THE POET GRAY 
NichoUs, tells in simple, imperfect English of his life there and 
of Gray''s kindness to him. "After breakfast,^ he says, "appear 
Shakespeare and old Lineus [sic^ struggling together as two 
ghosts would do for a damned soul. Sometimes the one gets the 
better, sometimes the other." 
Thus employed with Shakespeare and Linnaeus, content with 
either, student and lover of both, and of all that both repre- 
sent, we have our last glimpse of the solitary student of nature 
and of books, "perhaps the most learned man in Europe,"" and 
the author of the poem which, says Mr. John Morley, " has for 
nearly a century and a half given to greater multitudes of men 
more of the exquisite pleasure of poetry than any other single 
piece in all the glorious treasury of English verse." 
On one of the first pages of the second part of the first volume 
of the Systema Naturce, Gray has written the following words 
of Aristotle. They indicate the deeper thought which animated 
his studies of nature. 
Ato Set fXT} Sv<r\epaiveiv TratSiKws r^v irepi twj/ aTifWTfpwv ^wwv iTTLCTKaf/LV' 
iv TToxTi yap rots ^vo-ikoTs davfJuaoTov Ti evcari. Aristot. De partib. Animal. 
KcXoito ^vfia<i elaievai dappovvra^- ciai yap Koi IvravOa Oeol. (^Id. ibid.^ 
" Wherefore one ought not to feel a childish dislike at inspecting the 
lowest animals, for in every object of nature dwells something marvellous." 
"I command you to enter with confidence, for even here are gods." 
( 18 ) 
