LIFE OF GRAY. The Father of Thomas Gray, a man of harsh and violent temper, was, like Milton's, a scrivener in London. He had married in early life a Miss Antrobus, the sister of one of the masters of Eton. Thomas was their fifth son. He was born in Cornhill on the 26th of December, 1716. A few years after his birth, Mrs. Gray separated from her husband. Her allowance from him seems to have been small, as it was to her exertions as a milliner that her son was indebted for his education, first at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge. At Eton he became acquainted with Horace Walpole and Richard West. West was the son of the Irish Chancellor, and grandson of Bishop Burnett. Like Gray, he was destined to the law, and seems to have disliked the profession even more than his friend. When Gray removed to Cambridge, West was already entered of Christ's Church, Oxford. They corresponded closely, and some of Gray's finest letters are those which he addressed to his friend. In 1734, Gray became a pensioner of Peterhouse. His residence extended over a period of four years, during which, we are afraid, literature much more than divided his attention with the law. About the year 1738, he set out in company with his friend Walpole on a tour through France and Italy. They had been absent for nearly a year, and, after visiting all that was interesting in Florence, Rome, and Naples, had arrived at Reggio, when they quarrelled. The wonder is that they had not quarrelled long before. Gray was one of the most sensitive of men: Walpole was not only frivolous, but malicious. He delighted, like a schoolboy, in making mischief; and we may be sure that the man who could not spare his own kindred, would have but little regard for the feelings of his ancient schoolfellow. They parted, and Gray returned to Florence. From Florence he set out, by way of Venice, for England, making only a slight deviation from his route for the purpose of visiting the Grande Chartreuse. His account of this visit is one of the finest pieces of descriptive writing in the language. It is contained in two letters, one addressed to his mother, the other to his friend West. "It is a fortnight," he writes the former. " since we set out hence upon a little excursion to Geneva. We took the longest road, which lies through Savoy, on purpose to see a famous monastery, called the Grande Chartreuse, and had no reason to think our time lost. After having travelled seven days very slow (for we did not change horses, it being impossible for a chaise to go post in these roads), we arrived at a little village among the mountains of Savoy, called Echelles; from thence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that, sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is still made greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on the other hand, the cascades that in many places throw themselves from the very summit down into the vale and the river below, and many other particulars impossible to describe, you will conclude we had no occasion to repent our pains." "I do not remember," he writes to West, "to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pungent with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument. One need not have a very fantastic imagination to see spirits there at noonday. You have Death perpetually before your eyes, only so far removed as to compose the mind without frightening it."1 1 Gray's noble Alcaick Ode was written on the occasion of this visit. We give it a place here. "O Tu, severi Religio loci, Quocunque gaudes nomine (non leve Gray arrived in London on the 1st of September 1741. He had not been in town two months when his father died. This event determined Gray on relinquishing his profession. His wants were few, and his means sufficient to supply them. In 1742, he fixed his residence at Cambridge. In the same year his friend West died. In the interval between his return to England and his settlement at Cambridge, Gray had been employed on his tragedy of Aggripina, and a didactic poem in Latin, entitled De Principiis Cogitandi. The shock which he experienced from the death of West seems to have entirely deranged his plans. His tragedy was abandoned, and the only addition he afterwards made to his didactic poem was an apostrophe to his friend, than which nothing can more pathetically display the feelings of a wounded heart. Gray was now living in quiet seclusion at Cambridge. Here he wrote his Ode to Eton College, which was published by Dodsley in 1747. In 1750, his Elegy appeared, and in 1757, his Pindaric Odes. Four years before, his mother had died at Stoke. Gray seems to have felt her loss acutely. In an epitaph inscribed upon her tomb, he commemorates her as "the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her." In 1765 he took a journey into Scotland, where he formed au intimacy with Beattie. He thence penetrated into Wales and the west of England, and seems to have been particularly Nativa nam certe fluenta Numen habet, veteresque sylvas; "Præsentiorem et conspicitnus Deum "Quam si repostus sub trabe citrea 'Quod si invidendis sedibus, et frui "Saltem remoto des, Pater, angulo Tutumque vulgari tumultu |