sible," he writes to West, "that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly; and if these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it." His account of the low condition of classic learning at Cambridge we must take with a grain of salt. As an undergraduate he would of course see nothing of the great lights of the University, now sinking beneath the horizon; such a shy lad as he would not be asked to share the conversation of Bentley, or Snape, or the venerable Master of Jesus. What does seem clear from his repeated denunciations of "that pretty collection of desolate animals" called Cambridge, is that classical taste was at a very low ebb among the junior fellows and the elder undergraduates. The age of the great Latinists had passed away; the Greek revival, which Gray did much to start, had not begun, and 1737 was certainly a dull year at the University. It seems that there were no Greek text-books for the use of schools until 1741, and the method of pronouncing that language was as depraved as possible. A few hackneyed extracts from Homer and Hesiod were all that a youth was required to have read in order to pass his examination. Plato and Aristotle were almost unknown, and Gray himself seems to have been the only person at Cambridge who attempted seriously to write Greek verse. It is not difficult to understand that when, with the third term of his second year, his small opportunities of classical reading were taken from him, and he saw himself descend into the Cimmerian darkness of undiluted mathematics, the heart of the young poet sank within him. In December 1736 there was an attempt at rebellion; he declined to take degrees, and announced his intention of quitting college, but as we hear no more of this, and as he stayed two years longer at Cambridge, we may believe that this was overruled. Meanwhile the leaden rod seemed to rule the fate of the quadruple alliance. West grew worse and worse, hopelessly entangled in consumptive symptoms. Walpole lost his mother in August of 1737, and after this was a kind of waif and stray until he finally left England in 1739. Gray, whether in Cambridge or London, reverts more and more constantly to his melancholy. "Low spirits are my true and faithful companions; they get up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I do; nay, and pay visits, and will even affect to be jocose, and force a feeble laugh with me; but most commonly we sit together, and are the prettiest insipid company in the world. However, when you come," he writes to West, "I believe they must undergo the fate of all humble companions, and be discarded. Would I could turn them to the same use that you have done, and make an Apollo of them. If they could write such verses with me, not hartshorn, nor spirit of amber, nor all that furnishes the closet of the apothecary's wisdom, should persuade me to part with them." For West had been writing a touching eulogy ad amicos, in the manner of Tibullus, inspired by real feeling and a sad presentiment of the death that lay five years ahead. In reading these lines of Gray's, we hardly know whether most to admire the marvellous lightness and charm of the style, or to be concerned at such confession of want of spirits in a lad of twenty-one. His letters, however, when they could be wrung out of his apathy, were precious to poor West at Oxford; “I find no physic comparable to your letters: prescribe to me, dear Gray, as often and as much as you think proper," and the amiable young pedants proceed, as before, to the analysis of Poseidippos, and Lucretius, and such like frivolous reading. One of West's letters contains a piece of highly practical advice. "Indulge, amabo te, plusquam soles, corporis exercitationibus," but bodily exercise was just what Gray declined to indulge in to the end of his life. He does not seem to have been even a walker; indoors he was a bookworm, and out-of-doors a saunterer and a dreamer; nor was there ever, it would seem, a "good friend Matthew" to urge the too-pensive student out into the light of common life. Certain interesting poetical exercises mark the close of Gray's undergraduate career. A Latin ode in Sapphics and a fragment in Alcaics were sent in June, 1738, to West, who had just left Oxford for the Inner Temple. The second of these, which is so brief that it may surely be quoted here, O lacrymarum fons, tenero sacros has called forth high eulogy from scholars of every succeeding generation. It is in such tiny seed-pearl of song as this that we find the very quintessence of Gray's peculiar grace and delicacy. To July 1737 belongs a version into English heroics of a long passage from Propertius, beginning Now prostrate, Bacchus, at thy shrine I bend, which I have not met with in print; and another piece from the same poet, beginning "Long as of youth," which occurs in all the editions of Gray, bears on the original MS. at Pembroke the date Dec. 1738. It may be remarked that in the printed copies the two last lines, You whose young bosoms feel a nobler flame have accidentally dropped out. In September 1738 Gray left Cambridge, and took up his abode in his father's house for six months, apparently with no definite plans regarding his own future career; but out of this sleepy condition of mind he was suddenly waked by Horace Walpole's proposition that they should start together on the grand tour. The offer was a generous one. Walpole was to pay all Gray's expenses, but Gray was to be absolutely independent there was no talk of the poet's accompanying his younger friend in any secondary capacity, and it is only fair to Horace Walpole to state that he seems to have acted in a thoroughly kind and gentlemanly spirit. What was still more remarkable was, that without letting Gray know, he made out his will before starting, and so arranged that had he died while abroad, Gray would have been his sole legatee. The frivolities of Horace Walpole have been dissected with the most cruel frankness; it is surely only just to point out that in this instance he acted a very gracious and affectionate part. On the 29th of March, 1739, the two friends started from Dover. CHAPTER II. THE GRAND TOUR. GRAY was only out of his native country once, but that single visit to the Continent lasted for nearly three years, and produced a very deep impression upon his character. It is difficult to realize what he would have become without this stimulus to the animal and external part of his nature. He was in danger of settling down in a species of moral inertia, of becoming dull and torpid, of spoiling a great poet to make a little pedant. The happy frivolities of France and Italy, though they were powerless over the deep springs of his being, stirred the surface of it, and made him bright and human. It is to be noticed that we hear nothing of his "true and faithful companion, melancholy," while he is away in the south; he was cheerfully occupied, taken out of himself, and serene in the gaiety of others. The two friends enjoyed a very rough passage from Dover to Calais, and on landing Gray anticipated Dr. Johnson by being surprised that the inhabitants of the country could speak French so well. He also discovered that they were all "Papishes," and briskly adapted himself to the custom of the land by attending high mass the next day, which happened to be Easter Monday. In the afternoon the companions set out through a snow-storm for Boulogne in a post-chaise, a con |