LESSONS OF HIS LIFE 445 retention of uprightness under temptation, there is no more memorable instance of either than is presented by the life and character of this illustrious man. And whatever be the condition of him who seeks to profit by the story, none can be so low but he is in a position as advantageous as Johnson, and none can be so high but that, with all his helps, he will have enough to do to emulate his model. THIS Essay was published in the Quarterly Review for December, 1853, under the title of "The Life and Works of Gray." It was afterwards interleaved for revision, but never was touched. It is therefore reprinted here as it stood in the Review, except for the omission of some preliminary passages on the liberties which Mason took with Gray's letters when he edited them for publication. The references added in the notes are to the editions of Gray which the author used in preparing the article. These were Gray's Works, with Life by Mitford, 1836-1843; the Eton edition of Gray's Poetical Works, with Mitford's later Memoir, 1853; and Mitford's Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 1853, with the Additional Notes, 1855. 1 GRAY HOMAS GRAY, the fifth child of Philip Gray, a TH money-scrivener, was born December 26, 1716, in Cornhill, where his mother and her sister kept a milliner's shop. Of twelve children, eleven died in their infancy from fulness of blood, and the poet would have shared the family fate but for the firmness of his mother in opening a vein. A case submitted to counsel, on the part of Mrs. Gray, in 1735, when her son was an undergraduate at Cambridge, admits us to a view of the domestic interior.1 The money-scrivener was jealous of every man who approached his wife, her brother included, and in his paroxysms of suspicion he beat and kicked her, accompanying his blows with the most abusive language. This usage, which commenced shortly after the marriage, had grown to such a height, that for a twelvemonth past Mrs. Gray, out of fear for her life, had shared her sister's bed. Her husband threatened to take further revenge. He was the owner of the house in which they all lived, and in which the millinery trade was carried on. He gave warning to Mary Antrobus, the sister, to quit, in the hope, real or pretended, that the business would be destroyed by removing it from its ancient locality. Mrs. Gray's share of the profits had been settled upon herself at the time of the marriage, and besides paying forty pounds a year to her husband for the rent of the shop, and providing most of the furniture of his house, she had 1 [Mitford's Life of Gray, App. B, Works, vol. i. p. xcvi.] 11.-2 G 449 |