thought of classic inspiration to inlay on
his page--some bold image to tone down--some verse to retouch and
harmonize. His life is on the whole innocent and happy, and a feeling
of thankfulness to the Great Giver is breathed over all.

[Footnote 1: A claim has been put up for the churchyard of
Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge, the great bell of St.
Mary's serving for the "curfew." But Stoke-Pogis is more likely to
have been the spot, if any individual locality were indicated. The
poet often visited the village, his aunt and mother residing there,
and his aunt was interred in the churchyard of the place. Gray's
epitaph on his mother is characterized not only by the tenderness
with which he always regarded her memory, but by his style and cast
of thought. It runs thus: "Beside her friend and sister here sleep
the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of
many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.
She died March 11, 1753, aged 72." She had lived to read the _Elegy_,
which was perhaps an ample recompense for her maternal cares and
affection. Mrs. Gray's will commences in a similar touching strain:
"In the name of God, amen. This is the last will and desire of
Dorothy Gray to her son Thomas Gray." [Cunningham's edit. of
_Johnson's Lives_.] They were all in all to each other. The father's
cruelty and neglect, their straitened circumstances, the sacrifices
made by the mother to maintain her son at the university, her pride
in the talents and conduct of that son, and the increasing gratitude
and affection of the latter, nursed in his scholastic and cloistered
solitude--these form an affecting but noble record in the history of
genius.

[One would infer from the above that Mrs. Gray was _not_ "interred in
the churchyard of the place," though the epitaph given immediately
after shows that she _was_. Gray in his will directed that he should
be laid beside her there. The passage in the will reads thus: "First,
I do desire that my body may be deposited in the vault, made by my
dear mother in the churchyard of Stoke-Pogeis, near Slough in
Buckinghamshire, by her remains, in a coffin of seasoned oak, neither
lined nor covered, and (unless it be inconvenient) I could wish that
one of my executors may see me laid in the grave, and distribute
among such honest and industrious poor persons in said parish as he
thinks fit, the sum of ten pounds in charity."--_Ed_.]]

Various edi