Page:Poetical works (IA poeticalworks00grayrich).pdf/25

of Mrs. Rogers,^[1] another sister, at Stoke, near Windsor and Gray, thinking his fortune not sufficient to enable him to prosecute the study of the law, and yet unwilling to hurt the feelings of his mother, by appearing entirely to forsake his profession, changed or pretended to change the line of study, and went to Cambridge to take his degree in civil law. That in his own mind, however, he had entirely given up all thoughts of his profession, seems to appear from a letter to West: "Alas, for one (he says) who has nothing to do but to amuse himself! I believe my amusements are as little amusing as most folks; but no matter, it makes the hours pass, and is better than ἐν ἀμάθια καὶ ἀμοῦσια καταβιώνει."

"But the narrowness of his circumstances," says Mr. Mason, was not the only thing that distressed him at this period. He had, as we have seen, lost the friendship of Mr. Walpole abroad. He had also lost much time in his travels; a loss which application could not easily retrieve, when so severe and laborious a study as that of the Common Law was to be the object of it; and he well knew that whatever improvement he might have made in this interval, either in taste or science, such improvement would stand him in little stead with regard to his present situation and exigencies. This was not