Thomas Gray, the author of the celebrated _Elegy written in a Country
Churchyard_, was born in Cornhill, London, December 26, 1716. His
father, Philip Gray, an exchange broker and scrivener, was a wealthy
and nominally respectable citizen, but he treated his family with
brutal severity and neglect, and the poet was altogether indebted for
the advantages of a learned education to the affectionate care and
industry of his mother, whose maiden name was Antrobus, and who, in
conjunction with a maiden sister, kept a millinery shop. A brother of
Mrs. Gray was assistant to the Master of Eton, and was also a fellow
of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Under his protection the poet was
educated at Eton, and from thence went to Peterhouse, attending
college from 1734 to September, 1738. At Eton he had as
contemporaries Richard West, son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,
and Horace Walpole, son of the triumphant Whig minister, Sir Robert
Walpole. West died early in his 26th year, but his genius and virtues
and his sorrows will forever live in the correspondence of his
friend. In the spring of 1739, Gray was invited by Horace Walpole to
accompany him as travelling companion in a tour through France and
Italy. They made the usual route, and Gray wrote remarks on all he
saw in Florence, Rome, Naples, etc. His observations on arts and
antiquities, and his sketches of foreign manners, evince his
admirable taste, learning, and discrimination. Since Milton, no such
accomplished English traveller had visited those classic shores. In
their journey through Dauphiny, Gray's attention was strongly
arrested by the wild and picturesque site of the Grande Chartreuse,
surrounded by its dense forest of beech and fir, its enormous
precipices, cliffs, and cascades. He visited it a second time on his
return, and in the album of the mountain convent he wrote his famous
Alcaic Ode. At Reggio the travellers quarrelled and parted. Walpole
took the whole blame on himself. He was fond of pleasure and
amusements, "intoxicated by vanity, indulgence, and the insolence of
his situation as a prime minister's son"--his own confession--while
Gray was studious, of a serious disposition, and independent spirit.
The immediate cause of the rupture is said to have been Walpole's
clandestinely opening, reading, and resealing a letter addressed to
Gray, in which he expected to find a confirmation of his suspicions
that Gray had been writing unfavourably of him to some friends in
England. A partial reconciliation was effected about three years
afterwards by the intervention of a lady, and Walpole redeemed his
youthful error by a life-long sincere admiration and respect for his
friend. From Reggio Gray proceeded to Venice, and thence travelled
homewards, attended by a _laquais de voyage_. He arrived in England
in September, 1741, having been absent about two years and a half.
His father died in November, and it was found that the poet's fortune
would not enable him to prosecute the study of the law. He therefore
retired to Cambridge, and fixed his residence at the university.
There he continued for the remainder of his life, with the exception
of about two years spent in London, when the treasures of the British
Museum were thrown open. At Cambridge he had the range of noble
libraries. His happiness consisted in study, and he perused with
critical attention the Greek and Roman poets, philosophers,
historians, and orators. Plato and the Anthologia he read and
annotated with great care, as if for publication. He compiled tables
of Greek chronology, added notes to Linnæus and other naturalists,
wrote geographical disquisitions on Strabo; and, besides being
familiar with French and Italian literature, was a zealous
archæological student, and profoundly versed in architecture, botany,
painting, and music. In all departments of human learning, except
mathematics, he was a master. But it follows that one so studious, so
critical, and so fastidious, could not be a voluminous writer. A few
poems include all the original compositions of Gray--the
quintessence, as it were, of thirty years of ceaseless study and
contemplation, irradiated by bright and fitful gleams of inspiration.
In 1742 Gray composed his _Ode to Spring_, his _Ode on a Distant
Prospect of Eton College_, and his _Ode to Adversity_--productions
which most readers of poetry can repeat from memory. He commenced a
didactic poem, _On the Alliance of Education and Government_, but
wrote only about a hundred lines. Every reader must regret that this
philosophical poem is but a fragment. It is in the style and measure
of Dryden, of whom Gray was an ardent admirer and close student. His
_Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ was completed and published
in 1751. In the form of a sixpenny _brochure_ it circulated rapidly,
four editions being exhausted the first year. This popularity
surprised the poet. He said sarcastically that it was owing entirely
to the subject, and that the public would have received it as well if
it had been written in prose. The solemn and affecting nature of the
poem, applicable to all ranks and classes, no doubt aided its sale;
it required high poetic sensibility and a cultivated taste to
appreciate the rapid transitions, the figurative language, and
lyrical magnificence of the odes; but the elegy went home to all
hearts; while its musical harmony, originality, and pathetic train of
sentiment and feeling render it one of the most perfect of English
poems. No vicissitudes of taste or fashion have affected its
popularity. When the original manuscript of the poem was lately
(1854) offered for sale, it brought the almost incredible sum of 131
pounds. The two great odes of Gray, _The Progress of Poetry_ and _The
Bard_, were published in 1757, and were but coldly received. His
name, however, stood high, and on the death of Cibber, the same year,
he was offered the laureateship, which he wisely declined. He was
ambitious, however, of obtaining the more congenial and dignified
appointment of Professor of Modern History in the University of
Cambridge, which fell vacant in 1762, and, by the advice of his
friends, he made application to Lord Bute, but was unsuccessful. Lord
Bute had designed it for the tutor of his son-in-law, Sir James
Lowther. No one had heard of the tutor, but the Bute influence was
all-prevailing. In 1765 Gray took a journey into Scotland,
penetrating as far north as Dunkeld and the Pass of Killiecrankie;
and his account of his tour, in letters to his friends, is replete
with interest and with touches of his peculiar humour and graphic
description. One other poem proceeded from his pen. In 1768 the
Professorship of Modern History was again vacant, and the Duke of
Grafton bestowed it upon Gray. A sum of 400 pounds per annum was thus
added to his income; but his health was precarious--he had lost it,
he said, just when he began to be easy in his circumstances. The
nomination of the Duke of Grafton to the office of Chancellor of the
University enabled Gray to acknowledge the favour conferred on
himself. He thought it better that gratitude should sing than
expectation, and he honoured his grace's installation with an ode.
