1716-1771
[Sidenote: Gosse’s _Gray_. *]
“In one of Philip Gray’s fits of extravagance he seems to have had a
full-length of his son painted about this time, by the fashionable
portrait-painter of the day, Jonathan Richardson the elder. This
picture is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. The head is
good in colour and modelling; a broad pale brow, sharp nose and chin,
large eyes, and a pert expression, give a lively idea of the precocious
and not very healthy young gentleman of thirteen. He is dressed in a
blue satin coat, lined with pale shot silk, and crosses his stockinged
legs so as to display dapper slippers of russet leather.”--1729.
[Sidenote: Warburton’s _Horace Walpole and his contemporaries_. *]
“Gray, judging from his portrait by Echardt, lately at Strawberry
Hill, was eminently the poet and the scholar in his appearance. A
delicate frame, a pale complexion, an expansive forehead, clear eyes,
a small mouth, and regular features, bearing the general impression of
thoughtfulness and melancholy, surrounded by his own hair, worn long,
prepossessed the spectator in his favour, and charmed those who were
already his admirers.”
[Sidenote: Gosse’s _Gray_.]
“Mr. Gray’s singular niceness in the choice of his acquaintance makes
him appear fastidious in a great degree to all who are not acquainted
with his manner. He is of a fastidious and recluse distance of
carriage, rather averse to all sociability, but of the graver turn,
nice and elegant in his person, dress, and behaviour, even to a degree
of finicality and effeminacy.”--1770.