o desert
him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of
images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his
love of lyricks, that, having written, with great vigour and poignancy,
his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode
disgraceful only to its author.

Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly want
force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and uncouth,
the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes dissonant, or
unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too
little regard to established use, and, therefore, perplexing to the ear,
which, in a short composition, has not time to grow familiar with an
innovation.

To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they have,
doubtless, brighter and darker parts; but, when they are once found to
be generally dull, all further labour may be spared: for to what use can
the work be criticised that will not be read?

-----

[Footnote 195: Johnson entertained a very high idea of the varied
learning and science necessarily connected with the character of an
accomplished physician, and often affirmed of the physicians of this
island, that "they did more good to mankind without a prospect of
reward, than any profession of men whatever." His friendship for Dr.
Bathurst, and the most eminent men in the medical line of his day, is
well known. See an epistle to Dr. Percival, developing the wide field of
knowledge over which a physician should expatiate, prefixed to
Observations on the Literature of the Primitive Christian Writers. ED.]

[Footnote 196: A most curious and original character of Akenside is
given by George Hardinge, in vol. viii. of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes.
ED.]

GRAY.

Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at
Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then
assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.

The transition from the school to the college is, to most young
scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty,
and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with
academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of
life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly o