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Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classics scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751. Gray was a Self-criticism writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined.Gray, Thomas. The poetical works of Thomas Gray: containing his poems and correspondence, with memoirs of his life and writings. Vol. 1, Printed for Harding, Triphook, and Lepard, 1825. Nineteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/ZIGUXF727905683/NCCO?u=maine_orono&sid=bookmark-NCCO&xid=4d437883&pg=59. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
Gray's mother paid for him to go to Eton College, where his uncles Robert and William Antrobus worked. Robert became Gray's first teacher and helped inspire in Gray a love for botany and observational science. Gray's other uncle, William, became his tutor. He recalled his schooldays as a time of great happiness, as is evident in his "". Gray was a delicate and scholarly boy who spent his time reading and avoiding sport. He lived in his uncle's household rather than at college. He made three close friends at Eton: Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Minister Robert Walpole; Thomas Ashton; and Richard West, son of another Richard West (who was briefly Lord Chancellor of Ireland). The four prided themselves on their sense of style, sense of humour, and appreciation of beauty. They were called the "quadruple alliance". Gray’s nickname in the “Quadruple Alliance” was Orozmades, “the Zoroastrian divinity, who is mentioned in Nathaniel Lee The Rival Queens as a ‘dreadful god’ who from his cave issues groans and shrieks to predict the fall of Babylon.”
In 1734, Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He found the curriculum dull. He wrote letters to friends listing all the things he disliked: the masters ("mad with Pride") and the Fellows ("sleepy, drunken, dull, illiterate Things"). Intended by his family for the law, he spent most of his time as an undergraduate reading classical and modern literature, and playing Antonio Vivaldi and Scarlatti on the harpsichord for relaxation.
In 1738, he accompanied his old school friend Walpole on his Grand Tour of Europe, possibly at Walpole's expense. The two fell out and parted in Tuscany because Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities. They were reconciled a few years later. It was Walpole who later helped publish Gray's poetry. When Gray sent his most famous poem, "Elegy", to Walpole, Walpole sent off the poem as a manuscript and it appeared in different magazines. Gray then published the poem himself and received the credit he was due.
Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his collected works published during his lifetime amount to fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea." Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humour."Walpole, Letters, vi. 206 Gray came to be known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray perhaps knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality and sublimity of death.
In 1762, the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of £400, fell vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, and Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to secure the position for him. In the event, Gray lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he secured the position in 1768 after Brockett's death.Edmund Gosse, Gray (London: Macmillan, 1902), p. 133 at books.google.com
In 1759, during the Seven Years War, before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, British General James Wolfe is said to have recited it to one of his officers, adding, "I would prefer being the author of that Poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow." The Elegy was recognised immediately for its beauty and skill. It contains many phrases which have entered the common English lexicon, either on their own or as quoted in other works. These include:
Gray also wrote light verse, including , a mock-heroic elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat. Even this humorous poem contains some of Gray's most famous lines. Walpole owned two cats: Zara and Selima. Scholars allude to the name Selima mentioned in the poem. After setting the scene with the couplet "What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?", the poem moves to its multiple proverbial conclusion: "a fav'rite has no friend", "know one false step is ne'er retrieved" and "nor all that glisters, gold". (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase (the tub) on a pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill, where it can still be seen).
Gray's surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour. He is well known for his phrase, "where , 'tis folly to be wise," from . It has been asserted that the Ode also abounds with images which find "a mirror in every mind".Gilfillan, George, dissertation in The Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollet 1855, kindle ebook 1855 This was stated by Samuel Johnson who said of the poem, "I rejoice to concur with the common reader ... The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo". Indeed, Gray's poem follows the style of the mid-century literary endeavour to write of "universal feelings." Samuel Johnson also said of Gray that he spoke in "two languages". He spoke in the language of "public" and "private" and according to Johnson, he should have spoken more in his private language as he did in his "Elegy" poem.
When his duties allowed, Gray travelled widely throughout Britain to places such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Scotland and most notably the Lake District (see his Journal of a Visit to the Lake District in 1769) in search of picturesque landscapes and ancient monuments. These elements were not generally valued in the early 18th century, when the popular taste ran to classicism styles in architecture and literature, and most people liked their scenery tame and well-tended. The Gothic fiction details that appear in his Elegy and The Bard are a part of the first foreshadowing of the Romantic movement that dominated the early 19th century, when Wordsworth and the other Lake poets taught people to value the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic. Gray combined traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression, and may be considered as a classically focused precursor of the Romanticism revival.
Gray's connection to the Romantic poets is vexed. In the prefaces to the 1800 and 1802 editions of Wordsworth's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth singled out Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West" to exemplify what he found most objectionable in poetry, declaring it was
"Gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction."Gray wrote in a letter to West, that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry."
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