a letter addressed to
Gray, in which he expected to find a confirmation of his suspicions
that Gray had been writing unfavourably of him to some friends in
England. A partial reconciliation was effected about three years
afterwards by the intervention of a lady, and Walpole redeemed his
youthful error by a life-long sincere admiration and respect for his
friend. From Reggio Gray proceeded to Venice, and thence travelled
homewards, attended by a _laquais de voyage_. He arrived in England
in September, 1741, having been absent about two years and a half.
His father died in November, and it was found that the poet's fortune
would not enable him to prosecute the study of the law. He therefore
retired to Cambridge, and fixed his residence at the university.
There he continued for the remainder of his life, with the exception
of about two years spent in London, when the treasures of the British
Museum were thrown open. At Cambridge he had the range of noble
libraries. His happiness consisted in study, and he perused with
critical attention the Greek and Roman poets, philosophers,
historians, and orators. Plato and the Anthologia he read and
annotated with great care, as if for publication. He compiled tables
of Greek chronology, added notes to Linnaeus and other naturalists,
wrote geographical disquisitions on Strabo; and, besides being
familiar with French and Italian literature, was a zealous
archaeological student, and profoundly versed in architecture,
botany, painting, and music. In all departments of human learning,
except mathematics, he was a master. But it follows that one so
studious, so critical, and so fastidious, could not be a voluminous
writer. A few poems include all the original compositions of Gray-
-the quintessence, as it were, of thirty years of ceaseless study and
contemplation, irradiated by bright and fitful gleams of inspiration.
In 1742 Gray composed his _Ode to Spring_, his _Ode on a Distant
Prospect of Eton College_, and his _Ode to Adversity_--productions
which most readers of poetry can repeat from memory. He commenced a
didactic poem, _On the Alliance of Education and Government_, but
wrote only about a hundred lines. Every reader must regret that this
philosophical poem is but a fragment. It is in the style and measure
of Dryden, of whom Gray was an ardent admirer and close student. His
_Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ was completed and published
in 1751. In the form of a sixpenny _broc