in company with Horace Walpole for a three years' tour on the Continent. The friends went first of all to Paris, where they stayed two months, and saw a good deal of fashionable and of literary society. They then settled for three months at Rheims, where they enjoyed very cordial hospitality. In the autumn of 1739 they were sauntering through France; they loitered a while in Geneva, and then,

HE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind flowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

protected by "muffs, hoods, and masks of beaver, fur boots and bearskins," they ventured over the Alps in November. This adventure deeply impressed the imagination of Gray; "not a precipice," he said, "not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." All through 1740 the friends were together in Italy, but in the following May, while at Reggio, they quarrelled, and Gray returned alone to England. In November 1741 his father died, and was found to have

squandered the greater part of his fortune. Gray spent the winter of this year in London with West, and he now began to write English poetry; of his early tragedy of Agrippina only a fragment survives. In June 1742 West died, and Gray went down to Stoke Pogis, where one of his uncles had a house. Here he wrote his Ode to Spring, the Eton Ode, the Hymn to Adversity, and began the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. His uncle now died, and Gray's mother joined her two sisters in the house at Stoke Pogis, which now became Gray's occasional home until his death. He had given up the study of the law, and now, for cheapness' sake, he resolved to reside in Cambridge. In the winter

of 1742 he proceeded to Peter-
house, and there for two years
is lost to sight.
In 1744 the
difference between Gray and
Walpole was made up, and
the former began to correspond
again with the latter and with
other old acquaintances; in
1746 Walpole took a house in
Windsor, so that, when Gray
was at Stoke, the friends could
spend one day of every week
together. In 1747 Gray printed,
in folio, his Eton Ode, and
wrote the ode to Walpole's cat.
On his thirtieth birthday he
described himself as "lazy and
listless, and old, and vexed, and
perplexed"; but he was cheered.
up by the enthusiasm of a new
friend, William Mason, after-
wards his biographer, "a well-
meaning creature." His favour-
ite aunt, Miss Mary Antrobus,
died in November 1749, and
her funeral seems to have led
Gray to finish the Elegy which
he had sketched seven years
earlier. This famous poem
was published by Dodsley in

Title-page of Gray's "Odes"

quarto in February 1751, and was greatly successful from the very first. In 1753 Gray's poems were first collected, in folio, with plates by Richard Bentley; in March of that year his mother died; his exquisite epitaph may still be read on her tombstone at Stoke Pogis. In 1754 he completed, in his slow way, The Progress of Poesy, and, in 1757, The Bard; these were published together, as Odes by Mr. Gray, in the latter year. In 1756 a cruel practical joke was played on the poet by some coarse undergraduates, who raised a cry of fire, and induced him to descend in his night-gown into a tub of water. Failing to obtain redress from the college authorities, he transferred himself from Peterhouse, where he had no intimates, to Pembroke, which was full of his friends. He was welcomed, and he made this college his

Cambridge home for the rest of his life. He was now able to live in greater comfort, since, the ladies whom he had supported being dead, he sank part of his little property in an annuity. Moreover, in 1759 he took a house in Bloomsbury, and was practically absent from Cambridge for three years, mainly engaged in studying early English and Icelandic poetry at the recently-opened British Museum. The final years of Gray's life were extremely uneventful; they were mainly spent, in great retirement and

constantly declining health, in Cambridge, diversified by "Lilliputian travels" through portions of England and Scotland. In 1768 he collected the poems of his lifetime into one slender volume, and was appointed Professor of Modern Literature at Cambridge, but delivered no lectures. In 1769 he made his celebrated journey to the Cumbrian Lakes, and wrote the Journal, in which for the first time the sublimity of that scenery was properly celebrated. In the same year Gray formed the last, and one of the most ardent of his friendships, that with the brilliant young Swiss, Charles de Bonstetten. He hoped to follow his young companion to Switzerland, he died of suppressed gout in

but lacked the strength, and on the 30th of July 1771 his rooms at Pembroke College, having been taken ill at dinner in hall six nights before. He was buried at Stoke Pogis. At the time of his death Gray was "perhaps the most learned man in Europe." He was a little plump person, very shy, with a fund of latent humour; the tottering and gingerly way in which he walked was the subject of ridicule, and he was altogether too delicate for the rough age he lived in. His admirable Letters, first published in 1775, revealed sides of his character previously unsuspected, and greatly to his honour.

The Curfen tolls the Knall of pasting Day.
The Cowing Herd ward stonely our the Lea
And leaves the, Worts to Darkness & to me
The Ploughenoor homeward plads his

weary Way.

Now,
Now fades the glimin ring Landscape on the Sight,
And all the Air a solemn Stallness holds.
Save where the Beadle wheels his droning Flight,
Or dronry Sinkleings bull the discant Lotos.
Save that from yonder the whoon complain
mopping
Owl t
of such, as
as wand ving
her secret Bower
Molest her ancient solitary Reign

The

mantled Sower

Beneath those rugged Elons, that Yentree's Shade, where heaves the Surf

Each in

his

narront

a.

Call many

mouldiring Heap,

ever

Land.

The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet, sleep.
The breezy Call of incense-breathing Morn
The lock's shrill Clarion, & the eechoing Horn,
The Swallow invitt ring from the strate-built shed,
No more shall rowve them from their,
them from their lowly Bed.
For them no more, the blazing Hearth shall beon.
or busy duswife ply her lutning

run to

No Children
Nor climb his Knees

Care.

oft did the Harvest

their live's Return. to share to their Sickles yield,

Their Furrow oft the stubborn. Glebe has broke,
How jocurd did they drive their Team a field
How bowed the Woods beneath their sturdy Stroke:
Let not Ambition mock their useful Foil",
Their homely Jays,
obscure

a

& Destiny
For Grandeur hear with disdainful Smile
The short & simple Annals of the Poor.
The Beast of Heratory, the Pomp of Power,
And all that Beauty, all that Wealth ier
Awaits alike th' insertable Hour.
The Packs of Glory lead but to the Grave
Forgive, ye
Proud, th involuntary Fault,
to These
Trophies Fraise,

no

gave,

Where to the day drawn. The & fretted Vault
The pealing Anthers swells the Note of Praise.

Can stored ton or animated Bust

Back to it's Mansion call the fleeting Breath:
Can Harous's Voice provoke then sillout Dust,
Or Slachty soothe the dull cats Ear of Death,

VOL. III.

Page of MS. of Gray's "Elegy"

*

T

FROM "THE PROGRESS OF POESY."

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering natives' dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves

Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.