the night he was seized with convulsions, and did not always talk coherently.

He died about eleven

o'clock on the 30th, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, sensible almost to the last, quite aware of

his danger, and expressing no repining nor concern at the thoughts of leaving this world. He appointed Mr. Brown and Mr. Mason his executors; and desired to be buried near his mother, at Stoke. Mr. Brown saw his body laid in the grave; but it is singular, that no tomb or monument has been erected to his memory: a small stone, inserted lately in the wall of the church, is the only memorial which indicates the spot where the Poet's dust reposes.

Of Gray's person, his biographer has given no account, and Lord Orford has just mentioned it.* There is a portrait of him at Pembroke College, by Wilson, done after his death, from recollection, which has been engraved both for Mason's, and Mr. Mathias' edition. There is also an etching by Doughty, from a drawing by Mr. Mason; and there is one also copied by Mr. Henry Laws, a pupil of Bartolozzi: it is perhaps the most correct likeness of all. Dr. Turner, the late Master of Pembroke College, and Dean of Norwich, had two profile heads of Gray, taken by a Mr. Mapletoft, a Fellow of that college, one of which, he said, conveyed a strong resemblance; but the relievo

* See Walpoliana, Vol. I. p. 95. I must however observe, that this book is to be received with great caution; for I have no doubt that the editor, Mr. Pinkerton, inserted throughout many of his own opinions, and much of his own writing.

on his monument in Westminster Abbey is the one most to be relied on, and from which Mr. Behnes very judiciously formed the bust which is now placed in the Upper School-room at Eton.

Though warmly attached to a few, Gray was very fastidious in the choice of his society; and in his later years he was afflicted by such painful and debilitating disorders, as to confine him in a great measure to the solitude of his own apartments, or to the occasional visits of a few intimate friends. He mentions in one of his later letters, which I have had the opportunity of seeing, that he could not see to read at all with one eye; and that he had the muscæ volitantes so before the other, that if he lived, he had the chance of being quite blind. The following description of him, about this period of his life, has been given from personal recollection:-"From his earliest, almost to his latest residence at Cambridge, its usages, its studies, its principal members were the theme of his persevering raillery; neither could all the pride they felt in the presence of such an inmate prevent on every occasion a spirit of retaliation. Among the older and more dignified members of that body, out of the narrow circle (and very narrow that circle was) of his resident academical friends, he was not, if the truth must be spoken, regarded with great personal respect. The primness and pre

cision of his deportment, the nice adjustment of every part of his dress, when he came abroad,

Candentesque comæ, et splendentis gratia vestis,'

excited many a smile, and produced many a witticism.* Nay, even a stanza in 'Beattie's Minstrel,' as it stood in the first edition, has been supposed to have undergone a revision, prompted by the tenderness of friendship, in consequence of the strong, though undesigned resemblance which it struck out of the Cambridge Bard:

'Fret not thyself, thou man of modern song,
Nor violate the plaster of thy hair;

Nor to that dainty coat do aught of wrong;

Else how may'st thou to Cæsar's hall repair?
For sure no damaged coat may enter there,' &c.

In his later days, however, and when he seldom appeared in public, due homage was paid to the author of 'The Bard' by the younger members of the University, which deserves to be commemorated. Whenever Mr. Gray appeared upon the Walks, intelligence ran from College to College; and the tables in the different Halls, if it happened to be the hour of dinner, were thinned, by the desertion of young men thronging to behold him.Ӡ

*

Among those remembered was an epigram of Smart's, and a repartee of a fruit-woman at a coffee-house.

+From the Recollections of Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Craven.

The truth is, though Gray remained always at Cambridge, he appeared so little in public, that Mr. Mathias was there for a whole year without ever having had the opportunity of seeing him. The late Lord St. Helens said, that when he came to Cambridge in 1770, having had a letter of in

troduction to Gray, he received a visit from him, He was accompanied by Dr. Gisborne, Mr. Stonhewer, and Mr. Palgrave, and they walked in Indian file. When they withdrew, every Collegeman took off his cap as they passed, a consider