genious friends now commenced an epiftolary correfpondence, which, though not unworthy of their years, and of the hopes conceived of them, they little imagined was, one day, to be laid before the public.

They were not long in their respective universities, when they turned their attention to the study of the law. For, with that view, they found themselves in London in the year 1738. Mr. West took chambers in the Inner Temple; but Mr. Gray being invited by Mr. Walpole to accompany him in his travels, delayed, for a time, his application to a fcience, which, furely, did not fuit either his temper or his genius.

The improvement he received from vifiting France and Italy, was doubtless very great. But the pleasure arifing from his travels, was painfully interrupted by the disagreement which arose between him and Mr. Walpole. Their difpofitions were different. The penfive and philofophical turn of the former, did not well agree with the gaiety and liveliness of the latter. They had fet out in the end of the year 1739, and they parted at Reggio in the year 1741. Many years, however, did not pass till a reconciliation was produced between them, by the intervention and offices of a lady, who had a friendship for both.

On Mr. Gray's return to London

* September 1741.

he

he found his father altogether wasted with the fevere attacks of the gout, to which he had long been fubject. Two months after he lost him, and fucceeded to a scanty patrimony. The intention he had formed, of ftudying the law as a profeffion, began now to be fhaken. But his friends urging him to maintain his original purpose, and the delicacy of his nature inducing him not to give them uneafinefs, by too fudden a declaration of the ftate of his mind, he went to Cambridge, and took his Batchelor's degree in the Civil Law. The time he had paffed in his travels, the intense labour required by the study of the Common Law, and, above all, the narrowness of his fortune, estranged him from a defign, which perhaps he had

B 3

had never entertained with affection or ardour; and the anxiety excited by this undecifiveness as to the scheme of life he fhould follow, was now embittered by the sickness of Mr. Weft, who had some time languished in a confumption; and who, in June 1742, in the twentyfixth year of his age, fell an unfufpecting victim to this distemper.

A fhort time before this cruel event, Mr. Gray had gone to vifit his mother, in her retirement at Stoke, near Windfor, where he wrote his beautiful Ode on the Spring. And it is not impoffible, but a prefage of what was to happen, occafioned the interefting melancholy which reigns in it. His regrets it is easier to conceive than to de

scribe;

scribe; and they feem immediately to have given birth to a very tender fonnet in English, in the manner of Petrarque, and to a noble apoftrophe in Latin, which he intended as the introduction to one of his books, De principiis cogitandi. It is alfo worthy of observation, that within three months after Mr. Weft's death, he appears to have compofed the Ode on a diftant profpect of Eton College, and the Hymn to Adverfity. Nor is it to be doubted, that his forrow for his beloved friend gave a tone to these delightful poems; and the reader of fenfibility, who peruses them under this impreffion, will find an additional charm in them.

* See his Memoirs by Mr. Mason.