How have I trembled, when, at Tancred's stroke, Its gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd! When each live plant with mortal accents spoke, And the wild blast upheav'd the vanish'd sword! How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind, To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung! Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind Believ'd the magic wonders which he sung! Hence, at each sound, imagination glows! Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here! Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows! Melting it flows, pure, murm'ring, strong and clear, And fills th'impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmo. nious ear! XV. All hail! ye scenes, that o'er my soul prevail ! Or o'er your mountains creep in awful gloom? Then will I dress once more the faded bower, Where Jonson§ sat in Drummond's classic shade; Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each lyric flower, And mourn, on Yarrow's banks, where Willy's laid! Meantime, ye pow'rs that on the plains which bore The cordial youth, on Lothian's plains, attend!Where'er Home dwells, on hill, or lowly moor, To him I love your kind protection lend, And, touch'd with love like mine, preserve my absent friend! + Three rivers in Scotland. Ben Jonson paid a visit on foot, in 1619, to the Scotch poet Drummond, at his seat of Hawthornden, within four miles of Edinburgh. THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. THOMAS GRAY, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge. The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with academical qualifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the common law, he took no degree. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's Letters' contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dig. nity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel; and the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own little fortune, with only an occasional servant. He returned to England in September, 1741, and in about two months afterwards buried his father, who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law. He, therefore, retired to Cambridge, where he soon after became bachelor of civil law, and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he passed, except a short residence at London, the rest of his life. About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who deserved his esteem by the powers which he shews in his letters, and in the Ode to May,' which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina,' a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted the progress of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina' was never finished. In this year (1742) Gray seems to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring,' his Prospect of Eton,' and his Ode to Adversity.' He began likewise a Latin poem, De Principiis Cogitandi. It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for, though there is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in his lyric numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess; and his lines, even when |