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PREFATORY NOTICE. XI

and Mason' as having been placed in his hands
by Mr Penn, of Stoke Park The fate of the
originals (though I have been kindly favoured
with all the information which Colonel Stuart
could give me), I am unable to trace; but it
is probable that they would have been quite
inaccessible to me even could I have discovered
where they were. This may, perhaps, be the
best place to mention that Mitford records a line
of Gray's in pencil,

' The rude Columbus of an infant world'—
where he found it, I am uncertain; perhaps
among these Mason papers; if it is in the Common
Place Books at Pembroke College, Cambridge,
whence I have gathered some other poetic jottings
of Gray, it escaped my notice in the search which
the kindness of Dr Searle, the Master of Pembroke,
allowed me to make there. It is obvious to
conjecture that this was a thought for the ' Elegy'
and that the 'rude Columbus' might have found
a place beside the 'village Hampden' and the
'mute inglorious Mlton'.

The Common Place Books of Gray at Pem-
broke have given me much of West's; but offer,
as might be expected, of matter suitable to my
present purpose nothing in eatenso that is new
of Gray's, except the two translations from the



	PREFATORY NOTICE. XI and Mason' as having been placed in his hands by Mr Penn, of Stoke Park The fate of the originals (though I have been kindly favoured with all the information which Colonel Stuart could give me), I am unable to trace; but it is probable that they would have been quite inaccessible to me even could I have discovered where they were. This may, perhaps, be the best place to mention that Mitford records a line of Gray's in pencil, ' The rude Columbus of an infant world'— where he found it, I am uncertain; perhaps among these Mason papers; if it is in the Common Place Books at Pembroke College, Cambridge, whence I have gathered some other poetic jottings of Gray, it escaped my notice in the search which the kindness of Dr Searle, the Master of Pembroke, allowed me to make there. It is obvious to conjecture that this was a thought for the ' Elegy' and that the 'rude Columbus' might have found a place beside the 'village Hampden' and the 'mute inglorious Mlton'. The Common Place Books of Gray at Pem- broke have given me much of West's; but offer, as might be expected, of matter suitable to my present purpose nothing in eatenso that is new of Gray's, except the two translations from the