to Dr. Heberden, whose known partiality to every, even the smallest degree of merit, led him warmly to second his recommendation. The reader, I hope, will excuse this short piece of egotism, as it is written to express my gratitude, as well to the living as the dead, to declare the sense I shall ever retain of the honour which the fellows of Pembroke Hall then did me, and to particularize the time of an incident which brought me into the neighbourhood of Mr. Gray's college; and served to give that cement to our future intimacy, which is usually rendered stronger by proximity of place.

The letters, which I select for this Section, are from the date of the year 1742 to that of 1768, when Mr. Gray was made professor of modern history. This, as it is a considerable interval of time, will perhaps require me the more frequently to resume my narrative; especially as I cannot now. produce one continued chain of correspondence.

LETTER I.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.*

Cambridge, Dec. 27, 1742.

I OUGHT to have returned you my thanks a long time ago for the pleasure, I should say prodigy, of your letter; for such a thing has not happened above twice within this last age to mortal

* Of Old-Park, near Durham. With this gentleman Mr. Gray contracted an acquaintance very early; and though they were not educated together at Eton, yet afterwards at Cambridge, when the Doctor was fellow of Pembroke Hall, they became intimate friends, and continued so to the time of Mr. Gray's death.

man, and no one here can conceive what it may portend. You have heard, I suppose, how I have been employed a part of the time; how, by my own indefatigable application for these ten years past, and by the care and vigilance of that worthy magistrate the man in blue,* (who, I assure you, has not spared his labour, nor could have done more for his own son) I am got half way to the top of jurisprudence,† and bid as fair as another body to open a case of impotency with all decency and circumspection. You see my ambition. I do not doubt but some thirty years hence I shall convince the world and you that I am a very pretty young fellow; and may come to shine in a profession, perhaps the noblest of all except manmidwifery. As for you, if your distemper and you can but agree about going to London, I may reasonably expect in a much shorter time to see you in your three-cornered villa, doing the honours of a well-furnished table with as much dignity, as rich a mien, and as capacious a belly as Dr. Mead. Methinks I see Dr. * at the lower end of it, lost in admiration of your goodly person and parts, cramming down his envy (for it will rise) with the wing of a pheasant, and drowning it in neat Burgundy. But not to tempt your asthma too much with such a prospect, I should think you might be almost as happy and as great as this even in the country. But you know best, and I should be sorry to say any thing that might stop you in the career of glory; far be it from me to

* A servant of the vice-chancellor's for the time being, usually known by the nanie of Blue Coat, whose business it is to attend acts for degrees, &c. i. e. Bachelor of civil law.

hamper the wheels of your gilded chariot. Go on, Sir Thomas; and when you die, (for even physicians must die) may the faculty in Warwick Lane erect your statue in the very niche of Sir John Cutler's.

I was going to tell you how sorry I am for your illness, but I hope it is too late now: I can only say that I really was very sorry. May you live a hundred Christmasses, and eat as many collars of brawn stuck with rosemary.

Adieu! &c.

Though I have said that Mr. Gray, on his return to Cambridge, laid aside poetry almost entirely, yet I find amongst his papers a small fragment in verse which bears internal evidence that it was written about this very time. The foregoing Letter, in which he employs so much of his usual vein of ridicule on the university, seems to be no improper introduction to it: I shall therefore insert it here without making any apology, as I have given one, on a similar occasion, in the first section.

It seems to have been intended as a hymn or address to ignorance; and I presume had he proceeded with it, would have contained much good satire upon false science and scholastic pedantry. What he writ of it is purely introductory; yet many of the lines are so strong, and the general cast of the versification so musical, that I believe it will give the generality of readers a higher opinion of his poetical talents, than many of his lyri

cal productions have done.

I speak of the generality; because it is a certain fact, that their taste is founded upon the ten-syllable couplets of Dryden and Pope, and upon these only.

HAIL, horrors, hail! ye ever gloomy bowers,
Ye gothic fanes, and antiquated towers,
Where rushy Camus' slowly-winding flood
Perpetual draws his humid train of mud:
Glad I revisit thy neglected reign,

Oh take me to thy peaceful shade again.

But chiefly thee, whose influence breath'd from high
Augments the native darkness of the sky;
Ah Ignorance! soft salutary power!
Prostrate with filial reverence I adore.
Thrice hath Hyperion roll'd his annual race,
Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace.
Oh say, successful do'st thou still oppose
Thy leaden Ægis 'gainst our ancient foes?
Still stretch, tenacious of thy right divine,
The massy sceptre o'er thy slumb'ring line?
And dews Lethean through the land dispense
To steep in slumbers each benighted sense?
If any spark of wit's delusive ray
Break out, and flash a momentary day,
With damp, cold touch forbid it to aspire,
And huddle up in fogs the dangerous fire.
Oh say she hears me not, but careless grown,
Lethargic nods upon her ebon throne.
Goddess! awake, arise, alas my fears!

Can powers immortal feel the force of years?
Not thus of old, with ensigns wide unfurl'd,
She rode triumphant o'er the vanquish'd world;
Fierce nations own'd her unresisted might,
And all was ignorance, and all was night.

Oh sacred age! Oh times for ever lost!

(The schoolman's glory, and the churchman's boast!)
For ever gone-yet still to fancy new,
Her rapid wings the transient scene pursue,

And bring the buried ages back to view.

High on her car, behold the Grandam ride Like old Sesostris with barbaric pride; **** a team of harness'd monarchs bend

LETTER II.

MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

Peterhouse, April 26, 1744.

You write so feelingly to Mr. Brown, and represent your abandoned condition in terms so touching, that what gratitude could not effect in several months, compassion has brought about in a few days; and broke that strong attachment, or rather allegiance, which I and all here owe to our sovereign lady and mistress, the president of presidents and head of heads, (if I may be permitted to pronounce her name, that ineffable Octogrammaton) the power of Laziness. You must know she had been pleased to appoint me (in preference to so many old servants of her's who had spent their whole lives in qualifying themselves for the office) grand picker of straws and push-pin player to her Supinity (for that is her title.) The first is much in the nature of lord president of the council; and the other like the groom-porter, only without the profit; but as they are both things of very great honour in this country, I considered with myself the load of envy attending such great charges; and besides (between you and me) I found myself unable to support the fatigue of keeping up the appearance that persons of such dignity must do, so I thought proper to decline it