Produced by David Starner, Diane Monico and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. The Augustan Reprint Society THOMAS GRAY _An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard_ (1751) and _The Eton College Manuscript_ With an Introduction by George Sherburn Publication Number 31 Los Angeles Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1951 GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_ RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_ JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_ ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_ ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_ BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_ LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_ CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_ JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_ ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_ EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_ LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_ SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_ ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_ JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_ H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_ INTRODUCTION To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter is unacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not "must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed," Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement--perhaps (accepting the definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to "the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr. Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images which find a mirrour in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." Universality, clarity, incisive lapidary diction--these qualities may be somewhat staled in praise of the "classical" style, yet it is precisely in these traits that the "Elegy" proves most nobly. The artificial figures of rhetorical arrangement that are so omnipresent in the antitheses, chiasmuses, parallelisms, etc., of Pope and his school are in Gray's best quatrains unobtrusive or even infrequent.