the modern, he instinctively resisted its
progress. He was in taste and intention an extreme classicist. Thomas Gray
was born in London on the 26th December, 1716. His father was a money
scrivener, and, to his family at least, a bad man; his mother, forced to
support herself, kept a linen-draper shop; and to her the poet owed his
entire education. He was entered at Eton College, and afterwards at
Cambridge, and found in early life such friendships as were of great
importance to him later in his career. Among his college friends were
Horace Walpole, West, the son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and
William Mason, who afterwards wrote the poet's life. After completing his
college course, he travelled on the continent with Walpole; but, on
account of incompatibility of temper, they quarrelled and parted, and Gray
returned home. Although Walpole took the blame upon himself, it would
appear that Gray was a somewhat captious person, whose serious tastes
interfered with the gayer pleasures of his friend. On his return, Gray
went to Cambridge, where he led the life of a retired student, devoting
himself to the ancient authors, to poetry, botany, architecture, and
heraldry. He was fastidious as to his own productions, which were very
few, and which he kept by him, pruning, altering, and polishing, for a
long time before he would let them see the light. His lines entitled _A
Distant Prospect of Eton College_ appeared in 1742, and were received with
great applause.

It was at this time that he also began his _Elegy in a Country
Churchyard_; which, however, did not appear until seven or eight years
later, and which has made him immortal. The grandeur of its language, the
elevation of its sentiments, and the sympathy of its pathos, commend it to
all classes and all hearts; and of its kind of composition it stands alone
in English literature.

The ode on the progress of poetry appeared in 1755. Like the _Elegy_, his
poem of _The Bard_ was for several years on the literary easel, and he was
accidentally led to finish it by hearing a blind harper performing on a
Welsh harp.

On the death of Cibber, Gray was offered the laureate's crown, which he
declined, to avoid its conspicuousness and the envy of his brother poets.
In 1762, he applied for the professorship of modern history at Cambridge,
but failed to obtain the position. He was more fortunate in 1768, when it
again became vacant; but he held it as a sinecure, doing none of it