AS A NATURALIST 
own," he wrote to his friend Nicholls, "and you plant and trans- 
plant, and are dirty and amused; are you not ashamed of your- 
self? Why, I have no such things, you monster; nor ever shall 
be dirty or amused as long as I live! My gardens are in the win- 
dow, like those of a lodger up three pair of stairs in Petticoat 
Lane or Camomile Street, and they go to bed regularly under 
the same roof that I do." 
"The favorite study of Mr. Gray for the last ten years of his 
life," says Mason in his Memoirs of the poet, "was Natural His- 
tory. ... He followed it closely, and often said that he thought 
it a singular felicity to have engaged in it, as, besides the con- 
stant amusement it gave him in his chamber, it led him more 
frequently out into the fields, and, by making his life less seden- 
tary, improved the general course of his health and spirits." 
Gray''s letters afford abundant confirmation of Mason's words, 
but still stronger evidence of his devotion to the study of nature 
is found in the marginal notes with which he enriched the pages 
of his books. Mason speaks especially of his notes on Hudson's 
Flora Anglka^ and on the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus, "which 
latter he interleaved and filled almost entirely." In a letter writ- 
ten after the poefs death, Mr. Cole says: "He had Linnaeus's 
Works interleaved always before him, when I have accidentally 
called upon him." 
Gray bequeathed to Mason his manuscripts and the better 
(9) 
