1-272-967 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard, 18th December 1750. Copy, in Gray's own hand, of his Elegy, enclosed in a letter written from Cambridge to Dr Thomas Wharton. Gray writes, The stanzas which I now enclose to you have had the misfortune by Mr Walpole's fault to be made still more publick, for which they certainly were never meant; but it is too late to complain. They have been so applauded it is quite a shame to repeat it. I mean not to be modest; but I mean it is a shame for those who have said such superlative things about them that I can't repeat them. I should have been glad that you and two or three more people had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply. The detached signature is taken from a letter dated 9th August 1750, in the same volume. The Elegy was begun in 1742, taken up again in 1749, and completed on 12th June, 1750, when it was enclosed in a letter to Horace Walpole. It was first published on 16th February, 1751. From the third series of Facsimiles of royal, historical, literary and other autographs in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum: Series I-V, (London, 1899).