'Where Ignorance is bliss/"Tis folly to be wise,' from Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is one example. Extracts from his Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard have also become part of the literary heritage: 'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air'; 'Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble strife'; and a reference to life's 'cool sequestered vale' undoubtedly carry a familiar ring.
However, Gray (1716-71) would have been content for his name to rest in anonymity, his poems only circulating among his associates. The London-born son of a City scrivener, he was educated at Eton between 1725 and 1734, where one of his closest friends was Horace Walpole, who would arrange for the first, anonymous, publication of Gray's odes in 1747. Like Walpole, Gray attended Cambridge, but, although his intention was to prepare for a career as a London barrister, he returned to the university city after taking a two-year Grand Tour of Europe in the company of Walpole between 1739-41. In Cambridge, pursuing his literary interests as a gentleman scholar, he would effectively live for the remainder of his life.
Gray had begun writing English language poetry in the early 1740s, and Elegy may have had its origins in some lines penned on the death of another of his Eton friends, Richard West, in 1742, an event that caused him much grief. In fact, Gray had unknowingly sent
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
