as speedily and directly as he could, yet he once diverged from his way, between Turin and Lyons, again to contemplate the wild and magnificent scenery that surrounded the Grande Chartreuse; and in the Album of the Fathers he wrote his beautiful 'Alcaic Ode,' which bears strong marks of proceeding from a mind deeply impressed with the solemnity of the situation; where "every precipice and cliff was pregnant with religion and poetry."*

In two months after the return of Gray in 1741, his father died,† his constitution being worn out by repeated attacks of the gout; and Gray's filial duty was now solely directed to his mother. To the friend who condoled with Pope on his father's death, he answered in the pious language of Euryalus,"Genitrix est mihi,” — and Gray, in the like circumstances, assuredly felt no less the pleasure that arose from contributing to preserve the life and happiness of a parent. With a small fortune, which her husband's imprudence had materially impaired, Mrs. Gray and a maiden sister retired to the house

* See Letter XI. dated Turin, November 16, 1739.

+ Gray came to town about the 1st of September, 1741. His father died on the 6th of November following, at the age of 65. Mason.

Mr. Philip Gray built a country house at Wanstead, at a very considerable expense, which was sold after his death at £2000 less than its original cost. It was purchased by Alderman Ball, who was still resident in it in 1776. Isaac Reed

of Mrs. Rogers,* another sister, at Stoke, near Windsor: and Gray, thinking his fortune not sufficient to enable him to prosecute the study of the law, and yet unwilling to hurt the feelings of his mother, by appearing entirely to forsake his profession, changed or pretended to change the line of study, and went to Cambridge to take his degree in civil law. That in his own mind, however, he had entirely given up all thoughts of his profession, seems to appear from a letter to West: "Alas for one (he says) who has nothing to do but to amuse himself! I believe my amusements are as little amusing as most folks; but no matter, it makes the hours pass, and is better than έv åμálig καὶ ἀμοῦσιᾳ καταβιῶναι.”

"But the narrowness of his circumstances," says Mr. Mason, 66 was not the only thing that distressed him at this period. He had, as we have seen, lost the friendship of Mr. Walpole abroad. He had also lost much time in his travels; a loss which application could not easily retrieve, when so severe and laborious a study as that of the Common Law was to be the object of it; and he well knew that whatever improvement he might have made in this interval, either in taste or science, such improvement would stand him in little stead with regard to his present situation and exigencies.

* Mason describes Mrs. Rogers as the widow of a clergyman, but Isaac Reed, in a MS. note, has said that he was a gentleman of the law.

This was not all: his other friend, Mr. West, he found on his return oppressed by sickness and a load of family misfortunes. These the sympathizing heart of Mr. Gray made his own. He did all in his power (for he was now with him in London) to soothe the sorrows of his friend, and try to alleviate them by every office of the purest and most perfect affection: but his cares were vain. The distresses of Mr. West's mind had already too far affected a body from the first weak and delicate."

West was indeed at this time rapidly declining in health, and had gone into Hertfordshire for the benefit of the air. To him Gray sent part of his Tragedy of Agrippina,' then commenced; and which, Mr. Mason thinks, was suggested by a favourable impression left on his mind from a representation of the Britannicus of Racine. His friend objected to the length of Agrippina's speech; and the Fragment is now published, not exactly as Gray left it, but altered by Mr. Mason from the suggestions of West. The plan of this play seems to have been drawn after the model of the plays of Racine; though it displays perhaps more spirit and genius than ever informed the works of that elegant and correct tragedian. Mr. Mason, in a letter to Dr. Beattie, mentions among the Poetry left by Gray, "the opening scene of a tragedy called Agrippina, with the first speech of the second, written much in Racine's manner, and with many

masterly strokes." The language resembles rather that of Rowe or Addison, than of Shakespeare; though it is more highly wrought, and more closely compacted. If finished, it would, I think, have delighted the scholar in the closet; but it is too descriptive to have pleased upon the stage. Βαστάζονται δὲ οἱ ἀναγνωστικοί . . . . Καὶ παραβαλλόμενοι, οἱ μὲν τῶν γραφικῶν, ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι στενοὶ φαίνον

ται.

.....

Gray now employed himself in the perusal of the ancient authors. He mentions that he was reading Thucydides, Theocritus, and Anacreon. He translated some parts of Propertius with great elegance of language and versification, and selected for his Italian studies the poetry of Petrarch. He wrote an Heroic Epistle in Latin, in imitation of the manner of Ovid; and a Greek Epigram, which he communicated to West: to whom also in the summer, when he retired to his family at Stoke, he sent

* I have said that Gray kept an attentive eye upon Racine during the composition of his tragedy; an assertion, I think, that the notes will serve to prove: but the learned Mr. Twining, in his notes on Aristotle's Poetics, (p. 385, 4to.) says: "I have often wondered what it was that could attach Mr.

Gray so strongly to a poet whose genius was so little analogous to his own. I must confess I cannot, even in the Dramatic Fragment given us by Mr. Mason, discover any other resemblance to Racine, than in the length of the speeches. The fault, indeed, is Racine's; its beauties are surely of a higher order," &c.

† Aristotelis Rhetorica, lib. y. cap. xii.

his 'Ode to Spring,' which was written there, but which did not arrive in Hertfordshire till after the death of his beloved friend.* West died only twenty days after he had written the Letter to Gray, which concludes with " Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis." So little (says Mr. Mason) was the amiable youth then aware of the short time that he himself would be numbered amongst the living.

I shall here insert a very correct and judicious criticism, on a censure made by Johnson of an expression in Gray's Ode to Spring, by the late

* West was buried in the chancel of Hatfield church, beneath a stone, with the following epitaph: "Here lieth the body of Richard West, esq. only son of the right honourable Richard West, esq. lord chancellor of Ireland, who died the 1st of June, 1742, in the 26th year of his age." West's poems have never been fully collected. There is one, An Ode to Mary Magdalene,' in Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 419: another in Dalrymple's Songs, p. 142. In the European Magazine for January, 1798, p. 45, is a poem said to be written by him, called 'Damon to Philomel; ' and a Copy of Verses on his Death, supposed to be written by his uncle, Judge Burnet. In Walpole's Works, vol. i. p. 204, is a well known Epigram which was written by West, Time and Thomas Hearne,' which was printed by Mr. Walpole in a paper intended for the World,' but not sent, and which is commonly attributed to Swift. It appears also, that part of the tragedy of Pausanias is extant in MS. See the editor's note in Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 458; also his translation of Tibullus. See Mason's Gray, vol. i. p. 22. The collection of his poems by Dr. Anderson, in the edition of the British Poets, is very incomplete: and Mr. Alexander Chalmers, in his subsequent edition, has omitted them entirely.