years, reading and transcribing'; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his Lyrick performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity".

When the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge died he 17 was, as he says, 'cockered and spirited up,' till he asked it of lord Bute, who sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the tutor of Sir James Lowther 3.

His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was 18 promoted by exercise and change of place he undertook (1765) a journey into Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious and elegant; for as his comprehension was ample his curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all the monuments of past events 5.

2 Colman's Prose on Several Occasions, &c., 1787, ii. 273. 'These Odes,' writes Colman, 'were a piece of boys' play with my schoolfellow Lloyd, with whom they were written in concert.' Ib. Preface, p. II. They are quoted in Gent. Mag. June, 1760, p. 291. According to Steevens Johnson said: 'Colman never produced a luckier thing than his first Ode in ridicule of Gray. A considerable part of it may be numbered among those felicities which no man has twice attained.' John. Misc. ii. 320. See also Boswell's Johnson, ii. 334.

Gray wrote in June, 1760:-'I believe Mr. Colman's Odes sell no more than mine did, for I saw a heap of them lie in a bookseller's window, who recommended them to me as a very pretty thing.' Letters, ii. 147. See also ib. p. 161.

" Gray is said to have been so much hurt by a foolish and impertinent parody of two of his finest

odes, that he never afterwards attempted any considerable work.' Adam Smith, Moral Sent. 1801, i. 255.

Walpole, in 1796, says of Payne Knight: He tells a silly falsehood of Gray being terrified from writing by Lloyd's and Colman's trash.' Letters, ix. 462.

'Dr. J. Warton says::-"Colman and Lloyd once said to me that they repented of the attempt.' Gray's Letters, ii. 140 n.

3

He

Mitford, iii. 301, letter of Dec. 4, 1762. Lowther, a year before, had married Bute's daughter. Burke's Peerage. Later on he was known as 'the bad Lord Lonsdale,' that 'gloomy despot,' among whose victims was Wordsworth's father. treated Boswell also with brutality. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 179 n., v. 113. Walpole, speaking of the vast succession that fell to him in 1756, says 'it makes him Croesus.' Letters, iii. 5. Nevertheless he was mean enough to pension his tutor at the cost of the University.

In his letters. Mitford, iv. 51-65. 5 In 1758 he wrote:- The drift of my present studies įs to know, wherever I am, what lies within reach that may be worth seeing.' Ib. iii. 188. For his Naturalist's Calendar see ib. iii. 216, 224, 276, iv. 13; for his observations on architecture and painting see ib. iv. 70, 225, v. 325.

19

20

He naturally contracted a friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man'. The Mareschal College at Aberdeen offered him the degree of Doctor of Laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to refuse 2.

What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last given him without solicitation. The Professorship of History became again vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the duke of Grafton3. He accepted, and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never reading them; uneasy at his neglect of duty, and appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found himself unable to discharge it ‘.

Ill health made another journey necessary, and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration wishes that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment; but it is by studying at

Mitford, iv. 62-5. JOHNSON. We all love Beattie. Mrs. Thrale says, if ever she has another husband, she'll have Beattie.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 148.

In declining the honour he speaks of Cambridge in a tone different from his ordinary one-a set of men among whom I have passed so many easy, and, I may say, happy hours of my life.' Mitford, iv. 63.

3 The Duke was Prime Minister. Gray wrote on Aug. 1, 1768, that 'on Sunday se'nnight Brocket died by a fall from his horse, being (as I hear) drunk. On the Wednesday following I received a letter from the D. of Grafton saying he had the King's commands to offer me the vacant Professorship.' 76. iv. 123. On Oct. 31 he wrote:-'It is the best thing the Crown has to bestow (on a layman) here; the salary is £400 per ann.' Ib. p. 127. The drunken Brocket was in orders. Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 398. One of Gray's correspondents, Richard Stonehewer, was the Duke's Secretary. 'He is a great favourite of the Duke, and the person that recommended Mr. Gray.' WALPOLE, Letters, v. 117, 128. Gray, a year later, wrote an Ode for Music

for the Installation of the Duke as Chancellor of the University. Mitford, iv. 137. Post, GRAY, 48 n. 9.

