To THE REV.  WILLIAM COLE

Gray’s death

Paris, 12 Aug. 1771.

DEAR SIR,

I am excessively shocked at reading in the papers that Mr. Gray is dead!  I wish to God you may be able to tell me it is not true!  Yet in this painful uncertainty I must rest some days!  None of my acquaintance are in London.  I do not know to whom to apply but to you.  Alas!  I fear in vain!  Too many circumstances speak it true! the detail is exact;—­a second paper arrived by the same post, and does not contradict it—­and what is worse, I saw him but four or five days before I came hither; he had been to Kensington for the air, complained of gout flying about him, of sensations of it in his stomach, and indeed, thought him changed, and that he looked ill—­still I had not the least idea of his being in danger.—­I started up from my chair, when I read the paragraph—­a cannon-ball could not have surprised me more!  The shock but ceased, to give way to my concern; and my hopes are too ill founded to mitigate it.  If nobody has the charity to write to me, my anxiety must continue till the end of the month, for I shall set out on my return on the 26th; and unless you receive this time enough for your answer to leave London on the 20th, in the evening, I cannot meet it, till I find it in Arlington Street, whither I beg you to direct it.

If the event is but too true, pray add to this melancholy service, that of telling me any circumstances you know of his death.  Our long, very long friendship, and his genius, must endear to me everything that relates to him.  What writings has he left?  Who are his executors?  I should earnestly wish, if he has destined anything to the public, to print it at my press—­it would do me honour, and would give me an opportunity of expressing what I feel for him.  Methinks, as we grow old, our only business here is to adorn the graves of our friends, or to dig our own.

To THE REV.  WILLIAM MASON

The quarrel with Gray

2 March, 1773.

What shall I say?  How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which you submit your papers to my correction?  But if you are friendly, I must be just.  I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text.  I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine.  I was young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a prime minister’s son, not to have been inattentive to the feelings of one, I blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him.