inal Melchior de Polignac; a poem which had been ng expected, and appeared about that time. The ilure, however, of M. de Polignac's poem may be tributed partly to its length, (for it contains above irteen thousand verses,) and to a want of suffient variety and digression in the composition. he versification is not always finished and comact, and the language has lost much of its elegance the endeavour to accommodate it with precision the subject. Gray's residence at Cambridge was now contied, not from any partiality to the place where he ceived his education, but partly from the scantiss of his income, and in a great measure, no ubt, for the convenience which its libraries afrded.* Original composition he almost entirely g employed on it, and recited it so often, that many parts re stolen, and inserted in the works of other authors. Le erc got a fragment by heart, and published it in one of his rary journals. The cardinal died while his work was unished, and before he could add two more books to it against Deists. See Anecdotes par Grimm, vol. i. p. 455. The e written under Franklin's picture, "Eripuit cœlo fulmen, ptrumque tyrannis"-is an imitation of one in the Anticretius, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas." * In a note to the Spital Sermon, p. 117, Dr. Parr says: After the opportunities which Mr. Gray enjoyed, and of ich he doubtless had availed himself, for observing the te of literature and the characters of literary men upon › Continent, he did not merely visit the University, but ed his chief residence there. And of a choice to which adhered so steadily and so long, the scantiness of his for neglected; but his time was so assiduously occupied in a regular and studious perusal of the best Greek authors, that in six years he had read all the writers of eminence in that language, digesting and arranging their contents, remarking their peculiarities, and noting their corrupt and difficult passages with great accuracy and diligence. In the winter of 1742, he was admitted a bachelor of civil law; and a short recreation of his studies appears in a 'Fragment of an Address to Ignorance,' which contains a satire on the University where he resided, whose system of education he always disliked and ridiculed, and against which he used to tune, the love of books, and the easy access he had to them in many libraries, will hardly be considered as the sole motives." Dr. Parr, however, does not assign any other motives that influenced Gray, in his choice of the University for a residence. Nec tu credideris urbanæ commoda vitæ "At Ov. Ep. ex Pont. 1. 8. 29 *In p. 117 of the Spital Sermon, Dr. Parr says: that very time in which Mr. Gray spoke so contemptuously of Cambridge, that very University abounded in men of erudition and science, with whom the first scholars would not have disdained to converse: and who shall convict me of exaggeration, when I bring forward the names of Bentley, Davies, Asheton-of Jesus: Provost Snape, Middleton, Tunstall the public orator, Baker-of St. John's: Edmund Law, John Taylor, Thomas Johnson, Waterland, Whaley (afterwards regius professor of divinity), Smith (the nephew of Cotes), afterwards master of Trinity, Roger Long, Colson, the correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, and Professor Saunderson?" peak so openly, as to create many enemies. It is lain, from his Letters, that he thought the attenion and time bestowed there on mathematical and metaphysical pursuits, would have been more protably spent in classical studies. There is some reemblance in the style of this Fragment to part of 'ope's Dunciad; the fourth book of which had apeared but a year or two before: and Gray, I hould think, had that poem in his mind, when he rote these lines, to ridicule what he calls "that effable Octogrammaton, the power of laziness." In 1744 the difference between Walpole and ray was adjusted by the interference of a lady ho wished well to both parties. The lapse of three ears had probably been sufficient, in some degree, > soften down, though not entirely obliterate, the emembrance of supposed injuries on either side; atural kindness of temper had reassumed its place, nd we find their correspondence again proceeding n friendly and familiar terms. About this time ray became acquainted with Mr. Mason, then a cholar of St. John's College, whose poetical taents he had noticed; and some of whose poems he evised at the request of a friend. He maintained correspondence with his intimate and respectable iend, Dr. Wharton, of Durham; and he seems to ave lived on terms of familiarity with the celerated Dr. Middleton, whose loss he afterwards * * Dr. Middleton died the 28th of July, 1750, in the sixtyeventh year of his age, at Hildersham, in Cambridgeshire. laments. "I find a friend (he says) so uncommon thing, that I cannot help regretting even an old acquaintance, which is an indifferent likeness of it." In the year 1747, the Ode to Eton College,' the first production of Gray that appeared in print, was published in folio, by Dodsley. Dr. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, informs us, that "little no tice was taken of it, on its first publication." Walpole wished him to print his own poems with those of his deceased friend West. This, however, he declined, thinking the materials not sufficient: but he complied with another wish of Walpole, in commemorating in an Ode the death of his favourite cat. To this little poem I may be permitted to apply the words of Cicero, when speaking of a work of his own: "Non est enim tale, ut in arte poni possit, quasi illa Minerva Phidiæ; sed tamen, ut ex eâdem officinâ, exisse appareat.' "* Soon after this, he sent to Dr. Wharton a part of his poem 'On the Alliance of Education and Government.' He never pursued this subject much further. About a hundred lines remain; and the commentary proceeds a little beyond the poem. Mr. Mason thinks that he dropped it from finding some of his best thoughts forestalled by M. de Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Loix,† which appeared at that * Vide Ciceronis Præf. Paradoxa. ed. Olivet, vol. iii. p. 356. Paris. + Compare Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Loix, liv. xiv. chap. ii. e: and other reasons, which I have elsewhere ed, probably concurred in inducing him to leave nished, a very fine specimen of a philosophical m: Some time after, says Mr. Mason, he had ights of resuming his plan, and of dedicating poem by an introductory Ode to M. de Monuieu; but that great man's death, which haped in 1755, made him drop his design finally. Gray was now forming for his own instruction a le of Greek Chronology, which extended from 30th to the 113th Olympiad, a period of 332 rs; and which, while it did not exclude public nts, was chiefly designed to compare the time all great men, their writings and transactions. Mason, who saw this work, says, "that every e was in nine columns: one for the Olympiad, next for the Archons, the third for the Public irs of Greece, the three next for the Philosors, and the three last for Poets, Historians, and |