GRAY.

1716-1771.

Born in Cornhill, London Educated at Eton and Cambridge

panies Horace Walpole into Italy — His Quarrel with Pope — Publishes his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' — Its immediate popularity Publishes his Odes Refuses the Laurel Made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge - Death, and Burial at Stoke Pogeis in Buckinghamshire-Works and Character.

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THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother,' then assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge.

The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the Common Law, he took no degree.

When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it

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1 Mr. William Antrobus died at Everden, Northamptonshire, 22nd May, 1742, and was buried in the chancel of that church.

They quarrelled at Reggio.

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told that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a

3 "I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me the fault was mine. I was too young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me; of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one whom presumption and folly, perhaps, made me deem not my superior then in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him insolently: he loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from conviction of knowing he was my superior; I often disregarded his wishes of seeing places which I would not quit other amusements to visit, though I offered to send him to them without me. Forgive me if I say that his temper was not conciliating. At the same time that I will confess to you that he acted a more friendly part, had I had the sense to take advantage of it; he freely told me of my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine, the breach must have grown wider, till we became incompatible. After this confession, I fear you will think I fall far short of the justice I promised him in the words which I should wish to have substituted to some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter, and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory."—WALPOLE to Mason, March 2, 1773.

"The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraint of the university, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, &c., whilst I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."-WALPOLE: Walpoliana, vol. i. p. 95, art. cx.

Mr. Roberts, of the Pell Office, who was likely to be well informed, told me at Mr. Deacon's, 19th April, 1799, that the quarrel between Gray and Walpole was occasioned by a suspicion Mr. Walpole entertained that Mr. Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England. To ascertain this he clandestinely opened a letter and re-sealed it, which Mr. Gray with great propriety resented: there seems to have been but little cordiality afterwards between them.-ISAAC REED: MS. Note in Wakefield's Life of Gray; Mitford's Gray, ii. 175.

Compare Norton Nicholls's Reminiscences in Mitford's 'Gray,' v. 48.

manner suitable to his own little fortune, with only an occasional

servant.

He returned to England in September, 1741, and in about two months afterwards buried his father; who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law.* He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he soon after became Bachelor of Civil Law; and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he passed, except a short residence in London, the rest of his life.

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About this time [1742] he was deprived of Mr. West, the son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in his letters and in the Ode to May' which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina,' a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted the progress of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina' was never finished.

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In this year (1742) Gray seems first to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced the 'Ode to Spring,' his Prospect of Eton,' and his 'Ode to

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4 Philip Gray (the father) was born 27th July, 1676; died 6th November, 1741; and was buried in the church of St. Michael's, Cornhill, London. He was the son of Thomas and Alice Gray, and was baptized in the church of St. Olave, Hart Street, London. Dorothy Antrobus (the mother) made her will 23rd January, 1753. It commences touchingly: "In the name of God, Amen. This is the last will and desire of Dorothy Gray to her son Thomas Gray." She speaks of her “lining close," and desires to be buried in “lining” in a coffin of polished oak, with black nails, in the same vault with her sister, Mary Antrobus. The hearse was to be accompanied by one mourning coach. Gray's own request in his will is that he should be buried by the side of his mother, "in a coffin of seasoned oak, neither lined nor covered." She died 11th March, 1753. The story of the wedded life of the father and mother of Gray is told in a Case submitted to counsel in 1735, when the poet was entering his twentieth year. See Appendix.

Richard West died in his 26th year. Mr. Mitford, I am glad to think, is collecting his works for publication.

6 The Ode on Eton College was published in May, 1747, and was Gray's first English poem that was published.

When

Adversity.' He began likewise a Latin poem, De principiis cogitandi. '

It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for though there is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in his lyric numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess; and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom practice would quickly have made skilful.

He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason being elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall, brought him a companion who was afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled in him a zeal of admiration which cannot be reasonably expected from the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critic. In this retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the Death of Mr. Walpole's Cat;' and the year afterwards attempted a poem of more importance, on Government and Education,' of which the fragments which remain have many excellent lines.

His next production (1751) was his far-famed Elegy in the ✓ Church-yard,' which, finding its way into a Magazine, first, I believe, made him known to the public.8

An invitation from Lady Cobham about this time gave occasion to an odd composition called A Long Story,' which adds little to Gray's character."

When Gray published his exquisite Ode on Eton College-his first publication-little notice was taken of it.-Jos. WARTON: Essay on Pope, ii. 230, ed. 1782.

7 No; he began it at Florence in 1740.

8 Afterwards (1751) published in 4to. 'An Elegy wrote in a Country Church Yard. London: printed for R. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall; And sold by M. Cooper in Pater-noster-Row, 1751. Price Sixpence.' A fourth edition appeared the same year.

9 TO THOMAS GRAY, ESQ.

Sunday morning.

SIR, I am as much at a loss to bestow the commendations due to your Performance as any of our modern Poets wou'd be to imitate it. Ev'ry body that