makes. It is quite certain, from various remarks scattered through his correspondence, that the literature of the French regency, the boudoir poems and novels of the alcove, gave him more pleasure than any other form of contemporary literature. He uses language, in speaking of Gresset, the author of Vert-Vert, which contrasts curiously with his coldness towards Sterne and Collins. But above all, he delighted in Crébillon; hardly had he arrived in Paris, than he sent West the Lettres de la Marquise M✶✶✶ au Comte de R***, which had been published in 1732, but which the success of Tanzaï et Néardané had pushed into a new edition. The younger Crébillon at this time was in his thirty-second year, discreet, confidential, the friend of every one, the best company in Paris; half his time spent in wandering over the cheerful city that he loved so much, the other half given to literature in the company of that strange colossus, his father, the tragic poet, the writing-room of this odd couple being shared with a menagerie of cats and dogs and queer feathered folk. Always a serviceable creature, and perhaps even already possessed with something of that Anglomania which led him at last into a sort of morganatic marriage with British aristocracy, Crébillon evidently did all he could to make Walpole and Gray happy in Paris; no chaperon could be more fitting than he to a young Englishman desirous of threading the mazes of that rose-coloured Parisian Arcadia which had survived the days of the Regency, and had not yet ceased to look on Louis XV. as the Celadon of its pastoral valleys. It was a charming world of fancy and caprice ; a world of milky clouds floating in an infinite azure, and bearing a mundane Venus to her throne on a Frenchified Cythera. And what strange figures were bound to the

golden car; generals, and abbés, and elderly academicians, laughing philosophers and weeping tragedians, a motley crew united in the universal culte du Tendre, gliding down a stream of elegance and cheerfulness and tolerance that was by no means wholly ignoble.

All this, but especially the elegance and the tolerance, made a deep impression upon the spirit of Gray. He came from a Puritan country; and was himself, like so many of our greatest men, essentially a puritan at heart; but he was too acute not to observe where English practice was unsatisfactory. Above all, he seems to have detected the English deficiency in style and grace; a deficiency then, in 1739, far more marked than it had been half a century earlier. He could not but contrast the young English squire, that engaging and florid creature, with the bright, sarcastic, sympathetic companion of his walks in Paris, not without reflecting that the healthier English lad was almost sure to develop into a terrible type of fox-hunting stupidity in middle life. He, for one, then, and to the end of his days, would cast in his lot with what was refined and ingenious, and would temper the robustness of his race with a little Gallic brightness. Moreover his taste for the novels of Marivaux and Crébillon, with their ingenious analysis of emotion, their odour of musk and ambergris, their affectation of artless innocence, and their quick parry of wit, was not without excuse, in a man framed as Gray was for the more brilliant exercises of literature, and forced to feed, in his own country, if he must read romances at all, on the coarse rubbish of Mrs. Behn, or Mrs. Manley. Curiously enough at that very moment, Samuel Richardson was preparing for the press that excellent narrative of Pamela which was destined to found a great modern school of fiction in England, a

school which was soon to sweep into contempt and oblivion all the "crébillonage-amarivaudé" which Gray delighted in, a contempt so general that one stray reader here or there can scarcely venture to confess that he still finds the Hasard au coin du Feu very pleasant and innocent reading. We shall have to refer once again to this subject, when we reach the humorous poems in which Gray introduced into English literature this rococo manner.

Gray became quite a little fop in Paris. He complains that the French tailor has covered him with silk and fringe, and has widened his figure with buckram, a yard on either side. His waistcoat and breeches are so tight that he can scarcely breathe; he ties a vast solitaire around his neck, wears ruffles at his fingers' ends, and sticks his two arms into a muff. Thus made beautifully genteel he and Walpole rolled in their coach to the Comedy and the Opera, visited Versailles and the sights of Paris, attended installations and spectacles, and saw the best of all that was to be seen. Gray was absolutely delighted with his new existence; "I could entertain myself this month," he wrote to West, " merely with the common streets and the people in them;" and Walpole, who was good-nature itself during all this early part of the tour, insisted on sending Gray out in his coach to see all the collections of fine art, and other such sights as were not congenial to himself, since Horace Walpole had not yet learned to be a connoisseur. Gray occupied himself no less with music, and his letters to West contain some amusing criticisms of French opera. The performers, he says, "come in and sing sentiment in lamentable strains, neither air nor recitation; only, to one's great joy, they were every now and then interrupted by a dance, or, to one's great sorrow, by a chorus that borders the stage from

....

one end to the other, and screams, past all power of simile to represent. Imagine, I say, all this transacted by cracked voices, trilling divisions upon two notesand-a-half, accompanied by an orchestra of humstrums, and a whole house more attentive than if Farinelli sung, and you will almost have formed a just idea of the thing." And, again, later, he writes "des miaulemens et des heurlemens effroyables, melés avec un tintamarre du diable,-voilà la musique Françoise en abrégé." At first the weather was extremely bad, but in May they began to enjoy the genial climate; they took long excursions to Versailles and Chantilly, happy "to walk by moonlight, and hear the ladies and the nightingales sing."

On the 1st of June, in company with Henry Conway, Walpole and Gray left Paris and settled at Rheims for three exquisite summer months. I fancy that these were among the happiest weeks in Gray's life, the most sunny and unconcerned. As the three friends came with particular introductions from Lord Conway, who knew Rheims well, they were welcomed with great cordiality into all the best society of the town. Gray found the provincial assemblies very stately and graceful, but without the easy familiarity of Parisian manners. The mode of entertainment was uniform, beginning with cards, in the midst of which every one rose to eat what was called the gouter, a service of fruits, cream, sweetmeats, crawfish, and cheese. People then sat down again to cards, until they had played forty deals, when they broke up into little parties for a promenade. That this formality was sometimes set aside we may gather from a very pretty little vignette that Gray slips into a letter to his mother :

The other evening we happened to be got together in a com

pany of eighteen people, men and women of the best fashion here, at a garden in the town, to walk, when one of the ladies bethought herself of asking, Why should we not sup here? Immediately the cloth was laid by the side of a fountain under the trees, and a very elegant supper served up; after which another said, "Come, let us sing," and directly began herself. From singing we insensibly fell to dancing, and singing in a round; when somebody mentioned the violins, and immediately a company of them was ordered, minuets were begun in the open air, and then came country dances, which held till four o'clock next morning; at which hour the gayest lady then proposed, that such as were weary should get into their coaches, and the rest of them should dance before them with the music in the van; and in this manner we paraded through all the principal streets of the city, and waked everybody in it. Mr. Walpole had a mind to make a custom of the thing, and would have given a ball in the same manner next week; but the women did not come into it; so I believe it will drop, and they will return to their dull cards and usual formalities.

Walpole intended to spend the winter of 1739 in the South of France, and was therefore not unwilling to loiter by the way. They thought to stay a fortnight at Rheims, but they received a vague intimation that Lord Conway and that prince of idle companions, the ever-sparkling George Selwyn, were coming, and they hung on for three months in expectation of them. At last, on the 7th of September, they left Rheims, and entered Dijon three days later. The capital of Burgundy, with its rich architecture and treasuries of art, made Gray regret the frivolous months they had spent at Rheims, while Walpole, who was eager to set off, would only allow him three or four days for exploration. On the 18th of September they were at Lyons, and this town became their headquarters for the next six weeks. The junction of the