had never entertained with affection or ardour; and the anxiety excited by this. undecifivenefs as to the scheme of life he fhould follow, was now embittered by the fickness of Mr. Weft, who had fome time languished in a confumption, and who, in June 1742, in the twentyfixth year of his age, fell an unfufpecting victim to this diftemper,

A fhort time before this cruel event, Mr. Gray had gone to vifit his mother, in her retirement at Stoke, near Windfor, where he wrote his beautiful Ode on the Spring, And it is not impoffible, but a prefage of what was to happen, occafioned the interefting melancholy which reigns in it. His regrets it is easier to conceive than to de

scribe;

fcribe; and they seem immediately to have given birth to a very tender fonnet in English, in the manner of Petrarque, and to a noble apoftrophe in Latin, which he intended as the introduction to one of his books, De principiis cogitandi*. It is also worthy of observation, that within three months after Mr. Weft's death, he appears to have compofed the Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College, and the Hymn to Adverfity. Nor is it to be doubted, that his forrow for his beloved friend gave a tone to these delightful poems; and the reader of fenfibility, who peruses them under this impreffion, will find an additional charm in them,

The genius of Mr. Gray, which was averse from the mechanifm and toil of business, joined to his paffion for study and literature, inclined him to live at Cambridge, where he had free accefs to many valuable libraries. From the winter of the year 1742, to the end of his life, it was the feat of his refidence; and he was feldom abfent from it, except on occafional vifits to his mother, and during that period*, when, on the opening of the British Museum, he took lodgings in Southampton Row, for the purpose of examining, and extracting from, the Harleian and other manufcripts.

It was not till the year 1750, that

* Between the years 1759 and 1762.

he

he put the last hand to his much-celebrated Elegy in a Country Church-yard.

Mr. Walpole, who was infinitely delighted with it, communicated it in manufcript to many perfons of diftinction, who failed not to feel for and to bestow on the author the admiration and applause he so justly merited. In this polite and fashionable circle was Lady Cobham, who wishing much to be acquainted with Mr. Gray, procured this pleafure, by the means of her relation Mifs Speed, and of Lady Schaub. The hiftory of this incident, the circumstances of which were fomewhat peculiar, he has thrown into a ballad, intitled, A True Story. Of this piece the humour does not appear very ftriking; and, though it has found admirers, the au

thor

thor himself refused it a place in his own edition of his poems.

The year 1753 was memorable to Mr. Gray, by the lofs of his mother, whom he loved with an exemplary affection. In the year 1756, fome young men, who lived in the fame staircase, and who fancied that birth and fortune gave them a title to be impertinent, difturbing him frequently and intentionally with their infults and riots, he found it neceffary to remove from Peter-houfe, and went to Pembroke - hall. In the year 1768, by the unsolicited influence of the Duke of Grafton, he was nominated King's Profeffor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, a place of 400l. a year.

It