Gray, Thomas

Gray, Thomas (1716–71). Gray led a sheltered existence: ‘a life so barren of events as mine’, he wrote to a friend. Educated at Eton, he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, and returned after a grand tour as a fellow-commoner. In 1756 he transferred across the road to Pembroke College, having found his Peterhouse neighbours boisterous and noisy. He did not greatly like Cambridge but remained there for the rest of his life. In 1768 he was made professor of history and, characteristically, did not lecture but worried about it. His poetic fame came in 1750 when, through Horace Walpole, his ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’ was published. It touched many of the themes that tormented the 18th cent., particularly the vanity of human wishes: ‘the paths of Glory lead but to the grave.’ Gray was offered the poet laureateship in 1757 in succession to Cibber, but declined. His poetic output was small but crafted. Johnson, whose assessment of Gray in the Lives of the Poets is very cool, admitted that ‘in the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader’.

J. A. Cannon