Gray. 
GRA 
In 1768, the professorship of modern hi became 
again vacant, and the Duke of Grafton, then in power, 
at the request of Mr Stonehewer, bestowed it on Gray. 
Soon after the Duke of Grafton was elected to the chan- 
cellorship of the university, and Gray wrote the Ode; 
that was set to music, on the occasion of his installation, 
« He thought it better that gratitude should sing than 
expectation.” When this ceremony was past, he went 
on a tour to the lakes of Westmorland and Cumberland, 
from which his letters are written in a style of the most 
picturesque description, He that/reads his epistola- 
narrative,” says. Dr, Johnson, ‘* wishes ‘that to travel, 
and to tell his travels, had been more of his employ- 
ment.” 
In the April of 1770, he complains much ofa depres- 
sion of spirits, and talks of an intended tour into Wales, 
which took place in autumn ; but not a single letter is 
preserved in Mr Mason’s book on this journey. 
In May 1771, he wrote. to his friend Dr Wharton, 
just sketching the outline of his tour in Wales, and some 
of the adjacent country. . This is the last letter that re- 
mains in Mr Mason’s collection. _He there complains 
of an incurable cough, of spirits habitually low, and of 
the uneasiness which the thought of the duties of his 
profession gave him, which, Mr Mason says, he had now 
a determined resolution to resign. * He mentions also 
different plans of amusement and travel which he had 
projected, but which unfortunately were not to be ac- 
complished. Within a few days after the date of this 
letter he removed to London, where his health more 
and more declined. His physician Dr Gisborne advi- 
sed free air, and he went to Kensington. There hein 
some degree revived, and returned to Cambridge, in- 
tending to go from that place to Old Park, near Dur- 
ham, the residence of his friend Dr Wharton. . On the 
24th of July, however, while at dinner in the college 
hall, he was seized with an attack of the gout in his 
stomach. The violence of the disease resisted all the 
powers of medicine. On the 29th he was seized. with 
convulsions, which returned more violently on the 30th, 
and he expired on the evening of that day in the 55th 
year of his age, sensible almost to the last, aware of his 
danger, and expressing no visible concern at the thought 
of his approaching death. His friend Mr Mason was 
at that time absent ; and the care of his funeral devol- 
ved on the other executor Dr Brown, the president of 
Pembroke Hall, who saw him buried as he desired, by 
the side of his mother, in the church-yard of Stoke. 
Gray, independently of his poetical character, sus- 
tained that of a first-rate scholar. He was perhaps 
(says the Rev. Mr Temple in the summary of his cha- 
racter) the most learned man. in Europe. He knew 
every branch of history, natural and civil; had read all 
the original historians of England, France, and Italy ; 
and was a great antiquarian. His skill in zoology was 
accurate; and in an interleaved copy of Linneus which 
he had left behind, he had/not only concentrated what 
other writers had written, but had altered the style of 
the Swedish naturalist into classical Latin. t Botany, 
which he had studied in early life, was also an amuse~ 
ment of his later years, In axchitecture he was emi- 
nently skilled ; and in heraldry a complete master. To 
these accomplishments must be added his exquisite 
and scientific taste in painting and music. Walpole,in 
458 
GRE 
his History of Painters; Bentham, in his History of 
Ely; Pennant, in his Antiquities of London ; and Ross, 
in-his edition of Cicero’s Familiar Epistles, were all re. © 
spectively indebted to the learning of } 
As a man, the only blemish in his fine character seems 
to have been an excessive and half-affected delicacy. 
His genius as a poet isnot of the most extensive, but of 
the eiensentis ‘He is the only English poet who 
has divested elegiac poetry of its tedium’; placed its 
sombrous i in ct tis were be mC ‘end 
given a tone subdued romantic feel- 
ing to the plain reflections of truth, Respecting his: 
= of soe. are: e 
A Pindar's raptores in the lyre of Gray. 
3° Mason’s Life and Letters of Gray ; and Mitford’s 
ife. (n)° : (re 
GRAZING. See AGRICULTURE, : 
GREAT Inrervats,in music, are the same with ma- 
jor or greater intervals, and are marked with the large 
Roman numerals; as I. IL. ITIL. IV. &c. See Mason 
Intervals; But Mr Holden has used this term inva dif; 
ferent way. See his Great Srxru, and Great Tarrp. (¢). 
GREAT Ocrave of the German theoretical writers 
on music, is that octave (or septave rather) which be- 
gins with C on the second leger line below the bass 
stave, and ends with Bon the second line of that stave, 
or the/mi of Guido. . To this septave they exclusi 
apply the capital letters C, D, E, F,G, A, B, in 
tablature or: literal notation; and in the next: octave 
above, the letters c,d, e, f, g, a,b are used: See 
Smati Ocrave, Once-marken, Twice-MARKED, &€¢. 
Octaves; and Dr Callcott’s Musical Grammar, Art. 
34.  (¢) 
GREAT: Soirm of. M.\Overend, -ppedved by Dr 
Boyce, is a musical curiosity preserved in the lib of 
the Royal Institution in rae at in the Overend Mi 
nuscripts, vol. ii, pp. 113-133, 1438-+149, &c. Itcon- 
tains 86 notes within the octave, and was thought by 
the indefatigable musicians above named, to be capable 
of unravelling all the mysteries of the various ancient 
Greek scales of music,as Dr shad explained them 
diatonically, or by the use of the prime integers 1, 2, 3, 
and 5 only, in their ratios; but to the various oe 
of those, who, according to Dr Wallis, used the higher 
primes 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, &c. in the ratios, and in con- 
sequence have decimals of schismas, or =’s in our nota- 
tion ; or of those, who divided the major tone, or the 
minor fourth, into aliquot parts, for obtaining their in- 
tervals or degrees, this great scale has no near rela- 
tion. See Curomaticum, Diaronicum, Genera, and 
Greek Music. (¢) vind 
t 
mend 
* He had held his professorship of history nearly three years without having begun to execute the duties of it, which consist of two parts ; 
one, the teaching of modern languages; the other, the reading of lectures on modern history. The former he was allowed to execute by depu~ 
ties ; but the latter he was to commence in person, by reading a public lecture in the schools once at least in every term. He was at liberty to 
chuse his language, and chose the Latin, which Mr Mason thought somewhat injudicious ; and although we do not find that he proceeded 
farther than to draw up a part of his introductory lecture, he projected a plan. of very great extent, which, from his indolence and ill health, 
he-would not in all probability have been able to execute. His death, however, prevented the trial. 
+ It is a circumstance not generally known, that he translated the Linnwan genera, or characters of insects, into elegant Latin hexameterss 
