Thomas Gray - "Elegy" Masterpiece

"Elegy" Masterpiece

It is believed that Gray began writing his masterpiece, the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, in 1742. After several years of leaving it unfinished, he completed it in 1750. It is an Elegy. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 (see 1751 in poetry). Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired, and it was pirated, imitated, quoted and translated into Latin and Greek. It is still one of the most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English language. 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 his officers, adding: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow".

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:

• "The Paths of Glory"
• "Celestial fire"
• "Some mute inglorious Milton"
• "Far from the Madding Crowd"
• "The unlettered muse"
• "Kindred spirit"

Gray also wrote light verse, including Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, a mock elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat. 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", "now one false step is ne'er retrieved" and "nor all that glisters, gold". (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase on a pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill.)

Gray’s surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour. He is well known for his phrase, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." This is from his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College This phrase is one of the most misunderstood phrases in English literature. Gray is not promoting ignorance, but reflecting nostalgically on a time when he was allowed to be ignorant, his youth.(1742).