brity, was born in Cornhill, London, on the 26th of December, 1716. To his father he seems to have owed little but his birth. Ungovernable in his temper and harsh in his disposition, his wife, after bearing him twelve children, was forced to withdraw from his roof, and in conjunction with a sister supported herself by millinery business. Thomas was happily the only surviving child, and this excellent mother made up to him the want of a second parent; watching his infancy, supplying his education, and bestowing on him during her life such tender love, that her memory was ever cherished by her son with such reverent affection that he never spoke of her "without a sigh." His maternal uncle was an assistant teacher at Eton college, whither the youth was sent; and after the usual course there—remarkable for his diligence and proficiency, and forming an acquaintance with Horace Walpole and West—he entered Peterhouse college, Cambridge, as a pensioner in 1734. Here he renewed his intimacy with Walpole, and applied himself diligently to the study of the classics, as well as to metaphysics and moral philosophy, history, and poetry. Mathematics, however, appear to have been distasteful to him. In a letter to his friend West he thus expresses his feelings—"Must I plunge into mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; nature has not furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in too much light; I am not an eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly." While at Cambridge Gray acquired reputation as a scholar, and had acquitted himself creditably both as an original writer and a translator from the Latin and Italian. In 1738 he returned to London with the intention of studying the law. An invitation from his friend Walpole to accompany him on a continental tour diverted him from the legal profession. Accordingly, in the spring of 1739, they commenced their travels, visiting France, Switzerland, Florence, Rome, and Naples, where they explored Herculaneum, and thence returned northwards to Reggio. Here they parted. What the cause of their disagreement was is not apparent, but the dissimilarity of their tastes and dispositions may in a great measure account for it: at all events, Walpole charges himself with the blame of the breach. Gray returned home through the north of Italy and France, crossing by the Grand Chartreuse, of the scenery of which he says, "every precipice and cliff was pregnant with religion and poetry." Gray returned to England in September, 1741, two months before the death of his father. He now found himself in possession of a modest patrimony, and in 1742 took the degree of bachelor of civil law. Partly from the mediocrity of his means, partly from an indolent disposition, he abandoned all thoughts of the law as a profession, and so, after providing an establishment for his mother at Stoke Pogis, he settled down at his college at Peterhouse, and gave himself up to his favourite pursuits of literature. Henceforth his life was that of a retired and studious man of letters, leaving his beloved Cambridge only occasionally; his longest absence being for three years to London, in order to avail himself of the advantages of the British Museum, opened in 1759. The life of one who devotes himself to letters rarely presents many points of interest for biography. It is so with Gray. He was regarded as a man of fastidious taste, of fine culture, of indolent habits, and one who affected literature rather as a pleasure than a profession. He was courted and admired, and he numbered amongst his friends many men of mark. Mason, Conyers, and Middleton, were his firm friends, and Walpole again sought and obtained a renewal of their intimacy. They corresponded again, and the poet visited the courtier at Strawberry Hill. Meantime Gray had deeply imbued his mind with the spirit of the great masters of Greek and Latin literature. The fruits of his study were first given to the world in 1747, when Dodsley published his "Ode to Eton College." It does not seem to have attracted any large share of attention. Johnson looked coldly on it, and criticised it with undue severity. But it cannot be denied that it has considerable poetic merit and a harmonious versification. The last lines—
" Where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise"—
have become household words. The "Ode to Spring" and the "Hymn to Adversity" appeared shortly after. And in 1751 was published the poem upon which his fame is imperishably based—the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard." The poem was commenced in 1742 and finished in 1749, under the influences of sorrow for the death of his aunt. Walpole saw it in manuscript, and showed it to many admiring friends. There is a tradition that the elegy was composed in the precincts of the church of Grantchester, and the curfew is supposed to have been the great bell of St. Mary's. As might be expected, the elegy was instantaneously popular. In two months four editions were called for, and before long the number had reached eleven. In our own day it has passed in translation into every modern language, as also into Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The popularity of the elegy has gone on increasing. It is the familiar recitation of every schoolboy, the thoughtful pleasure of every man. In sentiment it has a charm that every heart recognizes, a feeling to which every heart responds; and its touching, simple, and solemn melody enhances its poetic merits. The eulogy of a soldier may be quoted as its highest praise. "I had rather," said General Wolfe the night before he fell in the attack on Quebec, "be the author of that poem than take Quebec." Even the prejudice of Johnson gave way before its spell, and he concludes his commendation by remarking—"Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame and useless to praise him." A heavy affliction came upon him in 1753—the death of that parent to whose love and solicitude he owed so much. To her memory he did honour in public by monument and inscription, and in his heart by a life-long sorrow. The youths of Peterhouse were wont to amuse themselves by playing off practical jokes on Gray, one of which (a false alarm of fire and a perilous descent by a rope from his window) caused him to remove in 1756 to Pembroke Hall. In 1757 appeared two Pindaric odes—"The Progress of Poetry" and "The Bard." These were printed by Walpole at his celebrated press at Strawberry Hill. "I found Gray," he writes, "in town last week. He brought his two odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hand, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." With all their classic elegance they had but little success. Walpole praised them above their merit, Johnson depreciated them below it. Coleman and Lloyd burlesqued them, and Goldsmith rendered a rational homage to their excellence, while he explained the cause of their unpopularity. The reputation of Gray was now so high, that on the death of Cibber this year he was offered the laureate's office. Though the sinecure would have suited his indolence, he was too fastidious to accept a dignity which he considered had "hitherto humbled its possessor." And yet an honour that Spenser, Jonson, and Dryden did not disdain, was not unworthy of Gray. Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson have in our own days "magnified the office." A visit to Scotland in 1765 led to his acquaintance with Beattie, and two years after appeared his "Imitations of Welsh and Norwegian Poetry." In 1768 he obtained what he had six years before unsuccessfully sought—the professorship of modern history in his university, the emoluments of which—£400 a-year—made him independent. He did not enjoy it many years. He now began to pay the penalty of a studious and sedentary life in failing health and recurring attacks of gout. He resigned his professorship in May, 1771. Two months after, while dining in the college hall, he was seized with gout in the stomach. The access was so violent that all medical remedies were unavailing, and after six days of suffering he died on the 30th of July, 1771. He was buried beside his mother at Stoke Pogis.
To form a right estimate of Gray, we must view him not alone as a poet. In that character, though he was doubtless a very finished artist, he would not, except for the elegy, occupy a very high place; but superadding the accomplishments of a deep, extensive, and accurate scholarship ranging over many sciences, all the fine arts and classical literature, both ancient and modern, and the elegance of most polished prose composition, we must pronounce Gray to be a high ornament and honour to English literature. Like Cowper and Goldsmith, he has enriched our literature by the charms of his epistolary style, which is inferior only to that of Cowper, who himself bears testimony to the excellence of Gray's letters. "I once," he says, "thought Swift's letters the best that could be written, but I like Gray's better. His humour, or his wit, or whatever it is to be called, is never ill-natured, and yet, I think, equally poignant with the dean's." It is to be lamented that a habitual indolence and an over fastidiousness prevented Gray making a larger use of his erudition and his genius. We have a long list of what he intended to do and might have done, but never did. Let us, however, be thankful that in what he has done he has given
