s arranged and digested be found deof public encouragement, the Editor well content to share the merits of lume with a correct and elegant THE LIF MR. Y 1, 1799. J. fe so sede the gentleman to the Reader pected to com able: yet productions of Low somethin THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MR. THOMAS GRAY. Of a life so sedentary and retired as that passed by the gentleman whose works are here present ed to the Reader, the incidents can scarcely be expected to comprise any thing uncommon o remarkable: yet a Reader who is pleased with the productions of the Poet, very naturally desires to know something of the Man. The parents of our Author were respectable citizens of London. His grandfather had been a merchant of some eminence; his father, Mr. pt himself, died in their infancy; and it said, that he narrowly escaped suffocang to too great a fullness of blood, which | the rest), and would certainly have been early, had not his mother, with a couarkable for one of her sex, and especially ery tender a parent, ventured to open a her own hand, which instantly removed xysm. ding to Mr. Mason, our Poet was born ill, December 26, 1716, and educated at ool, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his uncle, who was at that time assistant to rge, and also a fellow of St. Peter's Col Mason tells us ason, I know not on what authority, gives as the date of irth, November 26, 1716. in May 1736, mer of Dryden. with Mr. Horace Walpole*, and Mr. Richard West j. The latter of these gentlemen removed from Eton to Christ Church, Oxford, about the sam time that Mr. Gray left that place for Cambridge and from this time an epistolary correspondenc was carried on between them. Mr. Gray's first attempt in English verse, a Mr. Mason tells us, was a Translation from Sta tius, in May 1736, which is much in the spirite manner of Dryden. *The late Earl of Orford. + Son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His maternal grandfathe was the famous Dr. Burnet. ad already either hired or bought him ambers. But on an invitation which -le gave him to be his companion in this intention was laid aside for the never after put in execution. Bolognese, al equally proper fo your pleasure to pit Cardinal Gotti; if Aldrovandi; if upon 1 But to return: r. Walpole he set out in March 1739. ered through France into Italy; and which were published by Mr. Mason, -leasing account of many parts of their livened with such glowing descriptions ations as might be naturally expected a genius on classic ground, and some hed pieces of Latin poetry composed Unequal friendsh y dissolved." At e between Gray an We are his residence in Italy, Pope Clement and the amiable Benedict XIV. was told, in the d the former curious, P latter gay, lively, e); but the chief pole, who surviv x to himself; and that a lasting rec |