ear Mr. Gray seems to have applied ously to Poetry; for he produced his *, his Prospect of Eton College †, and dversity. He began likewise a Latin incipiis Cogitandi §, and a tragedy on of Nero and Agrippina ||.

Of Mr. Mason's ac deformer gentleman ich we extract the not till about the ye piness of being int of Mr. Gray. So of Milton's juvenile

collected from the narrative of Mr. Gray's prime ambition was to have Latin Poetry; and Dr. Johnson exsh that he had prosecuted that de

+ See p. 10. + See p. 16.

it is printed in Mr. Mason's Memoirs of Gray, Vol. III.

year or two befor on Mr. Pope's de then, at the

reques

The other two were in ditled 'Il Bellicoso aded to revise and es on the Peace of Aix a Miscellany printe , of some acquainta

was afterwards to be his Editor.

Of Mr. Mason's acquaintance with Mr. Gray the former gentleman gives us an account, from which we extract the following passage: "It was "not till about the year 1747 that I had the hap "piness of being introduced to the acquaintanc "of Mr. Gray. Some very juvenile imitation "of Milton's juvenile poems, which I had writter 66 a year or two before (and of which the Monody "on Mr. Pope's death was the principal *), h "then, at the request of one of my friends, wa

"The other two were in imitation of 'l'Allegro & il Penseroso "and intitled11 Bellicoso & il Pacifico.' The latter of these I w "persuaded to revise and publish in the Cambridge Collection "Verses on the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. The former has sing got into a Miscellany printed by G. Pearch, from the indiscretion, 66 suppose, of some acquaintance who had a copy of it."

66

I was at this time scholar of St. John's and Batchelor of Arts, personally uno the gentlemen who favoured me so herefore, that they gave me this mark tion and preference was greatly owing ray, who was well acquainted with sehat society, and to Dr. Heberden."

conceived an early d

now returned to

agmented, should, ke that very place irty years: But th By accounted for ring passion) ces, which prev

e winter of 1742, to the day of his Gray's principal residence was at He indeed, during the lives of his aunts, spent his summer vacation at , after they died, he made little tours

ominated in 1747, I was not elected Fellow till FeThe Master refused his assent, claiming a negative; herefore not compromised till after an ineffectual litiears."

an

These, amounting in all hands, who printe

the second number

Dritish Museum, ne took lodgings in ton-Row, in order to have recourse to the Harleian and other Manuscripts there deposited, from which he made several curious extracts *.

It may seem strange, that a person who had conceived an early dislike to Cambridge, and who was now returned to it with this prejudice rather augmented, should, when he was free to choose, make that very place his principal abode for near thirty years: But this Mr. Mason thinks may be easily accounted for from his love of books, (ever his ruling passion) and the straitness of his circumstances, which prevented the gratification of it;

*These, amounting in all to a tolerably-sized folio, passed into Mr. Walpole's hands, who printed the Speech of Sir Thomas Wyatt from them in the second number of his Miscellaneous Antiquities.

and summer of the year 1742, he wrote ble part of his more finished poems. - would be naturally led to conclude = return to Cambridge, when the cereking his degree was over, the quiet of ould have prompted him to continue ion of his poetical talents, and that imas the Muse seems in this year to have nspired him; but this was not the case. e has often declared, was much more O him than writing: He, therefore, now composition almost entirely, and apIf with intense assiduity to the study of reek authors; insomuch that, in the bout six years, there were hardly any note in that language which he had not

passed from him ons of distinction been privately t her, it at length in "The Mag