The biographers of Gray (and for a man who lived such an uneventfullife he has had a great many) give much space to his early letters to Walpole and their two friends of the 'Quadruple Alliance' at Eton. This partiality is not hard to understand: the letters of Gray, Walpole, West, and Ashton bring back the friendships of one's own school days, or, rather, glorify them; what other schoolboys ever put into letters so much humour, criticism, sentiment, and affection? These precocious boys-of whom one was to write the most beloved poem of the century and another to give posterity the history of his time-admit us into their company. As we read their letters we are mindful of what the ministers of fate had in store for the writers, and the reading is wistful and pleasant and sad.
