public. At its first appearance, Gray, who was not easily
pleased, in a letter to one of his friends observed, that it was the
only thing in fashion, and that it was a new and original kind of
humour. Soon after the publication of the second edition, he sold the
copy-right for two hundred pounds to Dodsley, and gave the profits
previously accruing from the work to the General Hospital at Bath.
Dodsley, about ten years after his purchase, candidly owned that the
sale had been more productive to him than that of any other book in
which he had before been concerned; and with much liberality restored
the copy-right to the author.

In 1767 he wrote a short Elegy on the Death of the Marquis of Tavistock;
and the Patriot, a Pindaric Epistle, intended to bring into discredit
the practice of prize-fighting.

Not long after he was called to serve the office of high-sheriff for the
county of Cambridge. In 1770 he quitted his seat there for a house which
he purchased in Bath. The greater convenience of obtaining instruction
for a numerous family, the education of which had hitherto been
superintended by himself, was one of the motives that induced him to
this change of habitation.

The Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers appearing soon after his
arrival at Bath, and being by many imputed to a writer who had lately so
much distinguished himself by his talent for satire, he was at
considerable pains to disavow that publication; and by some lines
containing a deserved compliment to his sovereign, gave a sufficient
pledge for the honesty of his disclaimer.

In 1776, a poem entitled An Election Ball, founded on a theme proposed
by Lady Miller, who held a sort of little poetical court at her villa at
Batheaston, did not disappoint the expectations formed of the author of
the Bath Guide. It was at first written in the Somersetshire dialect,
but was afterwards judiciously stripped of its provincialism.

About 1786 he entertained a design of collecting his poems, and
publishing them together. But the painful recollections which this task
awakened, of those friends and companions of his youth who had been
separated from him by death during so long a period, made him relinquish
his intention. He committed, however, to the press, translations of some
of Gay's Fables, which had been made into Latin, chiefly with a view to
the improvement of his children; an Alcaic Ode to Doctor Jenner, on the
discovery of the Cowpock; and several short