which in a fhort compofition has not time to grow familiar with an innovation.

To examine fuch compofitions fingly cannot be required; they have doubtlefs brighter and darker parts: but, when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be spared; for to what ufe can the work be criticised that will not be read?

GRAY.

GRA Y.

THOMAS GRAY, the fon of Mr. Philip Gray, a fcrivener 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 affiftant to Dr. George; and when he left fchool, in 1734, entered a penfioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge.

The tranfition from the fchool to the college is, to moft young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray feems 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 fullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profefs the Common Law, he took no degree.

When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whofe 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 pleafing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friend

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fhips are easily diffolved: 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 shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit fets them above the compliances of fervility, are apt enough in their affociation with fuperiors to watch their own dignity with trouble fome and punctilious jealoufy, and in the fervour of independance to exact that attention which they refufe to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel; and the rest of their travels was doubtlefs more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner fuitable to his own little fortune, with only an occafional fervant.

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 leffened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to ftudy the law. therefore retired to Cambridge, where he foon after became Bachelor of Civil Law, and where, without

He

liking the place or its inhabitants, or profeffing to like them, he paffed, except a fhort refidence at London, the reft of his life.

About this time he was deprived of Mr. Weft, the fon of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have fet a high value, and who deserved his esteem by the powers which he fhews in his Letters, and in the "Ode to May," which Mr. Mason has preferved, as well as by the fincerity with which, when Gray fent him part of "Agrippina,"

"pina," a tragedy that he had juft begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted the progrefs of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will confirm. It was certainly no lofs to the English stage that " Agrippina" was never finifhed.

In this year (1742) Gray feems to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced the "Ode to Spring," his "Profpect of "Eton," and his "Ode to Adverfity." He began likewife a Latin poem, "De principiis cogitandi."

It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were reasonable to with that he had profecuted his defign; for, though there is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and fome harshness in his lyrick numbers, his copioufnefs of language is fuch as very few poffefs; and his lines, even when imperfect, difcover a writer whom practice would have made skilful.

He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little folicitous what others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any other purpose than of improving and amufing himself; when Mr. Mafon, being elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall, brought him a companion who was afterwards to be his editor, and whofe fondness and fidelity has kindled in him a zeal of admiration which cannot be reasonably expected from the neutrality of a ftranger, and the coldness of a critick.

In this retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the "Death of Mr. Walpole's Cat ;" and the year afterwards attempted a poem, of more importance, on

"Govern

"Government and Education," of which the fragments which remain have many excellent lines.

His next production (1750) was his far-famed "Elegy in the Church-yard," which, finding its way into a Magazine, firft, I believe, made him known to the publick.

An invitation from lady Cobham about this time gave occafion to an odd compofition called "A "Long Story," which adds little to Gray's character.

Several of his pieces were published (1753), with defigns by Mr. Bentley; and, that they might in fome form or other make a book, only one fide of each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended each other fo well, that the whole impreffion was foon bought. This year he loft his mother.

Some time afterwards (1756) fome young men of the college, whose chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by frequent and troublesome noifes, and, as is faid, by pranks yet more offenfive and contemptuous. This infolence, having endured it a while, he reprefented to the governors of the fociety, among whom perhaps he had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed himself to Pembroke Hall.

In 1757 he published "The Progrefs of Poetry" and "The Bard," two compofitions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confeffed their inability to understand them, though Warburton faid that they were understood as well as the works of Milton and Shakspeare, which it is the fashion to admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their

praife.