177 



GRAY, THOMAS 



GREAVES, JOHN. 



178 



Zoophytes amongst the radiate, have obtained the largest amount of 

 attention from Dr. Gray. 



Whilst Dr. Gray has thus obtained a pre-eminent position as a 

 zoologist, he is President of the Botanical Society of London, thus 

 indicating his claims to be regarded as a naturalist by whom no 

 department of natural history has been neglected. He is a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, and an active member of the Council of the 

 Zoological Society. 



^GRAY, THOMAS, was born in Cornhill on the 26th of December, 

 171'3. He was the fifth among twelve children of a respectable 

 citizeu and money scrivener in London, and the only one of the 

 twelve who survived the period of infancy. 



Gray was sent to be educated at Eton, where a maternal uncle, 

 of the name of Antrobus, was one of the assistant masters. It 

 may be mentioned, that at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge, Gray 

 was entirely supported by his mother; the father, who was a 

 selfish, violent, and unprincipled man, having chosen to refuse all 

 assistance towards his son's education. At Eton Gray made him- 

 self a good classic ; and here too began that friendship with West 

 which, shortly terminated by the premature death of the latter, yet 

 forms one of the most interesting features in the history of Gray's 

 early manhood. Horace Walpole was another of his intimate asso- 

 ciates at Eton, and, removing thence to Cambridge at the same time 

 with Gray, continued to be so there : West went to Oxford. It was 

 in the autumn of 1735 that Gray commenced his residence at Cam- 

 bridge, having entered at Peter House ; and he continued to reside 

 till September 1738, when he left without a degree. He professed 

 to bate mathematics, and college discipline was irksome to him. " You 

 must know," he writes in hU second year to his friend West at Oxford, 

 " that I do not take degrees, and, after this term, shall have nothing 

 more of college impertinences to undergo." His time at Cambridge 

 was devoted to classics, modern languages, and poetry; and a few 

 Latin poems and English translations were made by him at this 

 period. 



In the spring of 1739 Gray set out, in company with Horace 

 Walpole, and at his request, on a tour through France and Italy. 

 They passed the following winter at Florence with Mr. (afterwards 

 Sir) Horace Mann, the envoy at the court ; and after visiting Rome 

 and Naples, and seeing the remains of Herculaneum, which had only 

 becu discovered the year before, they pawed eleven months more 

 at Florence. \\ bile here Gray commenced his Latin poem ' De Prin- 

 cipiis C'ogitandi.' But the travellers afterwards quarrelled, Gray being, 

 as Horace Walpole has it, "too serious a companion." "I had just 

 broke loose," says Walpole, " from the restraint of the university, with 

 as much money as I could spend ; and I was willing to indulge myself. 

 Gray was for antiquities, &c., whilst I was for perpetual balls and 

 plays : the fault was mine." (' Walpoliana,' L ex.) Gray turned his 

 steps homewards, and arrived in England in September .1741, just in 

 time to be present at his father's death. 



Gray had intended, on leaving Cambridge, to devote himself to the 

 study of the law. His traveU had now, for two years and a half, 

 diverted him from this object ; and after his father's death he appears 

 entirely to have given it up. He went to reside at Cambridge for the 

 professed purpose of taking the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law, but 

 continued to reside there after taking the degree. Enjoying oppor- 

 tunities of books which he could not command elsewhere, he devoted 

 himself with much ardour to the perusal of the classics, and at the 

 same time cultivated hU muse. The ' Ode to Spring ' was written hi 

 1742, and sent, like most of his previous compositions, to West, who 

 however had died before it reached him ; and in the autumn of the 

 same year, were written the ' Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton Col- 

 lege,' and the ' Hymn to Adversity.' The ' Elegy in a Country Church- 

 yard ' was also commenced at this period, but not finished till seven 

 yean afterwards. In the meanwhile the ' Ode to Eton College ' had 

 been published (being the first of Gray's publications) in 1747, and 

 little notice had been taken of it The ' Elegy,' published in 1749, 

 rapidly obtained an extensive popularity. 



