GR A Y.

HOMAS GRAY, the fon of Mr.

TH

Philip Gray, a fcrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eaton under Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a penfioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge.

The tranfition from the fchool to the college is, to moft young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray feems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge

neither

neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived fullenly 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 Eaton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's Letters contain a very pleafing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily diffolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it 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 fets them above the compliances of fervility, are apt enough in their affociation with fuperiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealoufy, and in the fervour of independance to exact that attention which they refufe to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the reft of their travels was doubtlefs more unpleasant

5

unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner fuitable to his own little fortune, with only an occafional fervant.

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, fo much leffened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law. He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he foon after became Bachelor of Civil Law; and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or pretending to like them, he passed, except a fhort refidence at London, the reft of his life.

About this time he was deprived of Mr. Weft, the son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have fet a high value, and who deferved his esteem by the powers which he fhews in his Letters, and in the Ode to May, which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the fincerity with which, when Gray fent him part of Agrippina, a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted

VOL. IV.

Hh

the

the progress of the work, and which the judgement of every reader will confirm. It was certainly no lofs to the English stage that Agrippina was never finished.

In this year (1742) Gray feems first to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring, his Profpect of Eaton, and his Ode to Adverfity. He began likewife a Latin poem, de Principiis cogitandi.

It seems to be the opinion of Mr. Mafon, that his firft ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were reasonable to wish that he had profecuted his defign; for though there is at prefent fome embarraffment in his phrase, and some harshness in his Lyrick numbers, his copioufness of language is fuch as very few poffefs; and his lines, even when imperfect, difcover a writer whom practice would quickly have made fkilful.

He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little folicitous what others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without

2