s arranged and digested be found deof public encouragement, the Editor well content to share the merits of lume with a correct and elegant

THE LIF

MR.1

AY 1, 1799.

J.

y the gentleman to the Reader.

pected to comf ariable: yet productions of Wow somethin

The parents of ens of Londo merchant of so

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

MR. THOMAS GRAY.

OF a life so sedentary and retired as that passec

by the gentleman whose works are here present ed to the Reader, the incidents can scarcely be expected to comprise any thing uncommon οι remarkable: yet a Reader who is pleased with the productions of the Poet, very naturally desires to know something of the Man.

The parents of our Author were respectable citizens of London. His grandfather had been a merchant of some eminence; his father, Mr. The latter of the Eton to Christ Chu ame that Mr. Gray and from this time

pt himself, died in their infancy; and it with Mr. Horace
said, that he narrowly escaped suffoca-
ng to too great a fullness of blood, which
I the rest), and would certainly have been
3 early, had not his mother, with a cou-
arkable for one of her sex, and especially
ery tender a parent, ventured to open a
her own hand, which instantly removed
cysm.

25 carried on betw

Mr. Gray's first

ding to Mr. Mason, our Poet was born Mr. Mason tells us

aill, December* 26, 1716, and educated at ool, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his uncle, who was at that time assistant to rge, and also a fellow of St. Peter's Col

, in May 1736, Carner of Dryden.

with Mr. Horace Walpole*, and Mr. Richard West †.

The latter of these gentlemen removed from Eton to Christ Church, Oxford, about the same time that Mr. Gray left that place for Cambridge and from this time an epistolary correspondence was carried on between them.

Mr. Gray's first attempt in English verse, a Mr. Mason tells us, was a Translation from Sta tius, in May 1736, which is much in the spirite manner of Dryden.

* The late Earl of Orford.

+ Son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His maternal grandfathe was the famous Dr. Burnet.

+ See p. 103.

b

ad already either hired or bought him ambers. But on an invitation which le gave him to be his companion in this intention was laid aside for the I never after put in execution.

Bolognese, * all equally proper fo your pleasure to pit "Cardinal Gotti; if 1 Aidrovandi; if upon "1" But to return:

"Unequal friendsh sly dissolved." At Prose between Gray an we are told, in the d The former curious, F latter gay, lively, tate); but the chief

r. Walpole he set out in March 1739. Lered through France into Italy; and which were published by Mr. Mason, leasing account of many parts of their livened with such glowing descriptions ations as might be naturally expected a genius on classic ground, and some

hed pieces of Latin poetry composed pole, who surviv

his residence in Italy, Pope Clement and the amiable Benedict XIV. was

20% to himself; and that a lasting rece