When he came to London, he found his father's constitution almost entirely worn out by the very severe attacks of the gout, to which he had been subject for many years. And indeed the next return of that distemper was fatal to him; for he died in November 1741, about two months after his son's return.

Mr. Philip Gray, as we have before observed, rather diminishedthan increased his paternal fotune. Our author, therefore, upon the death of his father, found his patrimony so small, that it would by no means enable him to prosecute the study of the law, without his becoming burdensome to his mother and aunt. These two sisters had, for many years, kept an India warehouse in Cornhill, and carried on a trade, under the joint names of Gray and Antrobus. But, upon this event, having acquired what would sup port them decently for the rest of their lives, they retired to Stoke, near Windsor, to the house of their other sister, Mrs. Rogers, lately become the widow of a clergyman of that name. Both of them wished Mr. Gray to follow the profession for which he had been originally intended, and would undoubtedly have contributed all in their power to enable him to do it with ease and conveniency. He, on his part, though he had taken his resolution of declining it, was too delicate to hurt two persons, for whom he had the tenderest affection, by peremptorily declaring his real intentions;

and therefore changed, or pretended to change, the line of that study: And, accordingly, towards the end of the subsequent year, went to Cambridge to take his bachelor's degree in civil law.

But the narrowness of his circumstances was not the only thing which distressed him at this period. He had, as we have seen, lost the friendship of Mr. Walpole abroad. He had also lost much time in his travels; a loss which application could not easily retrieve, when so severe and laborious a study, as that of the common law, was to be the object of it; and he well knew, that, whatever improvement he might have made in this interval, either in taste or science, such improvement would be of little, use to him in his present situation and exigencies. This was not all. His other friend, Mr. West, he found, on his return, oppressed by sickness and a load of family misfortunes. These, the sympathizing heart of Mr. Gray made his own. He did all in his power, for he was now with him in London, to soothe the sorrows of his friend; he endeavoured to alleviate them by every office of the purest and most cordial affection. But his cares were vain. The distresses of Mr. West's mind had already too far affected a body, from the first weak and delicate. His health déclined daily; and therefore he left town in March 1742; and, for the benefit of the air, went to David Mitchell's, Esq. at Pope's, near Hatfield, in Hertfordshire.

During an interval of something more than two months, Mr. West and Mr. Gray maintained a constant correspondence on subjects of literature, and their classical stu

D 3

dics.

dies. The last letter from Mr. West is dated May 11, 1742. Mr. Gray returned an answer, May 27. Immediately afterwards, he went upon a visit to his relations at Stoke; where he wrote that beautiful little, ode on the spring, which begins:

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd hours, Fair Venus' tráin, appears, &c.'

He sent it, as soon as written, to his beloved friend; but he was dead before it reached Hertfordshire, about three weeks after he had written the letter abovementioned to Mr. Gray, which concluded with, Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis;' so little was the amiable youth then aware of the short time, that he himself would be numbered among the living. But this, it has been frequently remarked, is almost constantly the case with such persons as die of that most remediless, yet most flattering of all distempers, a consumption. Shall humanity,' says Mr. Mason, the biographer of Mr. Gray, be thankful or sorry, that it is so? Thankful surely. For, as this malady generally attacks the young and the innocent, it seems the merciful in tention of heaven that to these death should come unperceived, and as it were by stealth; divested of one of its sharpest stings, the lingering expectation of their dissoJution.' Mr. West, when he died, was in the twenty-sixth year of his age.

As to Mr. Gray, we may assure ourselves, that he felt much more than his dying friend, when the letter, which inclosed the Ode, was returned unopened. There seems to be a kind of presentiment in that pathetic piece, which readers of taste will feel, when they learn

this anecdote. The lines here al luded to are:

Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some shew their gaily gilded trim
Quick glancing to the sun.

The insect youth are on the wing,

To Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the busy and the gay But flutter thro' life's little day, In fortune's varying colours drest: Brush'd by the hand of rough mischance, or chill'd by age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear, in accents low,`
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joy's no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone-
We frolick, while, 'tis May.'

This observation must we presume make one peruse these beautiful lines with double pleasure; and throw a melancholy grace (to borrow one of his own expressions) on the Ode on a distant prospect of Eton, and on that to Adversity; both of them written within three months after the death of Mr. West. For, as these poems abound with pathos, they who have feeling hearts will feel this excellence the more strongly, when they know the cause from whence it arose; and the unfeeling will perhaps learn to respect what they cannot taste, when they are prevented from imputing to a splenetic melancholy what, in fact, springs from the most benevolent of all sensations. It is probable, that the elegy in a Country Church Yard, was begun, if not finished, at this time; though the conclusion, as it stands at pre

sent,

cipal abode for near thirty years. But this perhaps may be accounted for from his love of books (ever his ruling passion) and the strait ness of his circumstances, which prevented the gratification of it. For to a man, who could not conveniently purchase even a small library, what situation so eligible, as that which affords free access to a number of large ones? This reason also accounts for another singular fact. During his residence at Stoke, in the spring and summer of the same year 1742, he wrote a considerable part of his more finished poems. Hence one would be naturally led to conclude, that, on his return to Cambridge, when the ceremony of taking his degree was over, the quiet of the place would have prompted him to continue the cultivation of his poetical talents, and that immediately, as the muse seems in this year to have peculiarly inspired him; but this was not the case. Reading was much more agrecable to him than writing. He therefore now laid aside composition almost entirely, and applied himself with intense assiduity to the study of the best Greek authors; in somuch that, in the space of about six years, there were. hardly any writers of note, in that language, which he had not only read, but digested; remarking, by the mode of common-place, their contents, their difficult and corrupt passages: and all this with the accuracy of a critic, added to the diligence of a student.

About the year 1747, Mr. Masen, the editor of Mr. Gray's poems, was introduced to him. The for mer had written, a year or two before, some imitations of Milton's juvenile poems, viz. A Monody on

the death of Mr. Pope, and two pieces, entitled, I Bellicoso, and I Pacifico, on the peace of Aix-laChapelle; and the latter revised them, at the request of a friend. This laid the foundation of an intimacy, which continued without interruption to the death of Mr. Gray.

About the year 1750, Mr. Gray had put his last hand to his celebrated elegy, written in a country church-yard, and had communicated it to his friend, Mr. Walpole, whose good taste was too much charmed with it to suffer him to with-hold the sight of it from his acquaintance. Accordingly it was shewn about for some time in manuscript, and received with all the applause it so justly merited. Among the rest of the fashionable world, for to these only it was at present communicated, Lady Cobham, who now lived at the mansion-house at Stoke Pogis, had read and admired it. She wished to be acquainted with the author. Accordingly, her relation, Miss Speed, and Lady Schaub, then at her house, undertook to bring this about, by making him the first visit. He happened to be from home, when the ladies arrived at his aunt's solitary mansion; and, when he returned, was surprized to find, written on one of his papers in the parlour, where he usually read, the following note: "Lady Schaub's compliments to Mr. Gray; she is sorry not to have found him at home, to tell him that Lady Brown is very well." This necessarily obliged him to return the visit, and soon after induced him to compose a ludicrous account of this little adventure, for the amusement of the ladies in question. He wrote it in ballad-measure, and

entitled,