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 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 diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable.  Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his age have enjoyed at the head of a school.  Little intrigues, little schemes and policies engage their thoughts; and at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in, furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination.’