School of Chemistry and Environment, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA
(UiTM), 72000 Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
CPs
The initial work on conducting polymers have begun since the nineteenth century
by Prof Dr Letheby [18]. In 1862, he attempted to investigate the properties of
conducting polymers, and a study on electropolymerisation of aniline sulfate was
published in the Journal of the Chemical Society [19]. However, the scientists of that
time were still not clear about the chemistry behind the materials that they were inves-
tigating. Even though the research about CPs emerged 60 years ago, the possibility
of producing those polymers was not recognised. A key discovery that changed the
perspective was the findings of inorganic polymer polysulfur nitride (SN)x which
was highly conducting in 1973 [20] by Macdiarmid and Heeger partnership. The
researchers also reported that the conductivity of (SN)x was in the order of 103 S/cm
which was close to the conductivity of copper (~105 S/cm). This discovery convinced
the entire scientific community to produce more polymeric conductors.
Polyacetylene was first synthesised by Natta and co-workers which showed a
range of conductivity between 10−11 and 10−3 S/cm in 1958. The conductivity of
this polymer could be manipulated by the synthesis process. However, this polymer
also did not get widespread attention, until a co-worker of Prof Dr Hideki Shirakawa
accidentally added an excess of Ziegler–Natta catalyst which resulted in a silvery
polyacetylene thin film in 1967. This film exhibited a higher conductivity than the
graphite powder. Then after some time, MacDiarmid who was a visiting professor
at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan gave a talk on (SN)x conducting properties
where it brought together MacDiarmid and Shirakawa to sit down for a cup of green
tea while sharing their fascination for conducting materials. Soon after, MacDiarmid
invited Shirakawa to the University of Pennsylvania to work on the CPs with Alan
Heeger. In 1976, the group of trios—Alan Heeger, Alan Macdiarmid, and Hideki
Shirakawa announced the discovery of novel conducting polymers which triggered
the interests of many scientific communities around the world to venture into the field
of conducting polymers. The trios received Nobel Prize for conducting polymers in
2000 [21].
1.2.1 Polyacetylene
Fig. 4 Polyacetylene
Fig. 5 Polyparaphenylene
1.2.2 Polyparaphenylene
Fig. 6 Polyparaphenylene
vinylene
Dopants such as H2 SO4 increase the conductivity of PPV with good metallic trans-
port property. However, the H2SO4 -PPV dopant was revealed to have low stability
in the presence of moisture [28].
Moreover, many approaches haven done in incorporating PPV with either
organic or inorganic materials to enhance or tune the conducting properties of
PPV was made in light emitting diode applications such as polysilicon-PPV [29],
polyparaphenylene-PPV [30] and poly(2,5-dimethyl-para-phenylene vinylene)-PPV
[31]. Another, interesting application of PPV, is solar cell device, for example blend
of the poly 2,5-dimethoxy-1,4-phenylenevinylene-2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy-
1,4-phenylenevinylene) (M3EH-PPV) and polyoxa-1,4-phenylene1,2-(1-cyano-
ethylene-2,5-dioctyloxy-1,4-phenylene-1,2-(2-cyano-ethylene-1,4-phenylene)
(CN-ether-PPV) [32] and TiO2 -PPV bilayer [33].
1.2.4 Polypyrrole
Pyrrole is a 5-membered ring that contains nitrogen (N) heteroatom. The conducting
properties of polypyrrole (PPy) is a result of π electrons and a positive charge along
the backbone [34]. PPy was first synthesised by using a common oxidative route
with pyrrole monomer and hydrogen peroxide as the oxidising agent in 1916 [34].
The synthesis yielded a compound which was known as ‘pyrrole black’ and was not
recognised as CPs. Then, in 1968 Dall’Ollio and co-workers prepared PPy via an
electrochemical route on a platinum electrode which has given the recognition for
PPy as CPs [35]. This discovery has led to explosive research that revolves around
the synthesis and application of PPy materials [30–25].