In March 1753 Gray lost his mother, for whom he had always felt 

 the strongest affection, and whom, according to Mr. Mason, he seldom 

 afterwards men' jned without a sigh. During the three years follow- 

 ing Horace \Vulpole observes that Gray was 'in flower." The 'Ode 

 on the Prognss of Poetry' and the ' Bard ' were then written. But 

 it was during these three years also that a material change for the 

 worse took place in Gray's health, and that he began to be visited 

 with alarming attacks of the gout, which embittered the remainder of 

 bis days, and ultimately carried him oft 



In 1756 Gray having experienced some incivilities at Peter House, 

 removed, or (in the technical phrase) migrated to Pembroke Hall. In 

 1757 he took his last two odes to London to bo published. They 

 were not eminently successful. But Gray's reputation had been 

 already established ; and on the death of Gibber in the came year he 

 was offered the laureattship by the Duke of Devonshire, which how- 

 ever he refused. He applied himself now for some time to the study 

 of architecture ; and from him Mr. Bentbam derived much valuable 

 assistance in his well-known 'History of Ely.' In 1765 ho visited 

 Scotland, and was then received with many signs of honour. The 

 University of Aberdeen proposed to confer on him the drgree of 

 Doctor of Laws ; but he declined the honour, thinking that it might 



BICKJ. DIV. VOL. Hi, 



appear a slight and contempt of Ma own university, where he says 

 " he passed so many easy and happy hours of his life, where lie had 

 once lived from choice, and continued to do so from obligation." In 

 1768 the professorship of modern history at Cambridge became vacant, 

 nd Gray, who on the occasion of the preceding vacancy had applied 

 unsuccessfully, was now appointed by the Duke of Grafton. In the 

 succeeding year the Duke of Grafton was elected chancellor of the 

 university, and Gray wrote the installation ode, a poem which, con- 

 sidering; the subject and the occasion, is singularly chaste and free 

 from Battery. In the spring of 1770 illness overtook him, as he was 

 projecting a tour in Wales ; but recovering, he was able to effect tho 

 tour in the autumn. His respite however was but a short one ; and 

 having suffered for some months previous from a violent cough and 

 great depression of spirits, he was suddenly seized, oa the 24th of 

 July 1771, with an attack of the gout in the stomach, which caused 

 his death on the 30th of the same month. He died in his fifty-fifth 

 year. 



The life of Gray is one singularly (even for an author) devoid of 

 variety and incident. It is the life of a student giving himself up to 

 learning, and moreover accounting it an end in itself, and its owu 

 exceeding great reward. For it is not so much that he kept aloof 

 from the active pursuits of life for the purpose of authorship, as that 

 he comparatively sacrificed even this and the fame which belongs to 

 it, by devoting his time almost entirely to reading. Writing was with 

 him the exception, and that too a rare one. His life was spent in 

 the acquisition of knowledge; and there is no doubt that he was a 

 man of considerable learning. His acquaintance with the classics was 

 profound and extensive. He had thought at one time of publishing 

 an edition of Strabo ; and he left behind him many notes and geo- 

 graphical disquisitions, which, together with notes on Plato and 

 Aristophanes, were edited by Mr. Mathias. He was besides a very 

 skilful zoologist and botanist. His knowledge of architecture has 

 been already mentioned. He was well versed moreover in heraldry, 

 and was a diligent antiquarian. 



He wrote little ; but as is often the case with those who write little, 

 the little that he wrote was written with great care. Thus his poems, 

 with the exception of one or two of a humorous character, are all 

 much elaborated ; and it follows that the quality which they chiefly 

 display is taste. Gray was indeed emphatically a mau of taste. Ho 

 did not possess, as has been loosely said by many of his admirers, a 

 vivid and luxuriant imagination, else he would in all probability have 

 written more. 



A scanty writer, Gray was also a scanty converaer ; and we learn 

 from Horace Walpole that his conversation partook al,-o of the studied 

 character of bis writing. Writing on one occasion to Mr. Moutigu, 

 Walpole says, " My Lady Ailesbury has been much diverted, and so 

 will you too. Gray is in their neighbourhood. They went a party to 

 dine on a cold loaf, and passed the day. Lady A. protests he never 

 opened his lips but once, and then only said, ' Yes, my lady, I believe 

 so.' " But Walpole wrote for effect, and so that that was attuned he 

 paid little regard to veracity. Yet it may be taken for granted that 

 the anecdote, however exaggerated, bore some semblance of proba- 

 bility. With his intimate friends Gray was certainly less reserved ; 

 and to them his conversation was learned and witty. It is unneces- 

 sary, after the account which has been given of Gray's life, to dwell 

 on the amiability of his character, his affectionateness, and humility. 



His friend Mason the poet published a Memoir of Gray, and also 

 his Letters, which have served as the basis of the subsequent lives of 

 Gray. An edition of Gray's works, containing, as has been said, bis 

 classical notes and disquisitions, as well as his poems and letters, was 

 published by Mr. Matbias, in 2 vols. 4 to, in 1814. An edition of his 

 poems and letters alone has been published by Mr. Mitford, first in 

 1816, in 2 vols. 4to, and very recently in 4 vols. 12mo. To both of 

 Mr. Mitford a editions is prefixed a memoir of Gray, which is ou 

 the whole the best that has appeared ; but a more valuable addition 

 to our stock of information respecting Gray was afforded by an edition 

 of ' Gray's Correspondence with Mason,' &c., published by Mr. Mitford 

 in 1853, and which showed what had not previously been suspected, 

 that Mason used a most unwarrantable licence in printing the Letters 

 of Gray, by altering them in various ways to suit his own notions. 



GREAVES, JOHN, an eminent English mathematician, scholar, 

 and antiquary, was born at Colmore, near Alresford, Hants, in 1 602 ; 

 went to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1617 ; was elected fellow of Mertou 

 in 1624, and appointed geometry professor of Gresham College, 

 London, in 1630. In 1637 he undertook a journey to the Levant and 

 Egypt, with the view of examining such antiquities as might serve to 

 illustrate ancient authors, and of making astronomical and geo- 

 graphical observations. He spent about a year at Constantinople, and 

 in the summer of 1638 proceeded to Egypt, where his chief per- 

 formance was a survey of the pyramids, of which no satisfactory 

 account was then extant ; thia was published under the title ' Pyra- 

 midographia,' in 1646. On his return he spent some months in 

 visiting tbe chief cities of Italy, studying their antiquities, and 

 consulting their libraries; and reached England early in 1640. Ho 

 took up his abode at Oxford, and having been appointed Saviliau 

 professor of astronomy in November 1643, was immediately after 

 very properly deprived of his Gresham professorship for neglect of 

 duty. Being of the Koyalist party he was ejected from both fellow 



