to increase, and nothing staying on his stomach, he sent for his friend Dr. Glynn, who, finding it to be the gout in that part, thought his case dangerous, and called in Dr. Plumptree, the physical professor: they prescribed to him the usual cordials given in that distemper, but without any good effect; for on the 29th he was seized with a strong convulsion fit, which, on the 30th, returned with increased violence, and on the next evening he expired. He was sensible at times almost to the last, and from the first aware of his extreme danger; but expressed no visible concern at the thoughts of his approaching dissolution.

This account I draw up from the letters which Dr. Brown, then on the spot, wrote to me during his short illness; and as I felt strongly at the time what Tacitus has so well expressed on a similar occasion, I may, with propriety, use his words: "Mihi, præter acerbitatem amici erepti, auget mæstitiam, quod adsidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu, complexu, non contigit."* I was then on the eastern side of Yorkshire, at a distance from the direct post, and therefore did not receive the melancholy intelligence soon enough to be able ́to reach Cambridge before his corpse had been carried to the place he had, by will, appointed for its interment. To see the last rights duly performed, therefore, fell to the lot of Dr. Brown; I had only to join him, on his return from the funeral, in executing the other trusts which his friendship had authorized us jointly to perform.

The method in which I have arranged the foregoing pages, has, I trust, one degree of merit-that it makes the reader so well acquainted with the man himself, as to render it totally unnecessary to conclude the whole with his character. If I am mistaken in this point, I have been a compiler to little purpose; and I chose to be this rather than a biographer, that I might do the

* Vita Agricolæ, cap. xlv.

more justice to the virtues and genius of my friend. I might have written his life in the common form, perhaps, with more reputation to myself; but, surely, not with equal information to the reader: for whose sake I have never related a single circumstance of Mr. Gray's life in my own words, when I could employ his for the purpose. Fortunately I had more materials for this use, than commonly fall to the lot of an Editor; and I certainly have not been sparing in the use of them: whether I havė been too lavish, must be left to the decision of the public.

With respect to the Latin Poems, which I have printed in the three first Sections of these Memoirs, I I must beg leave to add one word here, though a little out of place. A learned and ingenious person, to whom I communicated them, after they were printed off, was of opinion, that they contain some few expressions not warranted by any good authority; and that there are one or two false quantities to be found in them. I once had an intention to cancel the pages, and correct the passages objected to, according to my friend's criticisms; but, on second thoughts, I deemed it best to let them stand exactly as I found them in the manuscripts. The accurate classical reader will perhaps be best pleased with finding out the faulty passages himself; and his candour will easily make the proper allowances for any little mistakes in verses which he will consider never had the Author's last hand.

I might here lay down my pen, yet if any reader should still want his character, I will give him one which was published very soon after Mr. Gray's decease.* It appears to be well written; and as it comes from an anonymous pen, I choose the rather to insert

it, as it will, on that account, be less suspected of partiality.

It appeared in the London Magazine a month or two after his decease, and was prefaced with an eulogy on his poetical merit, which I did not think necessary to reprint in a work where that merit so very fully speaks for itself.

"Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was 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, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his plan of study; voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusement; and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a well-bred 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 :§

I have given, in the beginning of this Section, an account of the great pains which Mr. Gray bestowed on Natural History. I have since been favoured with a letter from a gentleman, well skilled in that science, who, after carefully perusing his interleaved Systema Naturæ of Linnæus, gives me this character of it: "In the class of animals (the Mammalia) he has concentrated (if I may use the expression) what the old writers and the diffuse Buffon have said upon the subject; he has universally adapted the concise language of Linnæus, and has given it an elegance which the Swede had no idea of; but there is little of his own in this class, and it served him only as a common-place; but it is such a common-place that few men but Mr. Gray could form. In the birds and fishes he has most accurately described all that he had an opportunity of examining: but the volume of insects is the most perfect; on the English insects there is certainly nothing so perfect. In regard to the plants, there is little else than the English names and their native soils extracted from the Species Plantarum of Linnæus. I suppose no man was so com. plete a master of his system; he has selected the distinguishing marks of each animal, &c. with the greatest judgment, and, what no man else probably could have done, he has made the German Latin of Linnæus purely classical."

+ He has disclaimed any skill in this art in the thirty-sixth Letter of the fourth Section, and usually held it in less estimation than I think it deserves, declaring himself to be only charmed with the bolder features of unadorned nature.

This is rightly put: it was rather an affectation in delicacy and effeminacy than the things themselves; and he chose to put on this appearance chiefly before persons whom he did not wish to please.

§ I have often thought that Mr. Congreve might very well be vindicated on this head. It seldom happens that the vanity of authorship continues to the end of a man's days, it usually soon leaves him where it found him; and if he has not something better to build his self-approbation upon than that of being a popular writer,

"

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 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. 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 the practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us."

he generally finds himself ill at ease, if respected only on that account. Mr. Congreve was much advanced in years when the young French poet paid him this visit; and, though a man of the world, he might now feel that indifference to literary fame which Mr. Gray, who always led a more retired and philosophic life, certainly felt much earlier. Both of them therefore might reasonably, at times, express some disgust, if their quiet was intruded upon by persons who thought they flattered them by such intrusion.

It was not on account of their knowledge that he valued mankind. He contemned indeed all pretenders to literature, but he did not select his friends from the literary class, merely because they were literate. To be his friend it was always either necessary that a man should have something better than an improved understanding, or at least that Mr. Gray should believe he had.

APPENDIX.*

FROM MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER I.

Cambridge, Feb. 3, 1746.

You are so good to inquire after my usual time of coming to town: it is at a season when even you, the perpetual friend of London, will, I fear, hardly be in itthe middle of June: and I commonly return thither in September; a month when I may more probably find you at home.

1

Our defeat to be sure is a rueful affair for the honour of the troops; but the Duke is gone it seems with the rapidity of a cannon-bullet to undefeat us again. The common people in town at least know how to be afraid; but we are such uncommon people here as to have no more sense of danger, than if the battle had been fought when and where the battle of Cannæ was. The perception of these calamities, and of their consequences, that we are supposed to get from books, is so faintly impressed, that we talk of war, famine, and pestilence with no more apprehension than of a broken head, or of a coach overturned between York and Edinburgh. I heard three people, sensible middle-aged men (when the Scotch were said to be at Stamford, and actually were at Derby), talking of hiring a chaise to go to Caxton (a place in the high road) to see the Pretender and the - highlanders as they passed.

The following series of letters, as it forms an interesting part of Mr. Gray's correspondence, could not, with propriety, be omitted in the present edition; and, it being deemed prudent to interfere, as little as possible, with Mr. Mason's arrangements, no method appeared more judicious than that of bringing them before the reader in the shape of an Appendix.-The letters themselves, with the notes affixed, have been taken from the quarto edition of Mr. Walpole's Works.