Title/Paratext] "The date at which G[ray]. [...]" R. Lonsdale, 1969.

"The date at which G[ray]. began writing his most celebrated poem has been the subject of frequent discussion and disagreement, and the scanty and unreliable nature of such evidence as there is makes it impossible to reach any definite conclusion. Writers on other aspects of the Elegy have so often adopted a dating merely to suit a particular argument that a full statement of the relevant considerations is perhaps still desirable.

The most precise single item of information that we have for the dating of the Elegy is that on 12 June 1750 G. wrote to Horace Walpole (Corresp i 326-7): 'I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer); and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like to want...' At the end of the letter G. added: 'You are desired to tell me your opinion, if you can take the pains, of these lines.' It has never been doubted that these remarks refer to the Elegy, which was therefore completed early in June 1750 at Stoke.

The date at which G. began the Elegy constitutes the real problem. From his letter to Walpole it is clear that there was a considerable interval between his beginning and completing it. Walpole had seen the beginning 'long ago', but whether this had been at the time when G. began writing it or at a later date is not apparent: the distinction is important, as will be seen later. At this point it is as well to consider the evidence offered by what is clearly the earliest extant draft of the Elegy. The Eton MS, entitled 'Stanza's Wrote In A Country Church-Yard' (now in the Memorial Buildings, Eton College) originally belonged to Mason. After various appearances in the sale-room in the nineteenth century it was bequeathed by Sir William Fraser in 1898 to Eton College. The first eighteen stanzas of this MS, in spite of many small variants, appear substantially as in the form eventually published. The four following stanzas, marked by G. in the margin as if for omission, were either abandoned or reworked in the remaining seventeen stanzas which, like the opening eighteen, appear very much as in the final form of the poem.

The Eton MS was first discussed by Mason (Memoirs p. 157) in 1775. Writing of the poems which G. is known to have written in the summer of 1742, he added: 'I am inclined to believe that the Elegy in a Country Church-yard was begun, if not concluded, at this time also: Though I am aware that, as it stands at present, the conclusion is of a later date; how that was originally, I shall shew in my notes on the poem.' Accordingly, in his notes, Mason, Poems pp. 108-09, commented on the Eton MS: 'In the first manuscript copy of this exquisite Poem, I find the conclusion different from that which he afterwards composed'. Then, after quoting the four stanzas which G. eventually rejected, Mason added: 'And here the Poem was originally intended to conclude, before the happy idea of the hoary-headed Swain, &c. suggested itself to him.'

The Eton MS confirms at least part of Mason's account. The four 'rejected' stanzas do provide a perfectly coherent conclusion to the poem. It seems clear, moreover, that, after G. had transcribed the poem to this point, there was a definite interval of time before he added the new ending. In that interval the MS was folded and stained and the paper itself deteriorated slightly. (I was kindly allowed to see an argument to this effect in an unpublished study of 'Gray's handwriting, and its value as evidence in the dating of his Elegy' by M. P. T. Leahy of Pennsylvania State University. That there was an interval cannot be doubted but neither the condition of the MS nor an examination of the handwriting itself throws any conclusive light on its length.)

Mason's tentative opinion that G. began the Elegy in 1742 was accepted by nineteenth-century editors and was also embellished: it was suggested, for example, that G. was inspired to begin the poem by the death of his uncle Jonathan Rogers in Oct. 1742; and this suggestion was balanced by the theory that he was inspired to take it up again after the death of his aunt Mary Antrobus in Nov. 1749. For neither suggestion is there any evidence. Apart from Mason's opinion, the only statement about the dating of the poem which can be thought tohave any authority came in 1773, when Horace Walpole was shown part of the Memoirs of G. on which Mason was then working. On 1 Dec. 1773 Walpole wrote to Mason: 'The Churchyard was, I am persuaded, posterior to West's death at least three or four years, as you will see by my note. At least I am sure that I had the twelve or more first lines from himself above three years after that period, and it was long before he finished it' (Walpole Correspondence xxviii 117-18). Unfortunately Mason's reply to this letter is not extant, but it contained his reasons for suggesting that the Elegy was begun in 1742. On 14 Dec. 1773 Walpole wrote again to Mason, accepting Mason's decision on another point he had raised about the Memoirs and adding briefly: 'Your account of the Elegy puts an end to my other criticism' (ibid 123).

In the absence of more definite evidence we cannot afford to abandon Walpole's objection as easily as he himself did. Admittedly, to convince Walpole, Mason must have produced a persuasive argument that he was right in believing G. began the Elegy in 1742. But just how persuasive must we assume it to have been? Mason did not meet G. until about 1747, so that his dating of the poem was not based on first-hand knowledge. If G. himself had told him that he began the poem in 1742, Mason would surely have said so. The very tentativeness with which he offers that opinion ('I am inclined to believe') appears to confirm its speculative character. It has not been noted, moreover, that this discussion in 1773 between Mason and Walpole as to the date of the Elegy was only incidental to a matter of much greater interest, at least to Walpole: namely, Mason's treatment in his Memoirs of Walpole's early friendship and eventual quarrel in Italy with G. Walpole was apprehensive about Mason's handling of this subject and undoubtedly offended Mason by some of his comments on it. In his letter of 14 Dec. 1773 he was therefore anxious to placate Mason and his decision in the same letter not to pursue further the matter of the dating should be seen in the context of the larger issue. At the best of times Walpole was given to 'agreeing' with correspondents with whom he obviously did not agree; and in this particular instance he had good reason for allowing himself to be persuaded.

