noyé:" Gray adds in the margin, "Muncaça, or Mango Khan, was not drowned, but in reality slain in China at the siege of Ho-chew in 1256.” Another traveller had said, “The name of this king was Abassidus-Ahmed:" Gray adds, “Ahmed Emir al Mumenin; this Abassid, surnamed Al-Nasor, was fifty-second khaliff, but he came not to the throne till A.D. 1179; so that the khaliff then reigning must be Hassan-Al-Moothaday, his predecessor." He corrects another statement of the traveller Rubriques thus; "It was not Bates-Khan, but Jarmagan, Ogtai's general, who defeated Cai Khosru the Second, surnamed Gaiatheddin, the eighth Selginmid sultan of Asia Minor in 1342." And in this manner he has filled the margins of a thick quarto volume of Oriental travels with very elaborate annotations, and corrections of the different authors, all written in the most careful and delicate hand; and has followed the author through the whole of this elaborate work, employed on subjects so utterly remote from all common curiosity and interest, with the same critical and patient investigation, as if his learning was particularly directed in that channel, or that he was meditating a work on similar subjects. His copy of "Liste des Insectes," which I also possess, is annotated on in a similar way; and the margin of his copy of the "Historia Animalium" of Aristotle, in the edition of Sylburgius, is crowded with notes and explana

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tions. His copy of "Entinck's London and its Environs," in six volumes, 8vo. is full of remarks and corrections on the architecture, sculpture, &c. of the different buildings in the Metropolis; and there is another copy of the same work in the library of Nuneham, equally full of his observations, from which Mr. Pennant was allowed to take materials for his work.

One most important branch of study alone passed unnoticed by him, or at least was only casually pursued; I mean that of theology: and it is singular, that in one of his later letters, I found Mason writing to him, "I wish I could get you to read Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of English prose." Spenser, Shakespeare, and Dryden were his favourite poets; and he also thought highly of Pope. He placed Lord Clarendon at the head of our historians; and, for style, he thought that of Conyers Middleton much to be approved. Of the "Clarissa” of Richardson, he spoke in the highest terms; he said, "He knew no instance of a tale so well told;" and mentioned with the highest commendation the dramatic propriety and consistency of the character, preserved from the beginning to the end, in all situations and circumstances. He thought Goldsmith a genuine poet: Cibber's comedies he considered excellent; and he said that "Vanbrugh's plays were much better than his architecture."

His French reading was extensive: he esteemed

very highly the dramas of Voltaire and the Émile of Rousseau; but his knowledge of Italian literature did not extend beyond the writers of the first class; for Mr. Mathias says that Gray had never read Filicaia, Guidi, and the other lyrical poets highly esteemed in Italy. In his correspondence, printed and manuscript, many other literary opinions and judgments will be found, both on the older authors, and on the writings of his contemporaries.

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But it is time that this narrative should draw to a close and as Gray's acquirements, however extensive, must be considered secondary to his fine poetical talents, I cannot, I think, form a better conclusion, than by giving a sketch of the latter, as drawn by Sir James Mackintosh, with his usual solidity of judgment and delicacy of taste :— "Gray," he writes, following some observations on the merits of Goldsmith, "was a poet of a far higher order, and of almost an opposite kind of merit. Of all English poets, he was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendour of which poetical style seems to be capable. If Virgil and his scholar Racine may be allowed to have united so much more ease with their elegance, no other poet approaches Gray in this kind of excellence. The degree of political invention diffused over such a style, the abundance of taste and of fancy necessary to produce it, and the art with

which the offensive boldness of imagery is polished away, are not, indeed, always perceptible to the common reader, nor do they convey to my mind the same species of gratification, which is felt from the perusal of those poems, which seem to be the unpremeditated effusions of enthusiasm. But to the eye of the critic, and more especially to the artist, they afford a new kind of pleasure, not incompatible with a distinct perception of the art employed, and somewhat similar to the grand emotions excited by the reflection of the skill and toil exerted on the construction of a magnificent palace. They can only be classed among the secondary pleasures of poetry, but they can never exist without a great degree of its higher excellencies. Almost all his poetry was lyrical; that species, which, issuing from a mind in the highest state of excitement, requires an intensity of feeling, which, for a long composition, the genius of no poet could support. Those who complained of its brevity and rapidity, only confessed their own inability to follow the movements of poetical inspiration.* Of the two grand

* In another place, this same writer observes, "The obscurity of the ode on 'The Progress of Poetry' arises from the variety of the subjects, the rapidity of the transitions, the boldness of the imagery, and the splendour of the language. To those who are incapable of that intense attention, which the higher order of poetry requires, and which poetical sensibility always produces, there is no obscurity. In 'The Bard,' some of these causes of obscurity are lessened: it is more

attributes of the Ode, Dryden has displayed the enthusiasm Gray exhibited the magnificence. He is also the only modern English writer, whose Latin verses deserve general notice; but we must lament that such difficult trifles had diverted his genius from its natural objects.*

"In his letters has been shown the descriptive power of the poet; and in new combinations of generally familiar words, which he seems to have caught from Madame de Sévigné (though it must be said he was somewhat quaint), he was eminently happy. It may be added, that he deserves the comparatively trifling praise of having been the most learned poet since Milton."+

impassioned, and less magnificent; but it has more brevity and abruptness. It is a lyric drama, and this structure is a new source of obscurity."

* I don't quite catch the writer's meaning here, for all Gray's Latin verses were written when he was young; and, from what I have seen, it appears to me, that in his later life he had lost his facility, and perhaps some of his correctness, in compositions in that language, whether in prose or verse. However, occasionally to compose in a language that we understand, and that we love, is a natural desire; and we may imitate, without the hope of competing with the great masters of Latin song. And such were the rational amusements, in their later years, of two remarkable persons of the present age, who united the character of the scholar and the statesman, and who preserved the love of their early studies, amidst the more onerous duties and employments of their riper years; I mean, the Marquis of Wellesley, and Lord Grenville. + See "Life of Sir James Mackintosh," Vol. II. p. 172.