ciation is due to
a corruption of values. The value commended in the "Elegy" is that of
the simple life, which alone is rational and virtuous--it is the life
according to nature. Sophisticated living, Gray implies in the stanza
that once ended the poem, finds man at war with himself and with
reason; but the cool sequestered path--its goal identical with that of
the paths of Glory--finds man at peace with himself and with reason.
The theme was not new before Gray made it peculiarly his own, and it
has become somewhat hackneyed in the last two hundred years; but the
fact that it is seldom unheard in any decade testifies to its
permanency of appeal, and the fact that it was "ne'er so well
express'd" as in the "Elegy" justifies our love for that poem.

George Sherburn
Harvard University

A NOTE ON THE TEXTS

The first edition of the "Elegy" is here reproduced from a copy in the
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

By permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, the
manuscript preserved in the library of Eton College is also
reproduced. This manuscript once belonged to Gray's friend,
biographer, and editor, William Mason. In spite of its dimness, due to
creases in the paper and to the fact that the ink shows through from
the other side of the paper, this manuscript is chosen for
reproduction because it preserves the quatrains discarded before
printing the poem, and has other interesting variants in text. Two
other MSS of the poem in Gray's hand are known to exist. One is
preserved in the British Museum (Egerton 2400, ff. 45-6) and the other
is the copy made by Gray in Volume II of his Commonplace Books. This,
is appropriately preserved in the library of Pembroke College,
Cambridge. Sir William Fraser bequeathed to Eton College the MS there
found, which in certain editions of the poem is called "the Fraser
manuscript."

AN

ELEGY

WROTE IN A

Country Church Yard.

_LONDON:_

Printed for R. DODSLEY in _Pall-mall_;

And sold by M. COOPER in _Pater-noster-Row_. 1751.

[Price Six-pence.]

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