Thomas Gray

The English poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) expressed deep and universal human feelings in forms derived from Greek and Roman literature. Although his output was small, he introduced new subject matter for poetry.

Thomas Gray was born on Dec. 26, 1716, of middle-class parents. He was the only one of 12 children to survive infancy. In 1727 Thomas became a pupil at Eton, where he met several bookish friends, who included Richard West (his death, in 1742, was to reinforce the melancholy that Gray often felt and expressed in his poems) and Horace Walpole, son of England's first modern-style prime minister and later an important man of letters.

Gray attended Cambridge University from 1734 to 1738 and after leaving the university without a degree undertook the grand tour of Europe with Walpole from 1739 to 1741. During this tour the two friends quarreled, but the quarrel was made up in 1745, and Walpole was to be a significant influence in the promulgation of Gray's poems in later years. In 1742 Gray returned to Cambridge and took a law degree the next year, although he was in fact much more interested in Greek literature than in law. For the most part, the rest of Gray's life, except for an occasional sojourn in London or trip to picturesque rural spots, was centered in Cambridge, where he was a man of letters and a scholar.

Gray's poetry, almost all of which he wrote in the years after he returned to Cambridge, is proof that personal reserve in poetry and careful imitation of ancient modes do not rule out depth of feeling. (He was one of the great English letter writers; in his letters his emotions appear more unreservedly.) The charge of artificiality brought against him later by men as different in their poetic principles as Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth is true, but there is room in poetry for artifice, and while spontaneity has its merits so also does the Virgilian craftsmanship that Gray generally practiced.

The "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1747) certainly inflates its subject when it describes schoolboy swimmers as those who "delight to cleave/With pliant art [the Thames's] glassy wave," but it concludes with a memorably classic sentiment that deserves its lapidary expression: "where ignorance is bliss,/'Tis folly to be wise." Even so playful a poem as the "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes" (1748) concludes with the chiseled wisdom, "Not all that tempts your wand'ring eyes …is lawful prize;/Nor all that glisters, gold."

In his greatest poem (and one of the most popular in English), the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), Gray achieves a perfect fusion of the dignity of his subject and the habitual elevatedness of his poetics. His style and his melancholy attitude toward life are perfectly adapted to the expression of the somber, time-honored verities of human experience. In the two famous Pindaric odes "The Progress of Poetry" and "The Bard" (published with Walpole's help in 1757) Gray seems to anticipate the rhapsodies of the romantic poets. Some readers in Gray's time found the odes obscure, but they are not so by modern standards. Much of Gray's energy in his later years was devoted to the study of old English and Norse poetry, a preoccupation that reveals itself in his odes.

Gray declined the poet laureateship in 1757. After a somewhat hypochondriacal middle age he died on July 30, 1771.

Further Reading

The standard biography of Gray is Robert W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray (1955; rev. ed. 1958). For critical comment on the "Elegy" see Cleanth Brooks's essay in his The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) and the essays by Frank Brady, Bertrand Bronson, and Ian Jack in Frederick W. Hilles and Harold Bloom, eds., From Sensibility to Romanticism (1965). Broader studies of Gray include Patricia Spacks, The Insistence of Horror: Aspects of the Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Poetry (1962), and Arthur Johnston, Thomas Gray and "The Bard" (1966).

Additional Sources

Hudson, William Henry, Gray & his poetry, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977.

Roberts, S. C. (Sydney Castle), Thomas Gray of Pembroke, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1978.

Thomas Gray, his life and works, London; Boston: G. Allen & Unwin, 1980. □

Thomas Gray 1716–71, English poet. He was educated at Eton and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1739 he began a grand tour of the Continent with Horace Walpole . They quarreled in Italy, and Gray returned to England in 1741. He continued his studies at Cambridge, and he remained there for most of his life, living in seclusion, studying Greek, and writing. In 1768 he was made professor of history and modern languages, but he did no real teaching. Although he was reconciled with Walpole, and formed other close relationships in his lifetime, his shy and sensitive disposition was ill adapted to the robust century in which he lived. He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but refused it. His first important poems, written in 1742, include "To Spring,""On a Distant Prospect of Eton College," and a sonnet on the death of his close friend Richard West. After years of revision he finished his great "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), a meditative poem presenting thoughts conjured up by the sight of a rural graveyard; it is perhaps the most quoted poem in English. In 1757, Walpole published Gray's Pindaric odes, "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard." Gray's verse illustrates the evolution of English poetry in the 18th cent.—from the classicism of the 1742 poems to the romantic tendencies of "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin" (1768). He did not write a large amount of poetry. Much of his verse is tinged with melancholy, and even more of it reflects his extensive learning. His letters, which contain much humor, are among the finest in the English language.

Bibliography: See his collected works, ed. by E. Gosse (4 vol., rev. ed. 1902–6; repr. 1968); his correspondence, ed. by P. Toynbee and L. Whibley (1935, repr. 1971); selected letters, ed. by J. W. Krutch (1952); biographies by R. W. Ketton-Cremer (1955), M. Golden (1964), W. P. Jones (1937, repr. 1965); study by A. L. Sells (1980); A. T. McKenzie, Thomas Gray: A Reference Guide (1982).

Gray, Thomas (1716–71), educated at Eton, with Horace Walpole, and at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He accompanied Walpole on a tour of France and Italy in 1739–41, but they quarrelled and returned home separately. In 1742 Gray moved to Cambridge, where he was to live, apart from travels and visits, for the rest of his life. In 1741–2 he began to write English rather than Latin poetry, producing a fragment of a Racinian tragedy, Agrippina, and his first odes, including Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1747), the first of his works to appear in print. In June 1742 his other Etonian friend Richard West died, just after Gray had sent him his ‘Ode on the Spring’ (1748); Gray paid tribute in ‘Sonnet on the Death of West’ (1775). In 1745 he was reconciled with Walpole, to whom he showed his ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat’ (1748) and his highly successful Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard (1751).

In 1754 Gray finished his Pindaric ode on The Progress of Poesy, and in 1757 a second Pindaric ode, The Bard, both remarkably ambitious and intense, and marking a clear shift from neo-classical lucidity towards the obscure and the sublime; both were published by Walpole in 1757, the first works printed by the Strawberry Hill Press. On the death of Cibber (1757) he was offered the laureateship, which he declined. He was deeply interested in new discoveries of Old Norse and Welsh poetry (including Macpherson's) and produced various imitations, including ‘The Fatal Sisters’ and ‘The Descent of Odin’ (1768). One of the best of his later poems is the satiric ‘On Lord Holland's Seat near Margate, Kent’ (1769). His Journal (1775) is an account of his visit to the Lakes, and his letters (3 vols, 1935, ed. P. Toynbee and L. Whibley) are an interesting mixture of erudition, affectionate informality, and enthusiasm for nature and literature.

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

Gray, Thomas (1716–71). Gray led a sheltered existence: ‘a life so barren of events as mine’, he wrote. 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. In 1768 he was made professor of history and, characteristically, did not lecture but worried about it. His poetic fame came in 1750 when 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, Thomas (1716–71) English poet. His masterpiece was “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751). Other poems include “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat” (1748), and “The Descent of Odin” (1768).