Fragment of a Latin Poem on the Gaurus Imitation of an Italian Sonnet of Signior Abbate Buon- THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. BY JOHN MITFORD. THOMAS GRAY, the subject of the present narrative, was the fifth child of Mr. Philip Gray, a respectable citizen and money-scrivener in London. His grandfather was also a considerable merchant in that place. The maiden name of his mother was Dorothy Antrobus. Thomas was born in Cornhill, the 26th of December, 1716; and was the only one of twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, from suffocation, produced by a fullness of blood; and he owed his life to a memorable instance of the love and courage of his mother, who removed the paroxysm, which attacked him, by opening a vein with her own hand: an instance of affection that seems to have been most tenderly preserved by him through his after life, repaid with care and attention, and remembered when the object of his filial solicitudes could no longer claim them. Mason informs us, "that Gray seldom mentioned his mother without a sigh." He was educated at Eton, under the protection of Mr. Antrobus, his maternal uncle, who was at b that time assistant to Dr. George, and also a fellow of Pembroke College, at Cambridge, where Gray was admitted as a pensioner in 1734, in his nineteenth year. I should be unwilling to pass over this period of his life, without mentioning that while at Eton, as well as at Cambridge, he depended for his entire support on the affection and firmness of his mother; who, when his father had refused all assistance, cheerfully maintained him on the scanty produce of her separate industry. At Eton his friendship with Horace Walpole, and more particularly with Richard West,* commenced. In him he met with one, who, from the goodness of his heart, the sincerity of his friendship, and the excellent cultivation of his mind, was worthy of his warmest attachment. The purity of taste, indeed, as well as the proficiency in literature which the letters of West display, were re * Richard West was the son of the right honourable Richard West, lord chancellor of Ireland; who died in 1727 or 1728, aged 36; and his grandfather, by the mother's side, was Bishop Burnet. His father was the maternal uncle of Glover the poet, and is supposed to be the author of a tragedy called Hecuba,' published in 1726. Mason says that, when at school, West's genius was thought to be more brilliant than his friend's. A portrait of the father is in the hall of the Inner Temple, given by Richard Glover. He was appointed Lord Chancellor in the reign of George the First, in 1725. He wrote on Treasons and Bills of Attainder, also on the Manner of Creating Peers. See this last tract highly praised in Quarterly Review, No. lxxxiv. p. 303. See King's poem, The Toast, p. 117. |