GRAY, Thomas, English poet and scholar: b. Cornhill, London, 26 Dec. 1716• d. Cam bridge, 30 July 1771. He was the fifth child and only survivor of 12 infants born to Philip Gray, a money-scrivener, and Dorothy Antrobus, a one-time milliner. The father was brutal and maltreated his wife, who had to support herself and her son. When Gray was 11 he was sent to Eton, where his uncle, William
was one of the masters. Here he formed a close intimacy with a few boys of quiet tastes— notably with Horace Walpole (q.v.) and Rich ard West, upon whose death he wrote one of the few sonnets to be found in the literature of the early 18th century. Seven years later (1734), Gray became a pensioner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, Walpole coming up the next year but to another college. Gray found the courses at Cambridge unsatisfactory, his tastes being at that time literary rather than scientific and philosophical, and he was not sociable or inclined to sports. He left in. 1738 without taking a degree and lived a few months in London before he accepted Horace Walpole's invitation to become his companion on a '
Gray and his mother remained in London for some time, the former suffering from a . .
naturally morbid temperament and the loss of his friend West, making but slight efforts to enter the profession he was dallying with, the law. In October 1742 Mrs. Gray 'went to live with her two sisters in the house of one of them at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, and Gray betook himself to Cambridge in order to study the civil law. He was made LL.B. in 1743, but really spent most of his time reading Greek and annotating what he read with the care he had displayed in noting down what interested him during his tour.
Cambridge, though he disliked the place and had few congenial friends there, became prac tically Gray's residence for the rest of his life, since he could live comfortably on his small in come and could have access to books. Among his few friends, who did not, however, remain in Cambridge permanee, were his corre spondents, Dr. Thomas Wharton and the Rev. William Mason, the latter a rather servile liter ary follower. In 1744 the friendship with Wal pole was renewed and Gray became a visitor to Strawberry Hill. He also went every summer to Stoke Poges to see his mother, who died there in 1753. But he could never be drawn out by others, and he never '