his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a brief space,
exchanged for an existence almost as studious in London. Between the
years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, in Southampton Row--a
pleasant locality then, opening to the fields--in order to be near the
British Museum, at that time just opened to the public. Here his intense
studies were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of
perusing the Harleian Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance
of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the
friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses
on the death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some
beautiful lines. Gray died in college--a doom that, next to ending one's
days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout: a
suitable, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost an
inevitable disease; but there is no record of his having been
intemperate.

[3: Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.]

Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that
career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of
existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages,
indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger
over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse--
still strong in faith in the world's worth--before we hasten on to
portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont
to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded;
bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one
friend--the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry Hill.

'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of Pitt's