EXTRACTS.

Propertius, Lib. III. Eleg. V. v. 19,

Propertius, Lib. II. Eleg. I. v. 17,

Tasso Gerus. Lib. Cant. XIV. St. 32, .

POEMATA.

Hymeneal on the Marriage of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,

Fragment of a Latin Poem on the Gaurus,

A Farewell to Florence,

Imitation of an Italian Sonnet of Signior Abbate Buondelmonte,
Alcaic Ode,

Part of an Heroic Epistle from Sophonisba to Masinissa,

De Principiis Cogitandi,.

Liber Quartus, .

Greek Epigram,

TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS.

Petrarca Part I. Sonetto 170,

From the "Anthologia Græca,"

APPENDIX.

The Characters of Christ-Cross Row,

Epigram on Dr. Keene,

Epitaph on Dr. Keene,

Extempore Epitaph,

Impromptu,

NOTES,.

LIFE OF GRAY.

THOMAS GRAY, the fifth child of Philip Gray, a money-scrivener, in London, was born in Cornhill, the 26th of December, 1716. The maiden name of his mother was Dorothy Antrobus. Of twelve children, he was the only one who survived; the rest dying in their infancy from suffocation, produced by fulness of blood. The poet would have shared their fate, but for the courage and firmness of the mother in opening a vein with her own hand. This was not her only claim to his affection, for she supported him from the proceeds of her own industry, both at Eton and Cambridge; the father not only refusing all assistance, but neglecting and abusing his family to an extent not at all consistent with the character of a 66 respectable citizen," ascribed to him by one of the poet's biographers. His unkindness bound the son and mother more closely together, and we can readily believe that after her death he never mentioned her name without a sigh, and deemed it, as he records in her epitaph, a misfortune to survive her.

At the age of thirteen he was sent to Eton, where one of his maternal uncles was an usher. We learn from Horace Walpole that his relative took prodigious pains with him, which "answered exceedingly." He was then a handsome boy with fine hair and good complexion; a pretty good scholar, with love enough for Virgil to read him in his play-hours for entertainment. Here his most intimate friends were Horace Walpole, and a more congenial spirit, Richard West. The latter was a grandson of the celebrated Bishop Burnet. He was a youth of uncommon promise, and was thought to exhibit

more brilliant talents than Gray; but the most affectionate relations existed between them, which were disturbed by no jealousies. Walpole often asserted that "Gray was never a boy," in allusion to his feminine manners, which led his school-fellows to call him Miss Gray. Of his boyish days we know literally nothing, though we are told that his juvenile letters were full of wit and humor.

The uncle who superintended his education at Eton was a fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, to which place Gray removed, and was admitted a pensioner in the year 1734; when Walpole went to King's College, in the same university, and West to Christ Church, at Oxford. Neither the studies nor the amusements of Cambridge were much to Gray's taste, for he found no pleasure in hard drinking or the mathematics. He became aware, too, that he had nerves, and was subject to low spirits; bad signs in a youth, and partly to be ascribed, perhaps, to a fancy of his uncle for teaching him the "virtues of simples," which had led to a habit of self-doctoring even worse than the perpetual recourse to a physician. Gray was at this early period a victim to the gloomy disposition inherited from his father. He found no resources out of his books in a place which was to him what Oxford was to his friend West, "a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves doctors and masters of arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown." His life was monotonous and cheerless. "When you have seen one of my days," he wrote at this time, "you have seen a whole year of my life; they go round and round, like the blind horse in the mill, only he has the satisfaction of fancying he makes a progress and gets some ground; my eyes are open enough to see the same dull prospect, and to know that, having made fourand-twenty steps more, I shall be just where I was. He wrote, during this period, letters to his friends so full of humor and elegance that we may well regret we have not more of them; clever translations from the classics, and Latin verses of various merit, which continue to be republished, as proof of his accomplished scholarship, and from the desire to preserve everything from his classical pen. It is said to have been his first ambition to excel in Latin poetry; but it was bitter irony in Dr. Johnson to say, "Perhaps it were reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design." We are not aware that a poem has ever been written in any other than the mother

tongue of an author which possesses interest except as a literary curiosity.

Gray left Cambridge in September, 1738, and lived at his father's house in London till the month of March following, when Horace Walpole invited him to become the companion of his continental travels. In letters to his family and to West we have an interesting though imperfect account of this tour. They travelled through France, crossed the Alps, visited the principal towns of Italy, and passed the winter in Florence, where they returned, after some short excursions, and remained for eleven months, during which Gray began the composition of his Latin poem, "De Principiis Cogitandi.” In April, 1741, Gray set off with Walpole for Reggio, where they had a violent quarrel, and parted company. The fault of this outbreak was not with Gray. Walpole attributed it to the difference of their tastes and pursuits. "I had just broke loose from the restraint of the university, with as much money as I could spend ; and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, &c., whilst I was for perpetual balls and plays; the fault was mine.” In a letter to Mr. Bentley, some years afterwards, Walpole says: "I was accustomed to flattery enough when my father was minister: at his fall I lost it all at once: and since that I have lived with Mr. Chute, who is all vehemence; with Mr. Fox, who is all disputation; with Sir C. Williams, who has no time from flattery, himself; and with Gray, who does not hate to find fault with me." Whatever was the cause of this quarrel, it was more serious than Walpole was willing to confess. Isaac Reed states, on the information of a gentleman likely to be well informed, that his offence was clandestinely opening a letter of Gray's, from a suspicion that his companion spoke ill of him in his correspondence. It is difficult to believe this even of a person like Walpole; but it is certain that Gray regarded the cause of quarrel as one that forbade entire reconciliation. An interview took place between them, four years afterwards, at Strawberry Hill, when Gray emphatically declared that, while he was willing that civility should be restored, it must be understood that their friendship was totally cancelled. A letter which he addressed to Mr. Wharton immediately after the meeting affords further proof that he received the advances with coldness. "I went to see the party (as Mrs. Foible says), and was something abashed at his confidence: he came to