t 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."

Two months after his return to England, his father died, somewhat
impoverished by improvidence. Gray, thinking himself too poor to study
the law, sent his mother and a maiden sister to reside at Stoke, near
Windsor, and retired to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he resumed his
classical and poetical pursuits. To West, who by this time was
declining in health, he sent part of "Agrippina," a tragedy he had
commenced. West objected to the length and prosiness of Agrippina's
speeches. These were afterwards altered by Mason, in accordance with
West's suggestions; but Gray was discouraged, and has left "Agrippina"
a Torso. The subject was unpleasing. To have treated adequately the
character of Nero, would have required mo