are told, was excellent, being formed on the study of the great Italian masters contemporary with Pergolesi, and he performed on the harpsichord. In painting he was a connoisseur, and architecture at one time received a considerable portion of his studious attention. But classical literature was his favorite pursuit: to this he applied with constant, unwearied assiduity; and he is generally allowed the merit of having been a profound as well as an elegant scholar. The notes upon various Greek authors, which he has left behind him, bear the marks of patient labor and accurate judgment. His criticisms are replete with philosophical discrimination, and discover, like everything else that proceeded from his pen, the most refined and delicate taste.

Gray is described as in person small, but well made, very nice and exact in his dress, in conversation lively, and possessing a singular facility of expression. By his intimate friends he appears to have been tenderly esteemed. To strangers he observed a reserve and precision of deportment which seemed to bespeak the reverse of sociability, while his polished language, which might be mistaken by them for a studied style, together with his effeminate and what were thought finical manners, subjected him to the charge of affectation. His fastidiousness too would sometimes betray itself in the visible expression of contempt; and he was satirical; but we do not learn that either his contempt or his sarcasm was ever bestowed inappropriately, or without just provocation. His general conduct was marked by urbanity and cheerfulness; his mind never contracted "the rust of pedantry." Dr. Beattie says, "he had none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet." He was capable too of warm friendship, and such a man could not be an unamiable man. On the contrary, he is spoken of as an ornament to society.

It is charged upon his character as a weakness, that, like Con

greve, while he himself owed all his distinction to his mental endowments and literary attainments, he "could not bear to be considered only as a man of letters; and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman who read for his amusement." There is a passage in one of his letters which partly confirms, and at the same time throws some light on this representation. "To find one's self business," he writes, "I am persuaded is the great art of life. I am never so angry as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery; as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of other people, than at one's own; and as if they could not go, unless they were wound up; yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius (more than common) is required to teach a man how to employ himself." Is it more than candid to conclude that his unwillingness to be regarded as a man of letters, arose from that dislike of ostentatious pretension which distinguishes the man of thorough learning from the pedant, while what he saw in the University of professional vulgarity made him set the more value on the character of the gentleman? And in this who will say that Gray was not right?

Epitaph

ON

MR. GRAY'S MONUMENT

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

BY MR. MASON.

No more the Grecian Muse unrival'd reigns, To Britain let the nations homage pay! She boasts a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

THE vignette on the title-page is a view of Stoke-Poges church, Buckinghamshire, the churchyard of which is the scene of this celebrated poem, and near which is a monument erected to the memory of Gray by the late John Penn, Esq., of Stoke Park. The drawing, by John Constable, Esq., R. A., has been kindly offered to the editor since the publication of the former edition, and is in the possession of Samuel Rogers, Esq.

The tomb of the Poet is at the south-east corner of the chancel, near that of his aunt, Mrs. Mary Antrobus.