PPy possessed enormous advantages such as large surface area due to its fibrous
structure and it is a high capacity electrode material. PPy can be easily synthesised via
chemical or electrochemical route, high stability in aqueous and air medium makes
it a promising candidate interfacial material [37]. Therefore, it made PPy one of the
extensively applied and investigated materials in the current state of the art.
1.2.5 Polythiophene
“Dear Doctor,—I send your reverence the lesson, &c. No sooner do people feel
their income increase than they want amusement. Why, what need have you of any
other than to sit like a Japanese divinity, with your hands folded on your fat belly,
wrapped, and, as it were, annihilated in the contemplation of your own copuses
and revenues?”
“Dear Mason,—Res est sacra miser (says the poet), but I say it is the happy man
that is the sacred thing, and therefore let the profane keep their distance. He is one
of Lucretius’ gods, supremely blest in the contemplation of his own felicity, and
what has he to do with worshippers? This, mind, is the first reason why I did not
come to York; the second is, that I do not love confinement, and probably by next
summer may be permitted to touch whom, and where, and with what I think fit,
without giving you any offence; the third and last, and not the least perhaps, is,
that the finances were at so low an ebb that I could not exactly do what I wished,
but was obliged to come the shortest road to town and recruit them. I do not justly
know what your taste in reasons may be since you altered your condition, but there
is the ingenious, the petulant, and the dull; any one would have done, for in my
conscience I do not believe you care a halfpenny for reasons at present: so God
bless ye both, and give ye all ye wish, when ye are restored to the use of your
wishes.
“I am returned from Scotland charmed with my expedition: it is of the Highlands
I speak; the Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and
ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a-year. None but those monstrous creatures
of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror. A fig for your poets,
painters, gardeners, and clergymen, that have not been among them; their
imagination can be made up of nothing but bowling-greens, flowering shrubs,
horse-ponds, Fleet-ditches, shell grottoes, and Chinese rails. Then I had so
beautiful an autumn—Italy could hardly produce a nobler scene—and this so
sweetly contrasted with the perfection of nastiness, and total want of
accommodation, that Scotland only can supply! Oh, you would have blessed
yourself! I shall certainly go again.”
“Dear Mason,—I rejoice; but has she common sense? Is she a gentlewoman?
Has she money? Has she a nose? I know she sings a little, and twiddles on the
harpsichord, hammers at sentiment, and puts herself in an attitude, admires a cast
in the eye, and can say Elfrida by heart. But these are only the virtues of a maid.
Do let her have some wife-like qualities, and a double portion of prudence, as she
will have not only herself to govern but you also, and that with an absolute sway.
Your friends, I doubt not, will suffer for it. However, we are very happy, and have
no other wish than to see you settled in the world. We beg you would not stand
fiddling about it, but be married forthwith.”
“Philip Gray, before his marriage with his wife (then Dorothy Antrobus, and who
was then partner with her sister Mary Antrobus), entered into certain articles of
agreement”—(permitting, in short, the said Dorothy Antrobus to continue the said
partnership for her own sole and separate use.)
“That in pursuance of the said articles, the said Mary, with the assistance of the
said Dorothy her sister, hath carried on the said trade for near thirty years, with
tolerable success for the said Dorothy. That she hath been at no charge to the said
Philip; and during all the said time hath not only found herself in all manner of
apparel, but also for all her children to the number of twelve, and most of the
furniture of his house; and paying £40 a-year for his shop, almost providing
everything for her son, whilst at Eton school, and now he is at Peter House at
Cambridge.
“Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, he hath used
her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the most
vile and abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear, and danger of her
life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit her bed and lie with her sister. This
she was resolved, if possible, to bear; not to leave her shop of trade for the sake of
her son, to be able to assist in the maintenance of him at the University, since his
father won’t.
