He had intended to study law, but was diverted from his purpose by Horace Walpole, who invited him to take in his Company the “grand tour.”  To no Briton, since Milton, could travel have been more congenial or more instructive than to Gray.  He that would travel to advantage must first have travelled in mind all the countries he visits, and must be learned in their literature, their politics, their scenery, and their antiquities, ere ever he sets a foot upon their shores.  To Italy and France, Gray went as to favourite studies, not as to relaxations; and spent his time in observing their famous scenes with the eye of a poet—­cataloguing their paintings in the spirit of a connoisseur—­perfecting his knowledge of their languages—­examining minutely the principles of their architecture and music—­comparing their present aspect with the old classical descriptions; and writing home an elegant epistolary account of all his sights, and all his speculations.  He saw Paris—­visited Geneva—­passed to Florence—­hurried to Rome on the tidings of Pope Clement XII’s death, to see the installation of his successor—­stood beside the cataracts of Tivoli and Terni, and might have seen in both, emblems of his own genius, which, like them, was beautiful and powerful, but artificial—­took a rapid run to Naples, and was charmed beyond expression with its bay, its climate, and its fruitage—­and was one of the first English travellers to visit Herculaneum, discovered only the year before (1739), and to wonder at that strange and solemn rehearsal of the resurrection exhibited in its streets.  From Naples he returned to Florence, where he continued eleven months, and began a Latin poem, “De Principiis Cogitandi.”  He then, on the 24th of April 1741, set off with Walpole for Bologna and Reggio.  At this latter place occurred the celebrated quarrel between the two travellers.  The causes and circumstances of this are involved in considerable obscurity.  Dissimilarity of tastes and habits was probably at the bottom of it.  Gray was an enthusiastic scholar; Walpole was then a gay and giddy voluptuary, although predestined to sour down into the most cold-blooded and cynical of gossips.  They parted at Reggio, to meet only once afterwards at Strawberry Hill, where Gray long after visited Walpole at his own invitation, but told him frankly he never could be on the same terms of friendship again.  Left now to pursue his journey alone, he went to Venice, and thence came back through Padua and Milan to France.  On his way between Turin and Lyons, he turned aside to see again the noble mountainous scenery surrounding the Grande Chartreuse in Dauphine; and in the album kept by the fathers wrote his Alcaic Ode, testifying to his admiration of a scene where, he says, “every precipice and cliff was pregnant, with religion and poetry.”