Such occasional productions are seldom happy; but Gray preserved his
poetic dignity and select beauty of expression. He made the founders
of Cambridge, as Mr. Hallam has remarked, "pass before our eyes like
shadows over a magic glass." When the ceremony of the installation
was over, the poet-professor went on a tour to the lakes of
Cumberland and Westmoreland, and few of the beauties of the
lake-country, since so famous, escaped his observation. This was to
be his last excursion. While at dinner one day in the college-hall he
was seized with an attack of gout in his stomach, which resisted all
the powers of medicine, and proved fatal in less than a week. He died
on the 30th of July, 1771, and was buried, according to his own
desire, beside the remains of his mother at Stoke-Pogis, near Slough,
in Buckinghamshire, in a beautiful sequestered village churchyard
that is supposed to have furnished the scene of his elegy.[1] The
literary habits and personal peculiarities of Gray are familiar to us
from the numerous representations and allusions of his friends. It is
easy to fancy the recluse-poet sitting in his college-chambers in the
old quadrangle of Pembroke Hall. His windows are ornamented with
mignonette and choice flowers in China vases, but outside may be
discerned some iron-work intended to be serviceable as a fire-escape,
for he has a horror of fire. His furniture is neat and select; his
books, rather for use than show, are disposed around him. He has a
harpsichord in the room. In the corner of one of the apartments is a
trunk containing his deceased mother's dresses, carefully folded up
and preserved. His fastidiousness, bordering upon effeminacy, is
visible in his gait and manner--in his handsome features and small,
well-dressed person, especially when he walks abroad and sinks the
author and hard student in "the gentleman who sometimes writes for
his amusement." He writes always with a crow-quill, speaks slowly and
sententiously, and shuns the crew of dissonant college revellers, who
call him "a prig," and seek to annoy him. Long mornings of study, and
nights feverish from ill-health, are spent in those chambers; he is
often listless and in low spirits; yet his natural temper is not
desponding, and he delights in employment. He has always something to
learn or to communicate--some sally of humour or quiet stroke of
satire for his friends and correspondents--some note on natural
history to enter in his journal--some passage of Plato to unfold and
illustrate--some golden thought of classic inspiration to inlay on
his page--some bold image to tone down--some verse to retouch and
harmonize. His life is on the whole innocent and happy, and a feeling
of thankfulness to the Great Giver is breathed over all.
[Footnote 1: A claim has been put up for the churchyard of
Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge, the great bell of St.
Mary's serving for the "curfew." But Stoke-Pogis is more likely to
have been the spot, if any individual locality were indicated. The
poet often visited the village, his aunt and mother residing there,
and his aunt was interred in the churchyard of the place. Gray's
epitaph on his mother is characterized not only by the tenderness
with which he always regarded her memory, but by his style and cast
of thought. It runs thus: "Beside her friend and sister here sleep
the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of
many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.
She died March 11, 1753, aged 72." She had lived to read the _Elegy_,
which was perhaps an ample recompense for her maternal cares and
affection. Mrs. Gray's will commences in a similar touching strain:
"In the name of God, amen. This is the last will and desire of
Dorothy Gray to her son Thomas Gray." [Cunningham's edit. of
_Johnson's Lives_.] They were all in all to each other. The father's
cruelty and neglect, their straitened circumstances, the sacrifices
made by the mother to maintain her son at the university, her pride
in the talents and conduct of that son, and the increasing gratitude
and affection of the latter, nursed in his scholastic and cloistered
solitude--these form an affecting but noble record in the history of
genius.
[One would infer from the above that Mrs. Gray was _not_ "interred in
the churchyard of the place," though the epitaph given immediately
after shows that she _was_. Gray in his will directed that he should
be laid beside her there. The passage in the will reads thus: "First,
I do desire that my body may be deposited in the vault, made by my
dear mother in the churchyard of Stoke-Pogeis, near Slough in
Buckinghamshire, by her remains, in a coffin of seasoned oak, neither
lined nor covered, and (unless it be inconvenient) I could wish that
one of my executors may see me laid in the grave, and distribute
among such honest and industrious poor persons in said parish as he
thinks fit, the sum of ten pounds in charity."--_Ed_.]]
Various editions of the collected works of Gray have been published.
The first, including memoirs of his life and his correspondence,
edited by his friend, the Rev. W. Mason, appeared in 1775. It has
been often reprinted, and forms the groundwork of the editions by
Mathias (1814) and Mitford (1816). Mr. Mitford, in 1843, published
Gray's correspondence with the Rev. Norton Nicholls; and in 1854
another collection of Gray's letters was published, edited also by
Mr. Mitford. Every scrap of the poet's MSS. is eagerly sought after,
and every year seems to add to his popularity as a poet and
letter-writer.
* * * * * *
In 1778 a monument to Gray was erected in Westminster Abbey by Mason,
with the following inscription:
No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns,
To Britain let the nations homage pay;
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.
The cenotaph afterwards erected in Stoke Park by Mr. Penn is
described below.
[Illustration: WEST-END HOUSE.]