My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry! Where oft in tender talk We saw the summer sun go down the sky; Nor where its waters glide Along the valley, can she now be found: In all the wide-stretch'd prospect's ample bound No more my mournful eye Can aught of her espy, But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie. LYTTELTON: Monody, st. 4. Johnson should have said a word in praise of Lyttelton's Prologue to Thomson's last play: one of the best Prologues in the English language. GRAY. Born in Cornhill, London-Educated at Eton and Cambridge-Accompanies Horace Walpole into Italy-His Quarrel with Pope-Publishes his 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' -Its immediate popularity-Publishes his Odes-Refuses the Laurel-Made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge-Death and Burial at Stoke Pogeis in BuckinghamshireWorks and Character. THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother,' then assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner of Peterhouse in Cambridge. The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly 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 Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: 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 1 Mr. William Antrobus died at Everden, Northamptonshire, 22nd May, 1742, and was buried in the chancel of that church. 2 They quarrelled at Reggio. "I am conscious that in the beginning of the difference between Gray and me the faul VOL. II. 26 shall find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own little fortune, with only an occasional servant. 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, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law.* He therefore was mine. I was too young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity and the insolence of my situation as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me; of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one whom presumption and folly perhaps, made me deem not my superior then in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him insolently: he loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from conviction of knowing he was my superior; I often disregarded his wishes of seeing places which I would not quit other amusements to visit, though I offered to send him to them without me. Forgive me if I say that his temper was not conciliating. At the same time that I will confess to you that he acted a more friendly part, had I had the sense to take advantage of it; he freely told me of my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine, the breach must have grown wider, till we became incompatible. After this confession, I fear you will think I fall far short of the justice I promised him, in the words which I should wish to have substituted to some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter, and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory."-WALPOLE to Mason, March 2, 1778. "The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraint of the University, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, &c., whilst I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."-WALPOLE : Walpoliana, vol. i. p. 95, art. cx. Mr. Roberts, of the Pell Office, who was likely to be well informed, told me at Mr. Deacon's, 19th April, 1799, that the quarrel between Gray and Walpole was occasioned by a suspicion Mr. Walpole entertained that Mr. Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England. Te ascertain this he clandestinely opened a letter and re-sealed it, which Mr. Gray with great propriety resented: there seems to have been but little cordiality afterwards between them. -ISAAC REED: MS. Note in Wakefield's Life of Gray; Milford's Gray, ii. 175. Compare Norton Nicholls's Reminiscences in Mitford's Gray,' v. 48. Philip Gray (the father) was born 27th July, 1676; died 6th November, 1741; and was buried in the church of St. Michael's, Cornhill, London. He was the son of Thomas and Alice Gray, and was baptized in the church of St. Olave, Hart Street, London. Dorothy Antrobus (the mother) made her will 23rd January, 1753. It commences touchingly: "In the name of God, Amen. This is the last will and desire of Dorothy Gray to her son Thomas Gray." She |