who had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening'
What a companion for a young man of taste and sympathy! but the friends
were far too clever long to agree. Gray was haughty, impatient,
intolerant of the peculiarities of others, according to the author of
'Walpoliana:' doubtless he detected the vanity, the actual selfishness,
the want of earnest feeling in Horace, which had all been kept down at
school, where boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their betters. In
vain did they travel _en prince_, and all at Walpole's expense; in vain
did they visit courts, and receive affability from princes: in vain did
he of Cornhill participate for a brief period in the attentions lavished
on the son of a British Prime Minister: they quarrelled--and we almost
reverence Gray for that result, more especially when we find the author
of 'Walpoliana' expressing his conviction that 'had it not been for this
idle indulgence of his hasty temper, Mr. Gray would immediately on his
return home have received, as usual, a pension or office from Sir Robert
Walpole.' We are inclined to feel contempt for the anonymous writer of
that amusing little book.

After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, returned to
London. He had been educated with the expectation of being a barrister;
but finding that funds were wanting to pursue a legal education, he gave
up a set of chambers in the Temple, which he had occupied previous to
his travels, and retired to Cambridge.

Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these once fond
friends present! In the small, quaint rooms of Peter-House,[3] Gray
consumed a dreary celibacy, consoled by the Muse alone, who--if other
damsels found no charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or
in his manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of
superiority--never deserted him. His college existence, varied only by