“There is no cause for this usage unless it be an unhappy jealousy of all mankind
in general (her own brother not excepted); but no woman deserves or hath
maintained a more virtuous character: or it is presumed, if he can make her sister
leave off trade, he thinks he can then come into his wife’s money, but the articles
are too secure for his vile purposes.
“He daily threatens he will pursue her with all the vengeance possible, and will
ruin himself to undo her and his only son; in order to which he hath given warning
to her sister to quit his shop where they have carried on their trade so successfully,
which will be almost their ruin: but he insists she shall go out at Midsummer next;
and the said Dorothy, his wife, in necessity must be forced to go along with her to
some other house and shop, to be assisting to her said sister in the said trade, for
her own and her son’s support.
“But if she can be quiet, she neither expects nor desires any help from him: but
he is really so very vile in his nature, she hath all the reason to expect most
troublesome usage from him that can be thought of.”—Vol. i. Appendix B.
Then follow some questions, and the answer of Counsel, which it is
not necessary to extract. What must have been the effect of such
domestic scenes as are here disclosed to us, on the sensitive mind of
Gray, may be partly guessed. Nor need we be surprised that the
college youth at Peter House, and the associate of Horace Walpole,
early contracted a habit of silence upon the events of his own life.
Bonstettin, whom he took so cordially to his friendship, says, “Je
racontais à Gray ma vie et mon pays, mais toute sa vie à lui était
fermée pour moi. Jamais il ne me parlait de lui. Il y avait chez Gray
entre le present et le passé un abîme infranchisable. Quand je voulais
un approche, de sombre nuées venaient le couvrir.”—Vol. V., Notes,
p. 181.
We understand now why Gray held his mother in so much esteem,
and why the father was rarely spoken of, while her name was never
mentioned to the latest day without a trembling of the voice; why
there was found at his death, still unopened, in his room, the chest
containing her wearing-apparel: he had never dared to open it, or
had never reconciled himself to part with its contents. To his mother
he owed his education and the position he occupied in life—a greater
debt than even that life which she twice gave. He was the only one of
twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, as we
are told, “from suffocation produced by a fulness of blood;” and this
strange family destiny would have befallen Gray also, but that his
mother “removed the paroxysm which attacked him, by opening a
vein with her own hand.”
The chief incident of Gray’s life, so far as biographers have been
able to record it, is his intimacy with Walpole;—his journey with him
upon the Continent, and the rupture that took place between them.
Of this quarrel we find an explanation in a note which is by no means
honourable to Walpole. Entertaining a suspicion that Gray had
spoken ill of him to some friends in England, he clandestinely
opened and re-sealed one of Gray’s letters. After this, there was “little
cordiality between them.” We should think not, for, short of a crime,
could one man be guilty towards another of a more dishonourable
action? But we are not satisfied with the authority on which this
explanation is given. The account will be found in a note, vol. ii. p.
175. We have only that sort of hearsay evidence which lawyers have
universally agreed in rejecting. A Mr Isaac Reed makes a private
memorandum (some time after the conversation) of what a Mr
Roberts, of the Pell office, had told him. This is not sufficient
authority for what, we presume in the time of Walpole as well as our
own, would be regarded as a grave charge, if brought against a
gentleman. Of Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, and how he heard the
story, we are told nothing. Mr Isaac Reed merely says of him “that he
was likely to be well informed.”
