and would not tell; when he was pressed, he said, with great simplicity, that the room was so hot and he himself so embarrassed, that he really did not quite know what it was the King did say.

The charge has often been brought against Gray that he delivered no lectures from his chair at Cambridge. It is, of course, very unfortunate that he did not, but it should be remembered that there was nothing singular in this. Not one of his predecessors, from the date of the institution of the professorship, had delivered a single lecture; Gray, indeed, was succeeded by a man of great energy, John Symonds, who introduced a variety of reforms at Cambridge, and, among others, reformed his own office by lecturing. The terms of the patent recommended the professor to find a deputy in one branch of his duty, and Gray delegated the teaching of foreign languages to a young Italian, Agostino Isola, of literary tastes, who survived long enough to teach Tuscan to Wordsworth. It is said that Gray took the opportunity of reading the Italian poets again with Isola, who afterwards became an editor of Tasso. The granddaughter of Gray's deputy was that Emma Isola who became the adopted child of Charles and Mary Lamb. One is glad to know that Gray behaved with great liberality to Isola and also to the French teacher at the University, René La Butte. It is pleasant to record that the opportunity to follow the natural dictates of his heart in this and other instances, he owed to the loyalty of his old schoolfellow, Stonehewer, who was the secretary of the Duke of Grafton, and who lost no time in suggesting Gray's name to his chief.

Poor Gray, for ever pursued by fears of conflagration, was actually in great danger of being burned alive in January 1768, when a part of Pembroke Hall, including

Mason's chambers, was totally destroyed by fire. Two Methodists, who had been attending a prayer-meeting in the town, happened to pass very late at night, and gave the alarm. Gray was roused between two and three in the morning by the excellent Stephen Hempstead, with the remark, "Don't be frighted, Sir, but the college is all of a fire!" No great harm was done, but Mason had to be lodged a little lower down the street, opposite Peterhouse. After the event of the professorship, Gray found himself unable to escape from many public shows in which he had previously pleaded his obscurity with success. For instance, in August 1768, the University of Cambridge was honoured by a visit from Christian VII., King of Denmark, who had married the sister of George III. To escape from the festivities, Gray went off to Newmarket, but there, as he says, "fell into the jaws of the King of Denmark," was presented to him by the Vicechancellor and the Orator, and was brought back to Cambridge by them, captive, in a chaise.

The Duke of Grafton succeeded the Duke of Newcastle as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1768, and Gray, moved by gratitude, though never by expectation, made an offer through Stonehewer that he should write an ode to be performed at the ceremony of installation. He seems to have made the proposal in the last months of the year. In April 1769, he says:-"I do not guess what intelligence Stonehewer gave you about my employments, but the worst employment I have had has been to write something for music against the Duke of Grafton comes to Cambridge. I must comfort myself with the intention, for I know it will bring abuse enough on me: however, it is done, and given to the Vice-Chancellor, and there is an end." Norton Nicholls records that Gray considered the

composition of this Installation Ode a sort of task, and set about it with great reluctance; "it was long after he first mentioned it to me before he could prevail with himself to begin the composition. One morning, when I went to him as usual after breakfast, I knocked at his door, which he threw open, and exclaimed with a loud voice,—

'Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!'

I was so astonished, that I almost feared he was out of his senses; but this was the beginning of the Ode which he had just composed." For three months before the event, the music professor, J. Randall, of King's, waited on Gray regularly to set the Installation Ode to music. It was Gray's desire to make this latter as much as possible like the refined compositions of the Italian masters that he loved, and Randall did his best to comply with this. Gray took great pains over the score, though in his private letters. he spoke with scorn of Randall's music; but when he came to the chorus, Gray remarked, "I have now done, make as much noise as you please!" Dr. Burney, it afterwards turned out, was very much disappointed because he was not asked to set Gray's composition. The Installation Ode was performed before a brilliant assembly on July the 1st, 1769, Gray all the while sighing to be far away upon the misty top of Skiddaw. In the midst of all the turmoil and circumstance of the installation he wrote in this way to Norton Nicholls, who had consulted him about the arrangement of his gardens:

And so you have a garden of your own, and you plant and transplant, and are dirty and amused! Are you not ashamed of yourself? Why, I have no such thing, you monster, nor ever shall be either dirty or amused as long as I live. My

gardens are in the window, like those of a lodger up three pairs of stairs in Petticoat Lane or Camomile Street, and they go to bed regularly under the same roof that I do. Dear, how charming it must be to walk out in one's own garding, and sit on a bench in the open air, with a fountain, and a leaden statue, and a rolling stone, and an arbour: have a care of sore throats, though, and the agoe.

It cannot be said that the Installation Ode, though it contains some beautiful passages, is in Gray's healthiest vein. In it he returns, with excess, to that allegorical style of his youth from which he had almost escaped, and we are told a great deal too much about "painted Flattery” and "creeping Gain," and visionary gentlefolks of that kind. Where he gets free from all this, and especially in that strophe when, after a silence of more than a century, we hear once more the music of Milton's Nativity Ode, we find him as charming as ever:

Ye brown, o'er-arching groves,

That contemplation loves,

Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!
Oft at the blush of dawn

I trod your level lawn,

Oft woo'd the gleam of Cynthia silver-bright

In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly,
With freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.

The procession of Cambridge worthies, which Hallam has praised so highly, is drawn with great dignity, and the compliment conveyed in the sixth strophe, where the venerable Margaret Beaufort bends from heaven to salute her descendant, is very finely turned; but we cannot help feeling that the spirit of languor has not completely been excluded from the poem, and that if Gray was not exhausted when he wrote it he was at least greatly fatigued.

The eulogy of the "star of Brunswick" at the close of the Ode is perhaps the only absurd passage in the entire works of Gray. After this he wrote no verse that has been preserved; his faculty seems to have left him entirely, and if we deplore his death within two years of the performance of the Installation Ode, it is not without a suspicion that the days of his poetic life were already numbered.

In 1769 Gray sold part of his estate, consisting of houses on the west side of Hand Alley, in the City, for one thousand guineas, and an annuity of eighty pounds for Mrs. Oliffe, who had a share in the estate. "I have also won a twenty-pound prize in the lottery, and Lord knows what arrears I have in the Treasury, and I am a rich fellow enough, go to;" so he writes on the 2nd of January of that year to Norton Nicholls; "and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him; and in a few days I shall have curtains, are you advised of that? ay, and a mattress to lie upon."

One more work remained for Gray to do, and that a considerable one. He was yet to discover and to describe the beauties of the Cumbrian Lakes. In his youth he was the man who first looked on the sublimities of Alpine scenery with pleasure, and in old age he was to be the pioneer of Wordsworth in opening the eyes of Englishmen to the exquisite landscape of Cumberland. The journal of Gray's Tour in the Lakes has been preserved in full, and was printed by Mason, who withheld his other itineraries. He started from York, where he had been staying with Mason, in July 1769, and spent the next two months at Old Park. On the 30th of September Gray found himself on the winding road looking westward, and with Appleby and the long reaches of the Eden at his feet. He made no stay, but passed on to Penrith, for the night,