Thomas Gray
born Dec. 26, 1716, London
died July 30, 1771, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire,
Eng.
English poet whose “An Elegy Written in a
Country Church Yard” is one of the best known of
English lyric poems. Although his literary
output was slight, he was the dominant poetic
figure in the mid-18th century and a precursor
of the Romantic movement.
Born into a prosperous but unhappy home, Gray
was the sole survivor of 12 children of a harsh
and violent father and a long-suffering mother,
who operated a millinery business to educate
him. A delicate and studious boy, he was sent to
Eton in 1725 at the age of eight. There he
formed a “Quadruple Alliance” with three other
boys who liked poetry and classics and disliked
rowdy sports and the Hogarthian manners of the
period. They were Horace Walpole, the son of the
prime minister; the precocious poet Richard
West, who was closest to Gray; and Thomas
Ashton. The style of life Gray developed at
Eton, devoted to quiet study, the pleasures of
the imagination, and a few understanding
friends, was to persist for the rest of his
years.
In 1734 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge,
where he began to write Latin verse of
considerable merit. He left in 1738 without a
degree and set out in 1739 with Walpole on a
grand tour of France, Switzerland, and Italy at
Sir Robert Walpole’s expense. At first all went
well, but in 1741 they quarreled—possibly over
Gray’s preferences for museums and scenery to
Walpole’s interest in lighter social
pursuits—and Gray returned to England. They were
reconciled in 1745 on Walpole’s initiative and
remained somewhat cooler friends for the rest of
their lives.
In 1742 Gray settled at Cambridge. That same
year West died, an event that affected him
profoundly. Gray had begun to write English
poems, among which some of the best were “Ode on
the Spring,” “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard
West,” “Hymn to Adversity,” and “Ode on a
Distant Prospect of Eton College.” They revealed
his maturity, ease and felicity of expression,
wistful melancholy, and the ability to phrase
truisms in striking, quotable lines, such as
“where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be
wise.” The Eton ode was published in 1747 and
again in 1748 along with “Ode on the Spring.”
They attracted no attention.
It was not until “An Elegy Written in a
Country Church Yard,” a poem long in the making,
was published in 1751 that Gray was recognized.
Its success was instantaneous and overwhelming.
A dignified elegy in eloquent classical diction
celebrating the graves of humble and unknown
villagers was, in itself, a novelty. Its theme
that the lives of the rich and poor alike “lead
but to the grave” was already familiar, but
Gray’s treatment—which had the effect of
suggesting that it was not only the “rude
forefathers of the village” he was mourning but
the death of all men and of the poet
himself—gave the poem its universal appeal.
Gray’s newfound celebrity did not make the
slightest difference in his habits. He remained
at Peterhouse until 1756, when, outraged by a
prank played on him by students, he moved to
Pembroke College. He wrote two Pindaric odes,
“The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,”
published in 1757 by Walpole’s private
Strawberry Hill Press. They were criticized, not
without reason, for obscurity, and in
disappointment, Gray virtually ceased to write.
He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but
declined it. He buried himself in his studies of
Celtic and Scandinavian antiquities and became
increasingly retiring and hypochondriacal. In
his last years his peace was disrupted by his
friendship with a young Swiss nobleman, Charles
Victor de Bonstetten, for whom he conceived a
romantic devotion, the most profound emotional
experience of his life.
Gray died at 55 and was buried in the country
churchyard at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire,
celebrated in his “Elegy.”
