other, or arranged with too little regard to established use, and therefore perplexing to the ear, which in a short compofition has not time to grow familiar with an innovation. To examine fuch compofitions fingly, cannot be required; they have doubtless brighter and darker parts: but when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be fpared; for to what use can the work be criticised that will not be read? GRAY. G R A Y. T HOMAS GRAY, the fon of Mr. Philip Gray, a fcrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eaton under Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother; and when he left fchool, in 1734, entered a penfioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge. The transition from the school to the college is, to moft young fcholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray feems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived fullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profefs the Common Law, he took no degree. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whofe friendship he had gained at Eaton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's Letters contain a very pleafing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily diffolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault. If we look however without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men, whofe confcioufnefs of their own merit fets them above the compliances of fervility, are apt enough in their affociation with fuperiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealoufy, and in the fervour of independance to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the reft of their travels was doubtlefs more unpleasant 5 |