The quarrel, its cause and its reconciliation, are, perhaps, now of
very little moment, but the intimacy with Walpole must always
remain as one of the most important facts in the life of Gray. For
what is the character which Gray reveals to us? In few words, it is the
incongruous combination of the sensitive poet and man of letters,
with the affectation and levity of a man of the world. This latter
phase of his character must have owed much of its development to
his early intercourse with the son of a prime-minister, and one whose
wit and pleasantry would fully justify and explain an influence over
his graver companion. Gray was a man who had a heart, and had
learnt to hide it under the affectation of indifference; neither could
he have been without the stirrings of a noble ambition; but he had
taught himself that it was a prettier thing to graft the man of letters
on the refined gentleman, than to give himself, heart and soul, to
some intellectual enterprise. He thinks, or he can write, that
“Literature, to take it in its most comprehensive sense, and include
everything that requires invention or judgment, or barely application
and industry, seems indeed drawing apace to its dissolution;” but he
makes no serious effort to arrest this dissolution. What is the
literature of a country but the efforts of such men as he? There was a
younger contemporary, one Gibbon, then turning over the same
classic pages as himself, who was soon to add to the literature of
England a History which would display more learning and more
eloquence than had ever before been united together. Antiquarian as
he was, what epoch has he illustrated for us? Zoologist, botanist; he
corrects the latinity of Linnæus! He makes notes innumerable—notes
on Strabo, notes on Plato; the text of what author has he amended or
explained for us? When appointed Professor of History, he does not
even write a single lecture.
“The political opinions of Gray, H. Walpole says, he never rightly
understood;” and his biographer adds that his religious opinions lie
in a certain obscurity. Some writers “not favourable to the cause of
Christianity,” have ranked him, it seems, amongst freethinkers:
orthodox and pious friends have no doubt whatever about his
orthodoxy or his piety. The perusal of his Letters never led us, for a
moment, to rank him amongst unbelievers; but if any one should
suggest that he had not thought on the subject with sufficient
earnestness even to be a doubter, we might be disposed to acquiesce
in this explanation. He lived in a time when there was little
earnestness of thought, and he was not of that energetic nature
which rises above the influence of the age. He was scandalised at
Rousseau and Voltaire because they were disturbers of the peace:
one is not sure that there was a deeper feeling in his hostility towards
them. The manner in which a person is written to is often as
significant as the manner in which he himself writes. Throughout
their correspondence, the Rev. William Mason never alludes to his
clerical profession in any one respect but as a means of living well
and comfortably in the world—as a career in which promotion and
good living are to be encountered. The credit of this quite secular
tone must be divided between the correspondents: perhaps in the
greater measure to the elder and more influential of the two.
These correspondents were, no doubt, excellent friends; but Gray
never speaks to a third person in a very flattering manner of Mason.
He is disposed always to deny any very close intimacy. He appears to
have said to himself, Men will laugh at us two poets, communing
upon verse, and flattering each other upon the muse; they will make
me out also no better than a poet; whereas I am gentleman by
profession and poet by accident. Writing to Walpole, he says, “I like
Mr Aston Hervey’s Fable, and an ode by Mr Mason, a new
acquaintance of mine.” Of this new acquaintance he had written to
Warton, more than two years before, in the following strain: “Mr
Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode very much, but have
found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a
good deal of modesty. I take him for a good and well-meaning
creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves
everybody he meets with; he reads little or nothing, writes
abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it.” In
another place he says of him that he “has not, properly speaking,
anything one can call a passion about him, except a little malice and
revenge.” Such phrases as these occur in his correspondence with
Warton and Brown: “I do not hear from Mason;” “You think us great
correspondents, but,” &c. To us it seems that he really liked the
younger poet, who more, perhaps, than any other man he knew,
sympathised with him on the poetical side of his character; but then
he did not like to be grouped with him, in the eyes of the wits and the
worldlings. They will compare us, and associate us, and think us rival
candidates for popular applause.
We see this morbid sense of ridicule betray itself in his publication
of his poems. He insists upon it that the poems shall be published as
mere illustrations of the drawings of Bentley, which accompanied
them. The book met with applause, and the Elegy became at once a
popular favourite. He seems, in a letter to Warton, to reprove and to
repudiate this abundant praise. “I should have been glad that you
and two or three more people had liked them, which would have
satisfied my ambition on this head amply.” For all this, when he
published the Bard, and other odes which, from their nature,
appealed still more to the select few, he was not a little nettled
because “the town” found them obscure.
In his manner and carriage, Gray is described as being cold and
fastidious to an offensive degree. A contemporary and admirer, Rev.
