Note 40 — Chapter II
Reading edition
This rests upon the authority of a shadowy Mr. Roberts of the Pell-office, who told it to Isaac Reed in 1799, more than half a century after the event. The subject is discussed at some length, but of necessity inconclusively, by Mr. D. C. Tovey in his interesting Gray and his Friends, 1890. Mr. Tovey thinks that Ashton was obscurely connected with the quarrel.