could dictate from a gentleman who had been official secretary to his father in Ireland, and who felt a tie of gratitude binding him to render this service to the son of his patron. This, however, had not its effect, as Mr. West's dislike to the laborious study of the common law was too deeply rooted, and may evidently be traced to the debility of a sinking constitution. Nor was Mr. Gray more successful, although in the tenderness and prudence of his counsel he showed himself in the light of a true friend; for we find afterwards, in the Works of Lord Orford, a letter from Mr. West, soliciting interest for a commission in the army.

Not long after Mr. Walpole had determined to spend some months more in Florence, he received intelligence of the immediate election of a new Pope, and though only four days' journey from Rome, the heat and mal'aria prevented him and his companion from travelling to witness the ceremony. They both, therefore, remained where they were, and in the course of the following month Mr. Gray sent to Mr. West a copy of Latin verses, on the Gaurus mountain. Besides these, he composed,

a This gentleman's name was Williams, and the most admirable letter he wrote to Mrs. West, for the benefit of her son, may be seen in the "Selections from the Gentleman's Magazine."

some time during his stay in this place, the commencement of the Poem " de Principiis Cogitandi," and sent the first fifty-three lines of it to his friend in the following spring, with his Farewell to Florence, and Translation of a Song by Buondelmonte.

On the 24th of April our travellers set off on their way homeward, and laid their course through Bologna for Venice. At Reggio, however, arose an unfortunate dispute, which ended in their sudden separation; and of this dispute and separation Mr. Walpole was afterwards content to bear the blame. He represents, as the cause of the quarrel, that Gray was "too serious a companion" for him. Gray," he says, was for antiquities, &c. while I was for perpetual balls and plays:—the fault was mine." The difference of temper here mentioned has been already hinted at, and had probably, for a considerable time, been preparing the mind of both parties for the crisis of a rupture. Walpole was vain, and had early been accustomed to flattery; Gray was no courtier, and might on his part, have betrayed something of discontent at being so long dependant, in his own movements, on those of another. But for information on the immediate cause of this quarrel, we are indebted to Mr. Mitford, who states, on what would claim to be considered good authority, that Mr. Walpole, suspecting Gray of having spoken ill of him to his friends in England,

clandestinely opened a letter of his and re-sealed it; an injury which Mr. Gray very properly resented. If any thing could add to the meanness of such an action, it was the cowardly manner in which it is slurred over in Mr. Walpole's general acknowledgment of blame, and that too as though he thought the world, judging by its own maxims, would readily acquit him.

Deprived thus of the means of gratifying his enlarged curiosity, on the scale that he had hitherto done, Mr. Gray proceeded alone to Venice, and there remained, only till he was provided with the means of returning to England. This was about the middle of July, and he followed in his return, nearly the same route as that, by which he had travelled southward, through Verona, Milan, Turin, and Lyons and as he was now accompanied only by a single laquais de voyage, he satisfied the reasonable anxiety of his friends for his health and safety by constant communications. One important deviation he made from the direct course, in order to visit once more the awful solitudes of the Grande Chartreuse, and though perturbed, as he must have been, by a variety of considerations, his mind was yet free to expatiate with the enthusiasm of a poet, and, it may be added, with a poet's melancholy, on the stupendous scenes which had at first so impressed his imagination. This may clearly be seen

from that beautiful Alcaic Ode, which he wrote in the Album of the fathers of the convent.

The circumstances in which Mr. Gray was placed on his return from abroad, cannot be better described than in the words of Mr. Mason. "He found his father's constitution almost entirely worn out by very severe attacks of the gout, to which he had been for many years subject; and, indeed, the next return of that distemper was fatal to him. This happened about two months after his son reached London.

It has been before observed, that Mr. Philip Gray was of a reserved and indolent temper; he was also morose, unsocial, and obstinate; defects which, if not inherent in his disposition, might probably arise from his bodily complaints. His indolence had led him to neglect the business of his profession; his obstinacy to build a country house at Wanstead, without acquainting either his wife or son with the design (to which he knew they would be very averse) till it was executed. This building, which he undertook late in life, was attended with very considerable expense, which might almost be called so much money thrown away; since, after his death, it was found necessary to sell the house for two

b He came to town about the 1st of September, 1741. His father died the 6th of November following, at the age of sixtyfive.-MASON.

thousand pounds less than its original cost. Mr. Gray, therefore, at this time found his patrimony so small, that it would by no means enable him to prosecute the study of the law, without his becoming burthensome to his mother and aunt. These two sisters had for many years carried on a trade d separate from that of Mrs. Gray's husband; by which having acquired what would support them decently for the rest of their lives, they left off business soon after his death, and retired to Stoke, near Windsor, to the house of their other sister, Mrs. Rogers, lately become the widow of a gentleman of that name. Both of them wished Mr. Gray to follow the profession for which he had been originally intended, and would undoubtedly have contributed all in their power to enable him to do it with ease and convenience. He, on his part, though he had taken his resolution of declining it, was too delicate to hurt two persons for whom he had so tender an affection, by peremptorily declaring his real intentions; and therefore changed, or pretended to change, the line of that study; and,

d They kept a kind of India warehouse on Cornhill, under the joint names of Gray and Antrobus.-MASON.

e Mr. Rogers had in the earlier part of his life followed the profession of the law, but retired from business many years before his death. I suppose he was the uncle mentioned in Sect. I. Letter ix.-MASON.