William Cole, says, “I am apt to think the characters of Voltaire and
Mr Gray were similar. They were both little men, very nice and exact
in their persons and dress, most lively and agreeable in conversation,
except that Mr Gray was apt to be too satirical, and both of them full
of affectation.” And then contrasting him with Dr Farmer, he thus
describes the two men: “The one (Dr Farmer) a cheerful,
companionable, hearty, open, downright man, of no great regard to
dress or common forms of behaviour; the other (Gray) of a most
fastidious and recluse distance of carriage, rather averse to
sociability, but of the graver turn; nice, and elegant in his person,
dress, and behaviour, even to a degree of finicalness and
effeminacy.”—Vol. i., Appendix. The contrast here drawn between
Gray and Dr Farmer, suggests to us the dissimilarity and mutual
distaste which existed between Gray and a still greater
contemporary, Dr Johnson. They repelled each other far more by
diversity of manner than by opposition of opinion. Gray refused to be
personally acquainted with Johnson. Passing him in the streets of
London, he whispered to the companion with whom he was walking,
“There is the Great Bear! there goes Ursa Major!” and accompanied
the words with a sort of shrinking and recoil. It is well known that
the antipathy was mutual. The judgment passed upon Gray in the
Lives of the Poets is the harshest and the least equitable criticism
throughout that work. One cannot help admitting, however, that, if
Gray had written the life of Johnson, there would have been a piece
of criticism produced still less equitable. Gray is rarely just to any of
his contemporaries. He seldom admires, and the little praise he
bestows is distributed most capriciously. He speaks as highly of
Lyttleton’s Monody as of the Odes of Collins. He mentions Sterne but
coldly, and when he would be complimentary, always selects his
Sermons! You would say that a certain superciliousness has been
creeping over and into the very heart of the man.
But now change the point of view, and from this the world-aspect
turn to the poetic side of the character. It was not a heartless man
who wrote the Elegy and the Bard, who was the friend of West, who
in later times was the friend of Bonstettin, who at all times could find
society in meditation, and companionship in beauties of nature. The
Letters of Gray are too well known to render it necessary for us to
make extracts from them, to show how often a vein of deep feeling
runs through a half-playful style of diction. His pathos touches us
still more, whether he is describing nature, or speaking of himself
and of his friends, from the restraint he has evidently put upon his
own enthusiasm, or his own tenderness. The “melancholy Gray” was
a far higher being than the witty and Walpolian Gray; and it is the
blending of the two together that has made the singular charm of the
Letters.
If evidence were wanted to prove that there existed uncorrupted in
the mind of Gray springs of pure and genuine feeling, we should find
that evidence in his attachment to Bonstettin. This young foreigner,
by his own ardent temper, had broken down all those cold artificial
barriers in which it is said the poet habitually intrenched himself.
Gray had taken lodgings for him at Cambridge, near his own rooms,
and they spent the evenings together, reading the Greek poets and
philosophers. When Bonstettin returned to his native country,
Switzerland, Gray felt the loss of his friend in a manner which he
does not seek even to disguise, but expresses with unaffected
warmth:—
“Cambridge, April 12, 1770.
“Never did I feel, my dear Bonstettin, to what a tedious length the few short
moments of our life may be extended by impatience and expectation, till you had
left me: nor ever knew before with so strong a conviction how much this frail body
sympathises with the inquietude of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less
than three weeks, like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head
into a vessel of water, and take it out again, as the standers-by affirmed, at the
command of a Dervise, and found he had passed many years in captivity, and begot
a large family of children. The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to
you are only owing to your last letter, a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven
knows when it may shine again. I did not conceive till now, I own, what it was to
lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own condition before I possessed
the happiness of your friendship.
“But enough of this—I return to your letter. It proves at least that, in the midst of
your new gaieties, I still hold some place in your memory; and, what pleases me
above all, it has an air of undissembled sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable
friend, to show me your heart simply, and without the shadow of disguise, and
leave me to weep over it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.”
