Linquis, & æternam fati te condis in umbram! At Tu, sancta anima, & nostri non indiga luctûs, 5 10 15 Mortalis, notos olìm miserata labores Unde orta es, fruere; atque o si secura, nec ultra 20 Respectes, tenuesque vacet cognoscere curas; Humanam si fortè altâ de sede procellam Contemplêre, metus, stimulosque cupidinis acres, Gaudiaque & gemitus, parvoque in corde tumultum 25 END OF THE THIRD SECTION, SECTION IV. THE three foregoing Sections have carried the Reader through the juvenile part of Mr. Gray's life, and nearly, alas, to half of its duration. Those which remain, though less diversified by incidents, will, notwithstanding, I flatter myself, be equally instructive and amusing, as several of his most intimate friends have very kindly furnished me with their collections of his letters; which, added to those I have myself preserved, will enable me to select from them many excellent specimens of his more mature judgment, correct taste, and extensive learning, blended at the same time with many amiable instances of his sensibility: They will also specify the few remaining anecdotes, which occurred in a life so retired and sedentary as his: For the Reader must be here informed that, from the winter of the year 1742 to the day of his death, his principal residence was at Cambridge. He indeed, during the lives of his mother and aunts, spent his summer vacations at Stoke; and, after they died, in making little tours on visits to his friends in different parts of the country: But he was seldom absent from college any considerable time, except between the years 1759 and 1762; when, on the opening of the British Museum, he took lodgings in Southampton Row, in order to have recourse to the Harleian and other Manuscripts there deposited, from which he made several curious It may seem strange that a person who had conceived so early a dislike to Cambridge, and who (as we shall see presently) now returned to it with this with this prejudice rather augmented, should, when he was free to choose, make that very place his principal abode for near thirty years: But this I think may be easily accounted for from his love of books, (ever his ruling passion) and the straitness of his circumstances, which prevented the gratification of it. For to a man, who could not conveniently purchase even a small library, what situation so eligible as that which affords free access to a number of large ones? This reason also accounts for another singular fact. We have seen These, amounting in all to a tolerably-sized folio, are at present in Mr. Walpole's hands. He has already printed the speech of Sir Thomas Wyat from them in the second number of his Miscellaneous Antiquities. The Public must impute it to their own want of curiosity if more of them do not appear in print. that, during his residence at Stoke, in the spring and summer of this same year 1742, he writ a considerable part of his more finished poems. Hence one would be naturally led to conclude that, on his return to Cambridge, when the ceremony of taking his degree was over, the quiet of the place would have prompted him to continue the cultivation of his poetical talents, and that immediately, as the Muse seems in this year to have peculiarly inspired him; but this was not the case. Reading, he has often told me, was much more agreeable to him than writing: He therefore now laid aside composition almost entirely, and applied himself with intense assiduity to the study of the best Greek authors; insomuch that, in the space of about six years, there were hardly any writers of note in that language which he had not only read but digested; remarking, by the mode of common-place, their contents, their difficult and corrupt passages, and all this with the accuracy of a critic added to the diligence of a student. Before I insert the next series of letters, I must take the liberty to mention, that it was not till about the year 1747 that I had the happiness of being introduced to the acquaintance of Mr. Gray. Some very juvenile imitations of Milton's juvenile poems, which I had written a year or two before, and of which the Monody on Mr. Pope's death was the principal *, he then, at the request of one of my friends, was so obliging as to revise. The same year, on account of a dispute which had happened between the master and fellows of Pembroke-Hall, I had the honour of being nominated by the Fellows to fill one of the vacant Fellowships +. I was at this time scholar of St. John's College, and Bachelor of Arts, personally unknown to the gentlemen who favoured me so highly; therefore that they gave me this mark of distinction and preference was greatly owing to Mr. Gray, who was well acquainted with several of that society, and to Dr. Heberden, whose known partiality to every, even the smallest degree of merit, led him warmly to second his recommendation. The Reader, I hope, will excuse this short piece of egotism, as it is written to express my gratitude, as well to the living as the dead, to declare the sense I shall ever retain of the honour The other two were in imitation of "l'Allegro & il Penseroso," and intitled "Il Bellicoso & il Pacifico." The latter of these I was persuaded to revise and publish in the Cambridge Collection of Verses on the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. The former has since got into a Miscellany, printed by G. Pearch, from the indiscretion, I suppose, of some acquaintance who had a copy of it. + Though nominated in 1747, I was not elected Fellow till February, 1749. The Master having refused his assent, claiming a negative, the affair was therefore not compromised till after an ineffectual litigation of two years. |