It is charged upon his character as a weakness, that, like Congreve, while he himself owed all his distinction to his mental endowments and literary attainments, he "could not bear to be considered only as a man of letters; and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman who read for his amusement." There is a passage in one of his letters which partly confirms, and at the same time throws some light on this representation. "To find one's self business," he writes, "I am persuaded is the great art of life. I am never so angry as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery; as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of other people, than at one's own; and as if they could not go, unless they were wound up: yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius (more than common) is required to teach a man how to employ himself." Is it more than candid to conclude that his unwillingness to be regarded as a man of letters, arose from that dislike of ostentatious pretension which distinguishes the man of thorough learning from the pedant, while what he saw in the University of professional vulgarity made him set the more value on the character of the gentleman? And in this who will say that Gray was not right?

ENCOMIUM.

TO

MR. GRAY, UPON HIS ODES.

By David Garrick, Esq.1

REPINE not, Gray, that our weak dazzled eyes
Thy daring heights and brightness shun;
How few can trace the eagle to the skies,
Or, like him, gaze upon the Sun!

Each gentle reader loves the gentle Muse,
That little dares, and little means;
Who humbly sips her learning from Reviews,
Or flutters in the Magazines.

• No longer now from Learning's sacred store
Our minds their health and vigour draw;
Homer and Pindar are revered no more,
No more the Stagyrite is law.

Though nursed by these, in vain thy Muse appears
To breathe her ardours in our souls;

In vain to sightless eyes and deaden'd ears,
The lightning gleams, the thunder rolls:

From an original MS. in the possession of Isaac Reed, Esq.

Yet droop not, Gray, nor quit thy heaven-born art,
Again thy wondrous powers reveal;
Wake slumbering Virtue in the Briton's heart,
And rouse us to reflect and feel!

With ancient deeds our long-chill'd bosoms fire,
Those deeds that mark Eliza's reign!
Make Britons Greeks again-then strike the lyre,
And Pindar shall not sing in vain.

ΕΡΙΤΑΡΗ

ON

MR. GRAY'S MONUMENT.

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

By Mr. Mason.

No more the Grecian Muse unrival'd reigns,
To Britain let the nations homage pay!
She boasts a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

POEMS

OF

THOMAS GRAY.