But one of the chief treasures in the library of which I write is Gray’s copy of Milton’s “Poems upon several occasions.  Both English and Latin.  Printed at the Blew Anchor next Mitre Court over against Fetter Lane in Fleet Street.”  When a boy at school, Gray owned and read this charming old volume, and he has printed his name, school-boy fashion, all over the title-page.  Wherever there is a vacant space big enough to hold Thomas Gray, there it stands in faded ink, still fading as time rolls on.  The Latin poems seem to have been most carefully conned by the youthful Etonian, and we know how much he esteemed them in after-life.

* * * * *

Scholarly Robert Southey once owned a book that now towers aloft in my friend’s library.  It is a princely copy of Ben Jonson, the Illustrious.  Southey lent it, when he possessed the magnifico, to Coleridge, who has begemmed it all over with his fine pencillings.  As Ben once handled the trowel, and did other honorable work as a bricklayer, Coleridge discourses with much golden gossip about the craft to which the great dramatist once belonged.  The editor of this magazine would hardly thank me, if I filled ten of his pages with extracts from the rambling dissertations in S.T.C.’s handwriting which I find in this rare folio, but I could easily pick out that amount of readable matter from the margins.  One manuscript anecdote, however, I must transcribe from the last leaf.  I think Coleridge got the story from “The Seer.”

“An Irish laborer laid a wager with another hod bearer that the latter could not carry him up the ladder to the top of a house in his hod, without letting him fall.  The bet is accepted, and up they go.  There is peril at every step.  At the top of the ladder there is life and the loss of the wager,—­death and success below!  The highest point is reached in safety; the wagerer looks humbled and disappointed.  ‘Well,’ said he, ’you have won; there is no doubt of that; worse luck to you another time; but at the third story I HAD HOPES.’”

* * * * *

In a quaint old edition of “The Spectator,” which seems to have been through many sieges, and must have come to grief very early in its existence, if one may judge anything from the various names which are scrawled upon it in different years, reaching back almost to the date of its publication, I find this note in the handwriting of Addison, sticking fast on the reverse side of his portrait.  It is addressed to Ambrose Philips, and there is no doubt that he went where he was bidden, and found the illustrious Joseph all ready to receive him at a well-furnished table.

“Tuesday Night.

“Sir,

“If you are at leisure for an hour, your company will be a great obligation to

“Yr. most humble sev’t.

“J.  Addison.

“Fountain Tavern.”

That night at the “Fountain,” perchance, they discussed that war of words which might then have been raging between the author of the “Pastorals” and Pope, moistening their clay with a frequency to which they were both somewhat notoriously inclined.