“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read, ‘Ce
n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that remembrance is the only
satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your shadow—the
known sound of your voice still rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the
fender, you are standing, or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on
the sofa. Do you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before I
can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have my answer;
and that all that time I am employed, with more than Herculean toil, in pushing
the tedious hours along, and wishing to annihilate them: the more I strive, the
heavier they move, and the longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have
spent many tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going
for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.
“May 9, 1770.
“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made into Suffolk,
without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with
me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as
so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have
too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little
interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your nature and present
enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathise with me. It is
impossible for me to dissemble with you: such as I am I expose my heart to your
view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”
These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the
mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth
is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In
the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart,
the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in
youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think
that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this
overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was
the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.
We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin
gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait
jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans
l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie
n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had
never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist
than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives
us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in
his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that
sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?
We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious
extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his
character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters
being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless.
Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our
purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression
often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is
the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised,
perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent
sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to
read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this
quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read
the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of
novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we
need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler,
but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not
unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more
indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting
some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this
result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance.
The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see
nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to
be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in
prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all
posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is
assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the
very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that
Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on
his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel,
that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems
driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of
employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary
task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its
accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his
happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of
his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian,
some large and useful task.
1. Life in Abyssinia; being Notes collected during Three Years’ Residence and
Travels in that Country. By Mansfield Parkyns. In Two Volumes. London: 1853.
2. A young Mahommedan, now resident at Adoua, was robbed one night of the
scalp of one side of his head.—Parkyns, ii. 293.
3. Blackwood’s Magazine for September 1851.
4. “Τὸ μὲν οὖν κολακεύειν, αἰσχρόν, τὸ δὲ ἐπιτιμᾶν, ἐπισφαλές· ἄριστον
δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ, τουτέστι τὸ ἐσχηματισμένον.”—Dem. Phal. de Elocutione.
5. Not such asphaltum as is now commonly used; he had a method of
preparing it to render it innocuous.
6. We owe it to Mr Stansfield to say, that had the authority we quoted given,
with Mr Stansfield’s answers, the subsequent explanation of them, we should not
have used such an expression as that he “confessed an astonishing indifference.”
We therefore quote his explanation. He is asked, (Question 3628,) “You have
stated that you have not studied these pictures in the National Gallery much; that
you were not very conversant with the works of the old masters; and that you had
not studied those pictures in particular; so you, from your previous knowledge of
them, feel competent to give an opinion whether or not they have been injured in
the minute details to which reference has been made? Yes. I think I may; because
when I spoke of my ignorance, I did it in reference to my not possessing the
information that I know many gentlemen belonging to the Academy have. I should
refer to Mr Dyce at once as a very great authority, and also to Sir Charles Eastlake
himself. I have not their experience in Italian works of art, but still the pictures
that are before us I have looked at with admiration, and I know that if there is any
material injury done to them I should detect it as soon as any one.”
7. Gen. x. 3; Ezek. xxvii. 14, xxxviii. 6; Herod, iv. 5.
8. Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses voyages de l’Inde, depuis l’an
629 jusqu’en 645. Par Hoei II. et Yen-thsong. Traduite du Chinois par Stanislas
Julien. Paris: 1853.
9. Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. Corrected by
himself. London, 1854.
10. Funfzig Jahre in beiden Hemisphären. Reminiscences of a Merchant’s
Life. By Vincent Nolte. 2 volumes. Hamburg: Perthes-Besser. London: Williams
and Norgate. 1853.
11. Memoires de G. J. Ouvrard. Paris, 1826.
12. The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon. By S. W. Baker, Esq. London: 1854.
13. The Correspondence of Thomas Gray and William Mason, with Notes
and Illustrations. By the Rev. John Mitford, Vicar of Benhall.
Gray’s Works. Aldine Edition.
14. Gray’s Works, Appendix, vol. i. p. 112.
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