the versatility of his mind. At Malvern he received a copy of Goldsmith's Deserted Village, which had just been published; he asked Norton Nicholls to read it aloud to him, listened to it with fixed attention, and exclaimed before they had proceeded far, "This man is a poet." From Malvern they went on to Ross in Herefordshire, and descended the Wye to Chepstow, a distance of forty miles, in a boat, "surrounded," says Gray, "with ever new delights." From this point they went on to Abergavenny and South Wales, returning by Oxford, where they spent two agreeable days. During this tour Gray turned aside to visit Leasowes, where Shenstone had lived and died in 1763. Gray had never admired Shenstone's artificial grace, and had been vexed by some allusions in his posthumously published letters, and it was probably more to see the famous "Arcadian greens rural" than to do homage to a poetic memory that he loitered at Halesowen. He returned in a very fair state of health, as was customary after his summer holidays; but the good effects unfortunately passed away unusually soon. He had a feverish attack in September, but cured it with sage-tea, his favourite nostrum. Nicholls came up to town to see him, and travelled with him as far as Cambridge; but Gray's now invincible dislike to this place seems to have made him really ill, and for the next two months he only went outside the walls of the college once. His aunt, Mrs. Oliffe, now ninety years of age, had come up to Cambridge, and appears to have lodged close to Gray inside Pembroke College, where he was now allowed to do whatever he chose. She was helplessly bedridden, but as intractable a daughter of the Dragon of Wantley as ever. The other Pembroke nonogenarian, Dr. Roger Long, died on the 16th of December 1770, and Gray's friend James Brown suc

ceeded him in the Mastership without any conten

tion.

Early in 1771, Mrs. Oliffe died, leaving her entire fortune, such as it was, to Gray, and none of it to her nieces the Antrobuses, who had nursed her in her illness. These women had been brought to Cambridge by Gray, and had been so comfortably settled by him in situations, that in one of his letters he playfully dreads that all his friends will shudder at the name of Antrobus. All through this spring Gray seems to have been gradually sinking in strength and spirits, though none of his friends appear to have been alarmed about it. To Norton Nicholls' entreaties that he would go to visit Bonstetten with him, as to the young Swiss gentleman's own invitations, he answered with a sad intimation that his health was not equal to so much exertion.

Nicholls came up to town to say farewell to him in the middle of June, having at last been persuaded that it was useless to wait for Gray. The poet was in his old rooms in Jermyn Street and there they parted for the last time. Before Nicholls took leave of him, Gray said, very earnestly, "I have one thing to beg of you, which you must not refuse." Nicholls replied, "You know you have only to command; what is it?" "Do not go to visit Voltaire; no one knows the mischief that man will do." Nicholls said, "Certainly I will not; but what could a visit from me signify?" "Every tribute to such a man signifies." A little before this Gray had rejected polite overtures from Voltaire, who was a great admirer of the Elegy; but it was not that he was dead to the charms of the great Frenchman. He paid a full tribute of admiration to his genius, delighted in his wit, enjoyed his histories, and regarded his tragedies as next in rank

to those of Shakespeare; but he hated him, as he hated Hume, because, as he said, he thought him an enemy to religion. He tried to persuade himself that Beattie had mastered Voltaire in argument. Gray had a similar dislike to Shaftesbury, and was, throughout his career, though in a very unassuming way, a sincere believer in Christianity. We find him exhorting Dr. Wharton not to omit the use of family prayer, and this although he had a horror of anything like "methodism " or religious display.

Gray's last letter to Bonstetten may be given as an example of his correspondence with that gentleman, as long after preserved and published by Miss Plumptre:

I am returned, my dear Bonstetten, from the little journey I made into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with me there, has embittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little interest I have in you by this air of sadness so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathize with me. It is impossible with me to dissemble with you; such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes. All that you say to me, especially on the subject of Switzerland, is infinitely acceptable.. It feels too pleasing ever to be fulfilled, and as often as I read over your truly kind letter, written long since from London, I stop at these words: "La mort qui peut glacer nos bras avant qu'ils soient entrelacés."

He made a struggle to release himself from this atrabilious mood. He reflected on the business which he had so long neglected, and determined to try again to find energy to lecture. He drew up three schemes for regu

lating the studies of private pupils, and laid them before the Duke of Grafton. But these plans, as was usual with Gray, never came to execution, and when he was at Aston in 1770, he told Mason that he had come to the conclusion that it was his duty to resign the professorship, since it was out of his power to do any real service in it. Mason strongly dissuaded him from such a step, and encouraged him to think that even yet he would be able to make a beginning of his lectures. The Exordium of his proposed inauguration speech was all that was found at his death to account for so many efforts and intentions.

In the latter part of May 1771 Gray went up to London, to his lodgings in Jermyn Street, where, as has been already mentioned, he received the farewell visit from Nicholls. He was profoundly wretched; writing to Wharton he said, "Till this year I hardly knew what mechanical low spirits were but now I even tremble at an East wind." His cough was incurable, the neuralgic pains in his head were chronic. William Robinson, in describing his last interview with him, said that Gray talked of his own career as a poet, lamented that he had done so little, and began at last, in a repining tone, to complain that he had lost his health just when he had become easy in his circumstances; but on that he checked himself, saying that it was wrong to rail against Providence. As he grew worse and worse, he placed himself under a physician, Dr. Gisborne, who ordered him to leave Bloomsbury, and try a clearer air at Kensington. Probably the last call he ever paid was on Walpole; for hearing that his old friend was about to set out for Paris, Gray visited him. "He complained of being ill," says Walpole, "and talked of the gout in his stomach, but I expected his death no more than my own." During the month of June he

received the MS. of Gilpin's Tour down the Wye, and enriched this work, which was not published until 1782, with his notes, being reminiscences of his journey of the preceding year.

On the 22nd of July, finding himself alone in London, and overwhelmed with dejection and the shadow of death, he came back to Cambridge. It was his intention to rest there a day or two, and then to proceed to Old Park, where the Whartons were ready to receive him. He put himself under the treatment of his physician, Dr. Robert Glynn, who had been the author of a successful Seatonian poem, and who dabbled in literature. This Dr. Glynn was conspicuous for his gold-headed cane, scarlet coat, three-cornered hat, and resounding pattens for thirty years. after Gray's death, and retains a niche in local history as the last functionary of the University who was buried by torchlight. Dr. Glynn was not at all anxious about Gray's condition, but on Wednesday the 24th, the poet was so languid, that his friend James Brown wrote for him to Dr. Wharton, to warn him that though Gray did not give over the hopes of taking his journey to Old Park, he was very low and feverish, and could hardly start immediately. That very night, while at dinner in the College Hall at Pembroke, Gray felt a sudden nausea, which obliged him to go hurriedly to his own room. He lay down, but he became so violently and constantly sick, that he sent his servant to fetch in Dr. Glynn, who was puzzled at the symptoms, but believed that there was no cause for alarm. Gray grew worse, however, for the gout had reached the stomach; Dr. Glynn became alarmed, and sent for Russell Plumptre, the Regius Professor of Physic. The old doctor was in bed, and refused to get up, for which he was afterwards severely blamed. No skill, however, could have