This state of mind Johnson knew only too well. Ante, MALLET,

14 n.

Gray wrote to Nicholls on March 20, 1770:-'As to Wales, doubtless I should wish it this summer, but I can answer for nothing; my own employment so sticks in my stomach, and troubles my conscience.' Mitford, v. 104. On May 20, 1771 (a few weeks before his death), he wrote:'The sense of my own duty, which I do not perform, my own low spirits (to which this consideration not a little contributes),' &c. Ib. p. 141. Nicholls replied:-'For God's sake how can you neglect a duty which never existed but in your own imagination? It never yet was performed, nor, I believe, expected.' Ib. For University Professors see Gibbon's Memoirs, p. 53.

5 In his last published letter he wrote:-'Travel I must or cease to exist.' Mitford, iv. 200. See also ib. p. 188.

92.

6

Ib. iv. 139-78; Mason, ii. 255

home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement'.

His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, 21 of which he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which (July 30, 1771) terminated in death 3.

His character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, 22 from a letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell, by the Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true.

'Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe 5. He was

''JOHNSON. As the Spanish proverb says, "He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 302.

'They every scene with so much wit did store

That who brought any in went out with more.'

Epil. to The Rehearsal, ed. Arber, p. 136.

2 In 1765 he wrote to Walpole, who was ill of the gout :-'The pain in your feet I can bear; but I shudder at the sickness in your stomach.... I conjure you, as you love yourself, I conjure you by Strawberry [Walpole's house] not to trifle with these edge-tools.' Mitford, iv. 68.

3 lb. pp. 204-7, 213. Mason (ii. 318) wrongly gives July 31 as the day of his death, as also Ann. Reg. 1771, i. 179. In both Gent. Mag. (1771, p. 378) and Ann. Reg. he is called Rev. Dr. Thomas Grey'three errors in four words in describing one of the first poets of the time.

Walpole wrote on Sept. 9:- One single paragraph is all that has been said on our friend; but when there are columns in every paper on Sir Francis Delaval [a wealthy baronet] ought we not to be glad?' be glad? Letters, v. 336.

Mason, ii. 321; Mitford, v. 164. In the first edition the character is adopted from a nameless writer.' On Aug. 24, 1782, Johnson wrote to

Boswell:- My Lives are reprinting, and I have forgotten the author of Gray's character; write immediately, and it may be perhaps yet inserted.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 153.

Temple was Vicar of St. Gluvias; his grandson was Archbishop of Canterbury 1896-1903. Ib. i. 436 n. Some of Boswell's letters to him were published in 1857. In one of them (p. 185) Boswell recalls the time 'when you and I sat up all night at Cambridge and read Gray with a noble enthusiasm.' 'Mr. Mason,' he adds, 'concludes his Life of Gray with a character of him, which he says he has taken from The London Magazine [1772, p. 140]. He mentions it as by an anonymous writer. What is it, think you, but a character of Gray written by you to me in a letter soon after his death, which I copied out for the Magazine, of which I am a proprietor?' Ib. p. 184. See also ib. p. 206.

For Gray's kindness to Temple see his correspondence with Nicholls. Mitford, v. 62, 69, 85, 110, 119, 133,

137.

5 For his learning see Mason, ii. 236; Mitford, i. Preface, p.73. 'When (writes Nicholls) I expressed my astonishment at the extent of his reading, he said:-"Why should you be surprised, for I do nothing else." He said he knew from experience how much might be done by a person who did not fling away his time on middling or inferior authors, and read with method.' Ib. v. 42.

'Reading, he has often told me

equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not superficially but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural' and civil; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysicks, morals, politicks made a principal part of his study; voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture 2, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining 3; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a man of letters; and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private

(writes Mason), was much more agreeable to him than writing.' Mason,

ii. 25.

1 Ib. ii. 243. 'Gray said he learnt botany merely for the sake of sparing himself the trouble of thinking' Mitford, i. Preface, p. 119.

