remainder of his life. This Mr. Mason accounts for by his love of books, which was ever his ruling passion, and the straitness of his circumstances, which prevented him from gratifying it. "For, to a man,” observes his friend and biographer, "who could not conveniently purchase even a small library, what situation so eligible as that which affords free access to a number of larger ones? This reason also accounts for another singular fact. We have seen that, during his residence at Stoke, in the spring and summer of this same year, 1742, he wrote 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 commonplace, their contents, their difficult and corrupt passages, and all this with the accuracy of a critic added to the diligence of a student,"

Once, it is true, we find his mind diverted from these severer pursuits into the channel of original composition; and the subject which engaged his attention was the learned dullness of the place in which he dwelt. But the design of this work, which has been entitled, A Hymn to Ignorance, was never completed, although the fragment which remains has quite enough merit to make us sincerely regret that it was so soon interrupted. It has, Mr. Mason thinks, internal evidence of being written early after the Author's settlement in Cambridge; and certainly much of its spirit is caught from the fourth book of the Dunciad, which had then but recently made its appearance.

Among our Author's cotemporaries at the University, with whom he contracted an early and lasting intimacy, was Mr. Stonehewer, who was successively tutor and secretary to the Duke of Grafton, and afterwards, by his interest, auditor of excise; Dr. Middleton, author of a treatise on the Roman Senate, and Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Wharton, of Old Park, near Durham. With this last gentleman Mr. Gray commenced, about the time of his return to Cambridge, a correspondence, by means of which we become acquainted with the chief events of a life so retired as his. Among the most important of these was his reconciliation with Mr. Walpole, which took place in the year 1745, through the intervention of a lady who wished well to both parties and some

details of the affair, as they are contained in a letter first published by Mr. Mitford, may not be uninteresting to the reader. "I went," writes Mr. Gray, "the following evening to see the party, (as Mrs. Foible says,) and was something abashed at his confidence: he came to meet me, kissed me on both sides with all the ease of one who receives an acquaintance just come out of the country, squatted me into a fauteuil, begun to talk of the town, and this and that and t'other, and continued with little interruption for three hours, when I took my leave very indifferently pleased, but treated with monstrous good-breeding, I supped with him next night; (as he desired;) Asheton was there, whose formalities tickled me inwardly, for he (I found) was to be angry about the letter I had written him. However, in going home together our hackney coach jumbled us into a sort of reconciliation: he hammered out somewhat like an excuse, and I received it very readily, because I cared not twopence whether it were true or not, so we grew the best acquaintance imaginable, and I sat with him on Sunday some hours alone, when he informed me of abundance of anecdotes, much to my satisfaction, and, in short, opened (I really believe) his heart to me with that sincerity, that I found I had still less reason to have a good opinion of him than (if possible) I ever had before. Next morning I breakfasted alone with Mr.

Walpole; when we had all the eclaircissement I ever expected, and I left him far better satisfied than I have been hitherto. When I return, I shall see him again."

This explanation was valuable, as it opened the way to such intercourse as might gradually be ripened into lasting cordiality. This, indeed, could only be the effect of time; for when Mr. Walpole, for the first time after his return, invited Gray to Strawberry-hill, the latter assured him that he would accept his hospitality on the terms of civility alone; never on those of friendship, which was for ever cancelled between them. But even this reply did not interrupt Mr. Walpole in the advances he was still induced to make, partly from a natural warmth and friendliness of temper, and partly, no doubt, from the consciousness of his first aggression. Both motives are creditable to him; and it would have been impossible, even for one of a colder and more repulsive disposition than Mr. Gray certainly possessed, to have adhered to the letter of his own stipulation. We find, accordingly, that their correspondence was renewed about two years after, and in the year 1747, Mr. Gray wrote, at Mr. Walpole's request, the Ode on the Death of his favourite Cat. Certainly considerable progress must have been made towards friendly intimacy before the past difference could be alluded to, in such terms as we find Mr.

"It is,"

Gray making use of in one of his letters. he says, 66 a tenet with me, (a simple one perhaps you will say,) that if ever two people who love one another come to breaking, it is for want of timely eclaircissement, a full and precise one, without witnesses or mediators, and without reserving any one disagreeable circumstance for the mind to brood upon in silence."

One of Mr. Walpole's subsequent letters expresses a wish that Mr. Gray would collect all that had been written by their deceased friend Mr. West, in order that it might be published, together with his own poems. This, however, Mr. Gray declined, from the fear that their joint productions would not be sufficient for one tolerable-sized volume. He was, however, induced to have his Ode on the Prospect of Eton College, printed separately by Dodsley; and it is remarkable that on its first publication, it seems to have excited very little attention.

About the same time Mr. Gray gives the following account of his occupation, which may afford some notion of his general method of spending his time at Cambridge. "My works," he says, "are not so considerable as you imagine, I have read Pausanias and Athenæus all through, and Eschylus again. I am now in Pindar and Lysias; for I take verse and prose together, like bread and cheese."

He had also begun at this time some tables of