Thomas Gray

1716–71, English poet. He was educated at Eton and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1739 he began a grand tour of the Continent with Horace Walpole. They quarreled in Italy, and Gray returned to England in 1741. He continued his studies at Cambridge, and he remained there for most of his life, living in seclusion, studying Greek, and writing. In 1768 he was made professor of history and modern languages, but he did no real teaching. Although he was reconciled with Walpole, and formed other close relationships in his lifetime, his shy and sensitive disposition was ill adapted to the robust century in which he lived. He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but refused it. His first important poems, written in 1742, include “To Spring,” “On a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” and a sonnet on the death of his close friend Richard West. After years of revision he finished his great “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), a meditative poem presenting thoughts conjured up by the sight of a...

1 poezii, 0 proze