'He often vexed me,' wrote Walpole, 'by finding him heaping notes on an interleaved Linnaeus instead of pranking on his lyre.' Letters, ix. 343. Prank in this sense is not in Johnson's Dict.

2 Mason, ii. 239. In 1765 he attacked 'the rage of repairing, beautifying, whitewashing, painting and gilding.... This well-meant fury has been, and will be, little less fatal to our ancient magnificent edifices than the Reformation and the Civil Wars.' Mitford, iv. 73.

Walpole, in Anecdotes of Painting, i. 195, speaking of architecture, says:-'If some parts of this work are more accurate than my own ignorance or carelessness would have left them, the reader and I are obliged to Mr. Gray, who condescended to correct what he never could have descended to write.'

3

From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences; his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.' Letters, ii. 128. See also Mitford, i. Preface, p. 64. Bonstetten said of him:-' Il avait de la gaieté dans l'esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère.' lb. v. 181.

* ' I wish I could say, 'writes Mr. Tovey, 'that Gray's mirth was always free from coarseness; but even his extant letters are sometimes marked by the bad taste of his time.' Mitford advised that some of his letters should be 'strictly preserved from inspection.' Letters of Gray, Preface, p. 22.

5 'I have no relish,' he wrote, 'for any other fame than what is conferred by the few real judges that are so thinly scattered over the face of the earth.' Mitford, iv. 19.

'Gray says (very justly) that learning never should be encouraged; it only draws out fools from their obscurity.' WALPOLE, Letters, ii. 438. Ante, CONGREVE, 31.

6 Walpole wrote in 1748:- Gray is the worst company in the world.

independent gentleman, who read for his amusement'. Perhaps it may be said, What signifies so much knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains to leave no memorial but a few poems ?? But let it be considered that Mr. Gray was, to others, at least innocently employed; to himself, certainly beneficially 3. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened, his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shewn to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us.'

To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular 23 account of Gray's skill in zoology*. He has remarked that Gray's effeminacy was affected most 'before those whom he did not wish to please "'; and that he is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference, as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be good. What has occurred to me, from the slight inspection of his 24 letters in which my undertaking has engaged me, is that

''A certain degree of pride led him to despise the idea of being thought an author professed.' Mason, ii. 236.

'I have no notion of poor Mr. Gray's delicacy. I would not sell my talents, as orators and senators do [his father had enriched him with sinecures. Boswell's Johnson, iii. 19 n.]; but I would keep a shop, and sell any of my own works that would gain me a livelihood, whether books or shoes, rather than be tempted to sell myself.' H. WALPOLE, Letters, v. 339.

2 Sainte-Beuve, after quoting Bonstetten's explanation of Gray's melancholy by his living enseveli dans une espèce de cloître,' continues:'Je ne sais si le secret de la mélancolie de Gray était dans ce manque d'amour; je le chercherais plutôt dans la stérilité d'un talent poétique si distingué, si rare, mais si avare.' Causeries, xiv. 430.

'I fancy Gray would have written and published more had his ideas been more copious, and his expression more easy to him.' E. FITZGERALD, More Letters, p. 216.

3 To find one's self business is the great art of life.' GRAY, Mitford, iii. 236. To be employed is to be happy.' Letters, i. 347.

Mason, ii. 321.

5 Wesley, after reading Mason's Memoirs of Gray, recorded on Dec. 4, 1776:- He does not appear, upon the whole, to have been an amiable man. His picture, I apprehend, expresses his character; sharp, sensible, ingenious, but at the same time proud, morose, envious, passionate and resentful.' Journal, 1827, iv. 87.

According to the Rev. William Cole, 'in Gil Blas the print of Scipio in the arbour was so like the countenance of Mr. Gray that, if he sat for it, it could not be more so. It is in a 12mo edition printed at Amsterdam, 1735, vol. iv. p. 94.' Mitford, i. Preface, p. 101. The edition in the Museum is of 1755; the vol. and page are the same.

6

Mason, ii. 323 n.

1 Ante, GRAY, 8 n. 6. 'I find more people like the grave letters than those of humour, and some think the latter a little affected, which is as