An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard and The Eton College Manuscript | Page 4

But the heroic (hendecasyllabic) quatrain was
regarded in general as too lofty, stately, cool, for elegy. For the
universal aspect of Gray's lament, however, it was highly apt as
compared with the less majestic octosyllabic line, hitherto normal in
this genre. For years after Gray's great success, however, most elegies,
if in quatrain form, followed Gray's quatrain in manner, whether or not

their subjects demanded the stately line.
The reasons why Gray is almost a poet of only one poem are not far to
seek. He did not covet applause, and apart from melancholy his own
emotions were too private to be published. In the "Elegy" he is true to
himself and to the spirit of his age--perhaps of most ages. When he
sought for material outside of his own experience, he went curiously to
books, and was captivated by the "récherché." He was also caught by
the rising cult of sublimity in his two great pindaric odes, and by the
cult of the picturesque in his flirtations with Scandinavian materials. In
these later poems he broadened the field of poetic material notably; but
in them he hardly deepened the imaginative or emotional tone: his
manner, rather, became elaborate and theatrical. The "Elegy" is the
language of the heart sincerely perfected.
The poem has pleased many and pleased long--throughout two
centuries. In part it works through "pleasing melancholy"; in part it
appeals to innumerable humble readers conscious of their own
unheralded merit. Inevitably, since the industrial revolution, modernist
critics have tended to stress its appeal to class consciousness. This
appeal, real though it is, can be overemphasized. The rude forefathers
are not primarily presented as underprivileged. Though
poverty-stricken and ignorant, they are happy in family life and jocund
in the field. "Nature is nature wherever placed," as the intellectuals of
Gray's time loved to say, and the powers of the village fathers,
potentially, equal the greatest; their virtue is contentment. They neither
want nor need "storied urn or animated bust." If they are unappreciated
by Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., the lack of appreciation 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.]
Advertisement.
The following_ POEM came into my Hands by Accident, if the general
Approbation with which this little Piece has been spread, may be call'd
by so slight a Term as Accident. It is this Approbation which makes it
unnecessary for me to make any Apology but to the Author: As he
cannot but feel some Satisfaction in having pleas'd so many Readers
already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that

Pleasure to many more._
The EDITOR
AN
ELEGY, _&c._
The Curfeu tolls the Knell of parting Day,
The lowing Herd winds
slowly o'er the Lea,
The Plow-man homeward plods his weary Way,

And leaves the World to Darkness, and to me.
Now fades the
glimmering Landscape on