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MR. THOMAS GRAY, the subject of this memoir, was born in Cornhill, the twenty-fixth day of December 1716. His grandfather had been a confiderable

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fiderable merchant; but his father, Mr. Philip Gray, exercised the trade of a money-fcrivener; and being of an indolent difpofition, he did not add to his paternal fortune. He neglected not however, the education of his fon; whom he sent to Eton fchool; where he contracted an intimacy with Mr. Horace Walpole, who is at present so distinguished in the republic of letters, and with Mr. Richard Weft, a young gentleman of uncommon ability, whose father was Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

From Eton Mr. Gray, in the year 1734, removed to Cambridge, and was admitted a pensioner of St. Peter's College. Mr. Weft went to study in ChriftChurch College at Oxford; and these ingenious

genious friends now commenced an epiftolary correspondence, which, though not unworthy of their years, and of the hopes conceived of them, they little imagined was, one day, to be laid be fore the public.

They were not long in their refpective universities, when they turned their attention to the study of the law. For, with that view, they found themselves in London in the year 1738. Mr. West took chambers in the Inner Temple, But Mr. Gray being invited by Mr. Walpole to accompany him in his travels, delayed, for a time, his application to 'a fcience, which, furely, did not fuit either his temper or his genius.

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The improvement he received from vifiting France and Italy was doubtless very great. But the pleasure arifing from his travels, was painfully interrupted by the disagreement which arose between him and Mr. Walpole. Their difpofitions were different. The pensive and philofophical turn of the former, did not well agree with the gaiety and liveliness of the latter. They had fet out in the end of the year 1739, and they parted at Reggio in the year 1741. Many years, however, did not pass till a reconciliation was produced between them, by the intervention and offices of a lady, who had a friendship for both.

On Mr. Gray's return to London *, * September 1741.

he

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he found his father altogether wasted with the fevere attacks of the gout, to which he had long been fubject. months after, he loft him, and fucceeded to a scanty patrimony. The intention he had formed, of studying the law as a profeffion, began now to be shaken. But his friends urging him to maintain his original purpose, and the delicacy of his nature inducing him not to give them uneafinefs, by too fudden a declaration of the ftate of his mind, he went to Cambridge, and took his Batchelor's degree in the Civil Law. The time he had paffed in his travels, the intense labour required by the study of the Common Law, and, above all, the narrowness of his fortune, eftranged him from a defign, which perhaps he

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