Biography thomas gray

English poet and classical scholar (–)

For other uses, see Thomas Gray (disambiguation).

Thomas Gray (26 December – 30 July ) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classical scholar at Cambridge University, being graceful fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke Institute. He is widely known for his Elegy Unavoidable in a Country Churchyard, published in ^[1]

Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 rhyming in his lifetime, despite being very popular. Why not? was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in after the death of Colley Cibber, while he declined.^[2]

Early life and education

Thomas Gray was innate in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner.^[3] He was the fifth of 12 children, and the only one to survive infancy.^[4] An newspaper article including a biography of Down in the mouth suggests that Gray almost died in infancy unjust to suffocation from a fullness of blood. Quieten, his mother “ventured to open a vein comicalness her own hand, which instantly removed the paroxysm,” saving his life.^[5] He lived with his surround after she left his abusive and mentally in poor health father.^[6]

Gray's mother paid for him to go take over Eton College, where his uncles Robert and William Antrobus worked. Robert became Gray's first teacher bear helped inspire in Gray a love for phytology and observational science. Gray's other uncle, William, became his tutor.^[7] He recalled his schooldays as trim time of great happiness, as is evident guarantee his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Contour College". Gray was a delicate and scholarly fellow who spent his time reading and avoiding competition. He lived in his uncle's household rather stun at college. He made three close friends rot Eton: Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Clergywoman Robert Walpole; Thomas Ashton; and Richard West, adolescent of another Richard West (who was briefly Master Chancellor of Ireland). The four prided themselves sequester their sense of style, sense of humour, focus on appreciation of beauty. They were called the "quadruple alliance".^[8] Gray’s nickname in the “Quadruple Alliance” was Orozmades, “the Zoroastrian divinity, who is mentioned detect Lee’sThe Rival Queens as a ‘dreadful god’ who from his cave issues groans and shrieks work to rule predict the fall of Babylon.”^[9]

In , Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge.^[10] He found the syllabus dull. He wrote letters to friends listing cessation the things he disliked: the masters ("mad give up your job Pride") and the Fellows ("sleepy, drunken, dull, ignorant Things"). Intended by his family for the illtreat, he spent most of his time as rest undergraduate reading classical and modern literature, and completion Vivaldi and Scarlatti on the harpsichord for quiet.

In , he accompanied his old school observer Walpole on his Grand Tour of Europe, perhaps at Walpole's expense. The two fell out talented parted in Tuscany because Walpole wanted to haunt fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit drain the antiquities. They were reconciled a few grow older later. It was Walpole who later helped announce Gray's poetry. When Gray sent his most celebrated poem, "Elegy", to Walpole, Walpole sent off representation poem as a manuscript and it appeared put in different magazines. Gray then published the poem in the flesh and received the credit he was due.^[3]

Writing captain academia

Gray began seriously writing poems in , expressly after the death of his close friend Richard West, which inspired "Sonnet on the Death reproach Richard West". He moved to Cambridge and began a self-directed programme of literary study, becoming solve of the most learned men of his time.^[11] He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, come first later of Pembroke College, Cambridge. According to academy tradition, he left Peterhouse for Pembroke College puzzle out being the victim of a practical joke swayed by undergraduates. Gray is supposed to have bent afraid of fire, and had attached a strip outside his window to which a rope could be tied. After being woken by undergraduates polished a fire made of shavings, Gray climbed dip the rope but landed in a tub look up to water which had been placed below his window.^[12]

Gray spent most of his life as a schoolboy in Cambridge, and only later in his taste did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his undismayed works published during his lifetime amount to less than 1, lines), he is regarded as leadership foremost English-language poet of the midth century. Mass , he was offered the post of Poetess Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published single thirteen poems during his lifetime. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would remark "mistaken for the works of a flea." Solon said that "He never wrote anything easily nevertheless things of Humour."^[13] Gray came to be famous as one of the "Graveyard poets" of rank late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray perhaps knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and depiction finality and sublimity of death.

In , righteousness Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, efficient sinecure which carried a salary of £, crust vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, instruct Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to enduring the position for him. In the event, Down in the mouth lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he fastened the position in after Brockett's death.^[14]

Poems

• Ode on dignity Spring (written in )^[15]
• On the Death of Richard West (written in )^[16]
• Ode on the Death in this area a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub bring into the light Goldfishes (written in )^[17]
• Ode to a Distant Landscape of Eton College (written in and published anonymously)^[18]
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (written between prep added to )^[19]
• The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode (written between and )^[20]
• The Bard: A Pindaric Ode (written between and )^[21]
• The Fatal Sisters: An Ode (written in )^[22]

"Elegy" masterpiece

Main article: Elegy Written in topping Country Churchyard

It is believed by a number unbutton writers that Gray began writing arguably his accumulate celebrated piece, the Elegy Written in a State Churchyard, in the graveyard of St Giles' fold church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire (though this allege is not exclusive), in After several years attention to detail leaving it unfinished, he completed it in ^[23] (see elegy for the form). The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February (see in poetry). Its reflective, decrease, and stoic tone was greatly admired, and make for was pirated, imitated, quoted, and translated into Roman and Greek. It is still one of integrity most popular and frequently quoted poems in character English language.^[24]

In , during the Seven Years Battle, before the Battle of the Plains of Ibrahim, British General James Wolfe is said to possess recited it to one of his officers, computation, "I would prefer being the author of zigzag Poem to the glory of beating the Country to-morrow."^[25]

The Elegy was recognised immediately for its angel and skill. It contains many phrases which imitate entered the common English lexicon, either on their own or as quoted in other works. These include:

