...

account since the death of my dear friend. Yesterday's post brought me the fatal news, in a letter from Mr. Brown, that Mr. Gray (all that was most dear to me in this world except yourself), died in the night about eleven o'clock, between the 30th and 31st of July. You need not be alarmed for me, I am well, and not subject to emotions violent enough to endanger my health, and besides with good kind people who pity me and can feel themselves. Afflicted you may be sure I am! You who know I considered Mr. Gray as a second parent, that I thought only of him, built all my happiness on him, talked of him for ever, wished him with me whenever I partook of any pleasure, and flew to him for refuge whenever I felt any uneasiness; to whom now shall I talk of all I have seen here? Who will teach me to read, to think, to feel? I protest to you, that whatever I did or thought had a reference to him," Mr. Gray will be pleased with this when I tell him. I must ask Mr. Gray what he thinks of such a person or thing. He would like such a person or dislike such another." If I met with any chagrins, I comforted myself that I had a treasure at home; if all the world had despised and hated me, I should have thought myself perfectly recompensed in his friendship. Now remains only one loss more; if I lose you, I am left alone in the world. At present I feel I have lost half of myself. Let me hear that you are well.

Thirty-four years afterwards the hand which penned these unaffected lines wrote down those reminiscences, alas! too brief, which constitute the most valuable impressions of Gray that we possess. It is impossible not to regret

that this sincere and tender friend did not undertake that labour of biography which fell into more skilled, but coarser hands than his. Yet it is no little matter to possess this first outflow of grief and affection. It assures us that, with all his melancholy and selftorture, the great spirit of Gray was not without its lively consolations, and that he gained of Heaven

the boon for which he had prayed, a friend of friends. Nicholls, Bonstetten, Robinson, Wharton, Stonehewer, and Brown were undistinguished names of unheroic men who are interesting to posterity only because, with that unselfish care which only a great character and sweetness of soul have power to rouse, they loved, honoured, cherished this silent and melancholy anchorite. Dearer friends, better and more devoted companions through a slow and unexhilarating career, no man famous in literature has possessed, and we feel that not to recognize this magnetic power of attracting good souls around him would be to lose sight of Gray's peculiar and signal charm. It is true that, like the moon, he was "dark to them, and silent" that he received, and lacked the power to give ; they do not seem to have required from him the impossible, they accepted his sympathy, and rejoiced in his inexpressive affection; and when he was taken from them, they regarded his memory as fanatics regard the sayings and doings of the founder of their faith. Gray "never spoke out," Brown said; he lived, more even than the rest of us, in an involuntary isolation, a pathetic type of the solitude of the soul.

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal myriads live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know.

CHAPTER Χ.

POSTHUMOUS.

THE earliest tribute to the mind and character of Gray was published in 1772 in the March number of a rather dingy periodical, issued under Dr. Johnson's protection, and entitled the London Magazine. This was written in the form of a letter to Boswell by a man who had little sympathy with Gray as a poet or as a wit, but was well fitted to comprehend him as a scholar, the Reverend William J. Temple, rector of St. Glavias. This gentleman, who had been a fellow of Trinity Hall during Gray's residence in Cambridge, and who is frequently mentioned in the poet's later letters, was almost the only existing link between the circles ruled respectively by Gray and Samuel Johnson, Cole being perhaps the one other person known to both these mutually repellent individuals. Temple's contribution to the London Magazine is styled "A Sketch of the Character of the Celebrated Poet Mr. Gray," and is ushered in by the editor with some perfunctory compliments to the poems. But Temple's own remarks are very valuable, and may be reprinted here, especially as the careful Mitford and every succeeding writer seem to have been content to quote them from Johnson's inaccurate transcript :

Perhaps Mr. Gray was the most learned man in Europe: he was equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of Science, and not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every

branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his plan of study. Voyages and travels. of all sorts were his favourite amusement: and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining. But he was also a good man, a well-bred man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his, was an affectation in delicacy or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had in some degree that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve. Though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a man of letters: and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private gentleman, who read for his amusement."

Against the charge of priggishness which seems to be contained in these last lines, we may place Norton Nicholls' anecdote, that having in the early part of their acquaintance remarked that some person was a clever man," he was cut short by Gray, who said, "Tell me if he is good for anything." Another saying of his, that genius and the highest acquirements of science were as nothing compared with "that exercise of right reason which Plato called virtue," is equally distinct as evidence that he did not place knowledge above conduct. But the earlier part of Temple's article, which regards Gray's learning and acquisitions of every sort, is of great value. Another of the poet's contemporaries, Robert Potter, the translator of Eschylus, and one of the foremost scholars of the time, followed with a similar statement. "Mr. Gray

was perhaps the most learned man of the age, but his mind never contracted the rust of pedantry. He had too good an understanding to neglect that urbanity which renders society pleasing his conversation was instructing, elegant and agreeable. Superior knowledge, an exquisite taste in the fine arts, and, above all, purity of morals, and an unaffected reverence for religion, made this excellent person an ornament to society, and an honour to human nature."

Mason lost no time in giving out that he was collecting materials for a Life of Gray. His first literary act was to print for private circulation in 1772 the opening book of his didactic poem The English Garden, which he had written as early as 1767, but which Gray had never allowed him to print, speaking freely of it as being nonsense. But Mason loved the children of his brain, and could not support the idea that one of them should be withheld from the world. With great naïveté, he attempted to argue the matter with the shade of his great friend in a third book which he added in 1772.

Clos'd is that curious ear, by Death's cold hand,
That mark'd each error of my careless strain
With kind severity; to whom my Muse

Still lov'd to whisper what she meant to sing
In louder accent; to whose taste supreme
She first and last appealed,

but still the departed friend may be invoked by the Muse,

and still, by Fancy sooth'd,

Fain would she hope her GRAY attends the call.

Mason then refers, in the flat, particular manner native to eighteenth century elegy, to the urn and bust and sculptured lyre which he had placed to the memory of Gray in