''Their lot forbad''. Thomas Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

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I. The Graveyard Poetry and Thomas Gray 
The earlier part of the 18th century is often referred to as the Augustan Age. Several 
writers of the time used the expression themselves to indicate that they had as models those 
poets who lived in the Rome of Emperor Augustus (27 BC – AD 14), which is to say 
Virgil, Horace and Ovid. This is also the reason why the period is sometimes called neo-
classical, to indicate that writers and artists attempted to reproduce the formal perfection of 
the classics. This meant observing strict rules of metre and rhyme and only using proper 
poetic diction, a language removed from everyday language and only appropriate for 
poetry. Poetry was intellectual rather than emotional and aimed at classic perfection of 
form rather than the expression of feeling; poets like Pope saw themselves as exponents of 
human reason, not of human emotion, as romantic poets did. 
Although the period favoured classical rules, understanding over fancy, and form over 
content, subjective, meditative and emotional trends were also present. Towards the end of 
the century these trends culminated in what is often labelled as pre-romanticism, whose 
works are characterized by love of nature, interest in folklore, and a tendency to mystery 
and melancholy. 
Pre-romanticism is a general term applied to a number of developments in late 18th 
century culture which are thought to have prepared the ground for Romanticism in its full 
sense. The most important constituents of pre-romanticism are the Sturm und Drang phase 
of German literature; the Primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Ossianism; the cult 
of sensibility in the sentimental novel; the sensationalism of the early Gothic novels; the 
revival of interest in old ballads and romances; the melancholy of English graveyard 
poetry. All these developments seem to have helped to give a new importance to subjective 
individual feelings. 
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The figure of Thomas Gray (1716-1771) can be seen at the crossroads between 
Classicism and Romanticism.1 
Like other writers of his time, Gray believed that echoing traditional poetry was not a 
negative action; for him it was, in fact, a sign of cultural competence, especially since 
Classical poetry offered the best models that could be followed, unattainable examples of 
excellence. 
Gray‟s idea of poetry was far from the later romantic concepts of originality and 
inspiration; in his opinion, succeeding generations were free to use the heritage of thought 
and expression that the preceding poets had left them and, in particular, they could build 
upon that “fertile substratum” left by the classical writers of Greece and Rome.2 
But Gray was also deeply interested in and, in fact, almost fascinated with, the concept 
of the sublime, showing, in that, a typical romantic inclination. It was his opinion that in 
poetry there should be an element of grandeur and of passion, able to convey a sort of 
terrifying pleasure. He was, in fact, by nature inclined to appreciate the wilder and more 
frightening manifestations of nature.3 
Still, while these feelings appear very close to the Romantics‟ wonder and admiration 
towards Nature and, above all, towards wild Nature, there is an important difference 
between Gray and later poets. Gray believed that rules and patterns were necessary and 
should always dominate the work of art, even in the reproduction of the wilderness and 
starkness of Nature. His works are always carefully planned and thought upon, even those 
that may appear, using Wordsworth‟s words, a “spontaneous overflow of powerful 
                                                 