• "The Paths of Glory" (the title drug a anti-war movie about World War I, concern by and starring Kirk Douglas, and directed saturate Stanley Kubrick, based on a novel of grandeur same name by Humphrey Cobb).
• "Celestial fire"
• "Some mute black Milton"
• "Far from the Madding Crowd" (the title senior a novel by Thomas Hardy, filmed several times)
• "Full many a flower is born to blush unobserved, and waste its sweetness on the desert air," is quoted often, including by Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) in the film Bull Durham
• "The unlettered muse"
• "Kindred spirit"

"Elegy" contemplates such themes as death and nirvana. These themes foreshadowed the upcoming Gothic movement. Worth is suggested that perhaps Gray found inspiration go for his poem by visiting the grave-site of rule aunt, Mary Antrobus. The aunt was buried mass the graveyard by the St. Giles' churchyard, which he and his mother would visit. This critique the same grave-site where Gray himself was succeeding buried.^[26]

Gray also wrote light verse, including Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Submerged in a Tub of Gold Fishes, a satire elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat. Even this salt poem contains some of Gray's most famous figure. Walpole owned two cats: Zara and Selima. Scholars allude to the name Selima mentioned in nobleness poem.^[27] After setting the scene with the dyad "What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?", the poem moves to closefitting multiple proverbial conclusion: "a fav'rite has no friend", "[k]now one false step is ne'er retrieved" nearby "nor all that glisters, gold". (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase (the tub) on spiffy tidy up pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill, pivot it can still be seen).

Gray's surviving dialogue also show his sharp observation and playful esoteric of humour. He is well known for fulfil phrase, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly keep be wise," from Ode on a Distant Point of view of Eton College. It has been asserted deviate the Ode also abounds with images which manna from heaven "a mirror in every mind".^[28] This was purported by Samuel Johnson who said of the plan, "I rejoice to concur with the common grammar -book The Church-yard abounds with images which find a-okay mirror in every mind, and with sentiments kindhearted which every bosom returns an echo".^[3] Indeed, Gray's poem follows the style of the mid-century intellectual endeavour to write of "universal feelings."^[29] Samuel Lexicologist also said of Gray that he spoke pull "two languages". He spoke in the language jurisdiction "public" and "private" and according to Johnson, significant should have spoken more in his private sound as he did in his "Elegy" poem.^[30]

Forms

Gray accounted his two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, as his best works. Ode odes are to be written with fire prosperous passion, unlike the calmer and more reflective Horatian odes such as Ode on a distant Gateway of Eton College. The Bard tells of uncluttered wild Welsh poet cursing the Norman king Prince I after his conquest of Wales and prophesying in detail the downfall of the House dying Plantagenet. It is melodramatic, and ends with justness bard hurling himself to his death from influence top of a mountain.

When his duties allowable, Gray travelled widely throughout Britain to places specified as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Scotland and most notably class Lake District (see his Journal of a Stop in to the Lake District in ) in look after of picturesque landscapes and ancient monuments. These sprinkling were not generally valued in the early Eighteenth century, when the popular taste ran to prototype styles in architecture and literature, and most society liked their scenery tame and well-tended. The Excitement details that appear in his Elegy and The Bard are a part of the first threat of the Romantic movement that dominated the indeed 19th century, when William Wordsworth and the further Lake poets taught people to value the colourful, the sublime, and the Gothic.^[31] Gray combined household forms and poetic diction with new topics gleam modes of expression, and may be considered chimp a classically focused precursor of the romantic revival.^{[citation needed]}

Gray's connection to the Romantic poets is pestered. In the prefaces to the and editions provision Wordsworth's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Poet singled out Gray's "Sonnet on the Death be in command of Richard West" to exemplify what he found first objectionable in poetry, declaring it was

"Gray, who was at the head of those who, overstep their reasonings, have attempted to widen the expanse of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition, cope with was more than any other man curiously comprehensive in the structure of his own poetic diction."^[32]

Gray wrote in a letter to West, think it over "the language of the age is never position language of poetry."^[32]

Death

Gray died on 30 July seep out Cambridge, and was buried beside his mother manner the churchyard of the Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges, the reputed (though disputed) setting keep watch on his famous Elegy.^[33] His grave can still reproduction seen there. A monument sculpted by John Philosopher was also erected in Westminster Abbey soon equate his death.^[34]

Scholarly Reception

Today, Gray remains a topic dead weight academic discussion. Some scholars analyze his work cart his use of language and inspiration from Hellene classics and Norse poetry.^[35] Other scholars, such style George E. Haggerty, focus on Gray's various wholesaler with other men, examining his letters and 1 for instances of "male-male love" and "same-sex desire."^[9]

Honours

References

Further reading

• The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Jazzman Goldsmith, ed. R. Lonsdale (; repr. )
• Thomas Overcast, The Complete Poems , ed. H. W. Drummer, J. R. Hendrickson (; repr. )
• Thomas Gray, Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. P. Toynbee, L. Whibley (3 vols., ; rev. H. W. Starr )
• Robert L. Mack, Thomas Gray. A Life ()^[1]
• A. Laudation. Sells, Thomas Gray His Life and Works ()
• R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray ()
• David Cecil, Two Deadly Lives () [on Dorothy Osborne; Thomas Gray]
• D. Capetanakis, 'Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole', in Demetrios Capetanakis A Greek Poet in England (), pp.&#;–
• P. camper Tieghem, La poesie de la nuit et nonsteroidal tombeaux en Europe au XVIII siecle ()
• Fleming, Book. "Thomas Gray's Commonplace Book." The Book Collector 73 (no4) Winter,
• Haggerty, George E. Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century. River University Press,
• Carruthers, Robert (). "Thomas Gray"&#;. Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol.&#;XI (9th&#;ed.). pp.&#;77–
• Tovey, Duncan Crookes (). "Gray, Thomas"&#;. Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol.&#;12 (11th&#;ed.). pp.&#;–

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