Walpole was naturally
delighted with the poem--so delighted, in fact, that he handed it
about from friend to friend and even made manuscript copies of it.
This caused some embarrassment to the poet. In February, 1751, he was
annoyed to find that the publisher of the _Magazine of Magazines_ was
actually printing his _Elegy_ in his periodical. So Gray immediately
wrote to Walpole: "As I am not at all disposed to be either so
indulgent or so correspondent as they desire, I have but one bad way
to escape the honor they would inflict upon me: and therefore am
obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which
may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my
name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper
and character; he must correct the press himself, and print it without
any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places
continued without them." On the 16th of February, only five days after
this letter was received, _An Elegy wrote in a Country Church-yard_
appeared as a large quarto pamphlet, anonymous, price sixpence.

From the very first it achieved great popularity. Magazine after
magazine published it without giving the author any compensation.
Gray was soon hit upon as the author. Unfortunately, the success of
the poem gave no increased income to the poet. Dodsley, the publisher,
is said to have made about a thousand pounds from the various poems of
Gray, but Gray had the impractical idea that it was not dignified for
a poet to make money from poetry.

In view of this lack of compensation for his poetic writings, it is
very gratifying to know that during the latter days of his life Gray
enjoyed the emolument arising from his holding the chair of Modern
Literature and Modern Languages at Cambridge. This paid him 400 pounds
a year, and did not require much work, as the office was a sinecure.

One of the biographers points out that this promotion was brought
about inadvertently through the riotous living of Gray's great enemy,
Lord Sandwich. Professor Lawrence Brockett, the incumbent of the chair
of Literature at Cambridge, dined with Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbroke.
He became so drunk that in riding home to Cambridge he fell from his
horse and broke his neck. At once five obscure dons made brisk
application for the vacant place, and Gray, sensitive and lacking the
arts of the politician, did not expect the place. But the author of
the _E