1
 See Morris Golden, Thomas Gray (Twayne Publishers, New York, 1964), in particular, the chapter “Classical or Romantic?”, 
pp. 127-145. 
2
 Luisa Conti Camaiora, Gray, Keats, Hopkins. Poetry and the Poetic Presence. Edizioni dell‟arco, Milano 1992, p. 13. 
3
 See letter XXXI of 16th November, 1739 to Richard West, containing his description of the Alps on his way to the Grande 
Chartreuse is contained: “I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation, that there was no restraining: Not a 
precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist 
into belief, without the help of other argument.” 
(Letters of Thomas Gray. Selected with an introduction of John Beresford. London: Oxford University Press, 1925. 
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feelings”.4 As a matter of fact, Gray constructed his poems very carefully and paid much 
attention to the organization of rhyme, metre, image and thought. This meant a great deal to 
him, since he was constantly in search for perfect form.5 
During his youth, Gray was plunged into classical learning, from which is derived his 
love of ancient Greece and Rome, which was still increased by the time he spent in Italy 
with his friend Horace Walpole in 1739-1740 and which resulted in the fact that almost all 
his earliest poems were composed in Latin, a language he knew remarkably well and 
handled with exceptional ease and grace. The two great Pindaric odes, “The Progress of 
Poesy” and “The Bard”, both written in the early seventeen-fifties and published in 1757, 
were considered by him the summit of his poetic achievement; they were the works he 
wished to be remembered for. For almost a century English poets had been writing odes, 
modelling them on the odes of  the Greek poet Pindar, but no poet until Gray had followed 
so closely Pindar‟s structure. However the content of these two odes was to bewilder his 
contemporaries, because it displays Gray‟s peculiarity, that is to say his capacity of 
presenting romantic ideas and features in works whose structure recalls and re-proposes 
classical compositions. In fact, in the first ode “The Progress of Poesy” Gray celebrates the 
poet‟s calling with some passages which anticipate the romantic movement6 and in the 
second ode “The Bard” he describes a traditional episode during the final subjugation of 
Wales by English, showing his deep knowledge of English history and the study he had 
made of Welsh poetry, history and legend.7 
The appearance of romantic aspects even in classical forms like the odes is due to the 
fact that in middle age Gray began to feel another, completely different world calling him, 
                                                 
4
 W. J. B. Owen, Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1979, p. 116. 
5
 Golden, pp. 46-47. 
6
 This prelude of Gray‟s romantic development is visible is some passages of the ode, such as: “In climes beyond the solar road, 
/ Where shaggy forms o‟er ice-built mountains roam, / The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom / To clear the shiv‟ring Nature‟s 
dull abode. / And oft, beneath the od‟rous shade / Of Chili‟s boundless forests laid, / She deigns to hear the savage Youth repeat 
/ In loose numbers wildly sweet / Their feather-cintur‟d Choefs, and dusky Loves...” (“The Progress of Poesy”, 54-62) 
7
  R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Thomas Gray. Longmans Green, London, 1958, p. 17. 
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the world of the misty Celtic and Scandinavian past, the world celebrated in James 
Macpherson‟s Ossian’s Songs, which Gray was among the first to welcome, in 1760. So 
Gray, like many of his contemporaries, fell under the spell of northern romanticism, which 
was to influence his later works that became more and more inclined to the romantic mood. 
The poets of the second half of the 18th century, and the Graveyard poets in particular, 
present in their poems experiences such as folly, terror and rêverie, describe rural life and 
look for exotic places, like William Collins in Persian Eclogues or in “Ode on the popular 
Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland”; they also draw their inspiration from medieval 
life, as we can see in Thomas Warton‟s “The Grave of King Arthur” or from Welsh and 
Norwegian mythology, like Thomas Gray in “The Fatal Sisters” and “The Descent of 
Odin”. Perhaps the most sensational case is that of James Macpherson‟s interest in Celtic 
mythology, which resulted in the fake Ossian’s Songs, highly admired by William Blake. 
In the poems of the period, the poet is portrayed in the act of creating, which is often 
felt as an autobiographic process. The poet is often celebrated as an isolated hero or even as 
a victim: see for example the final versions of Thomas Gray‟s Elegy and “The Bard”, 
Macpherson‟s Ossian’s Songs, Thomas Chatterton‟s “Mynstrelles Songe” and James 
Beattie‟s “Minstrel”8. 
In this second half of the 18th century, poets often substitute the heroic couplet with 
irregular groups of lines and with blank verse; they experiment much and also recover 
many features from preceding periods, such as the Spenserian stanza (eight five-foot 
iambic lines followed by an iambic line of six feet) from the Elizabethan age, and the 
ballad stanza. 
The Graveyard school of poetry includes a number of pre-Romantic English poets of 
the 18th century, although they were not in fact an organized group. These poets are 
                                                 
8
 Storia della civiltà letteraria inglese. Vol. 2: Il Settecento, il Romanticismo, il Vittorianesimo. Edited by Franco Marenco, 
Torino, UTET, 1956. (p. 102).