In any case, Walpole retracted only the first part of his original assertion i.e. that G. began writing the Elegy three or four years after West's death, in 1745 or 1746. There is no reason to believe that he had not remembered correctly that G. had shown him twelve or more of the opening lines at that period. This memory fits easily enough with G.'s own statement in June 1750 that Walpole had seen the beginning of the Elegy 'long ago'. G. and Walpole had not become reconciled after their Italian quarrel until Nov. 1745, so that even if G. had begun the Elegy in 1742 he would not have shown it to Walpole any earlier. (This may have been the argument used by Mason against Walpole's objection to his dating.) The most likely period for G. to have shown Walpole the beginning of the poem is in the autumn of 1746, when Walpole was living at Windsor and when G. saw him regularly (Corresp i 239). It was also at this time that G. began showing his other poems to Walpole.

It may therefore be assumed that Walpole first saw the opening 12 ll. of the Elegy in the autumn of 1746. But a question at once arises. Why, if, as Mason and his adherents believe, G. had already written the whole of the first version of the poem, should he have shown Walpole only the 'twelve or more first lines' at this time? Is it not more likely that G. showed him only some twelve lines because he had written no more and more likely, in addition, that he had written them fairly recently? This problem was tackled ingeniously but unconvincingly by H. W. Garrod in 'A note on the composition of Gray's Elegy', in Essays Presented to David Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1945) pp. 111-16. Garrod pointed out that, without the four stanzas later rejected by G., the first version of the Elegy in the Eton MS contains 18 stanzas or 72 ll. Mitford's transcript of Walpole's letter of 1 Dec. 1773 provides the only text and Garrod argued that in making his copy of it Mitford had misread Walpole's '72' for '12'. In other words Walpole in fact told Mason that G. had shown him 'seventy-two or more first lines' of the Elegy some three or four years after West's death: i.e. almost the whole of the first version of the poem.

Garrod's argument is hardly tenable. It seems unlikely that G. in June 1750 would have referred to 72 or more lines as merely a 'beginning', when the whole poem contained only 128; and the manner in which G. asked for Walpole's opinion of 'these lines' does not suggest that Walpole had seen many of them before. As far as Walpole is concerned, it is unlikely that he would use such a phrase as 'seventy-two or more first lines': 72 is a very particular number to be vague about. Similarly, Walpole was always active in pressing G. to publish his poems and in 1747 and 1748 was responsible for the publication of three of them. His enthusiasm for the Elegy when he was shown it in 1750 makes it hard to believe that he had already seen its most memorable stanzas and had been content for some four years not to pester G. to finish and publish it. Finally, it is worth noting the authoritative opinion of the editors of Walpole's letters as to whether he wrote '12' or '72' and as to whether Mitford is likely to have mistranscribed the number: 'We believe [Walpole] wrote 12; HW's 1's and 7's are not at all similar, and it would have been unlike HW to count out the number of lines Gray sent him, or, if he had, to remember the total for a quarter of a century' (Walpole Correspondence xxviii 118 n 4).

The inconclusive nature of the main items of evidence as to the dating of the Elegy will be readily apparent. All that seems likely at this point is that the choice of dates is confined to two: the alternative to accepting Mason's tentative suggestion that G. at least began the poem in 1742 is to believe that when G. showed the twelve or more opening lines to Walpole in the autumn of 1746 he had only recently started it. In support of Mason's date is the fact that he managed to persuade Walpole that he was right, although the circumstances in which he did so must be taken into account. The other main fact in support of 1742 is that that year was by far the most creative of G.'s life: but there must obviously be a limit to this kind of argument, and it may be hard to believe that, in addition to the Ode on Spring, the Sonnet on West, the Eton Ode, the Ode to Adversity and the fragmentary Hymn to Ignorance, G. also found time and creative energy to write very much of the Elegy. It has also seemed natural to some scholars to connect the Elegy with the death of Richard West in June 1742, but once again there is no evidence to confirm such a theory. If West were to be involved in the poem at any point, it could only be in the description of the unhappy poet and in the epitaph at the end of the Elegy. Yet this section of the poem seems certainly to have been written in about 1750. The most elaborate of the theories involving West, Odell Shepard's 'A youth to fortune and to fame unknown', MP, xx (1922-23) 347-73, argued that the 'Epitaph' had originally been a separate poem about West written in 1742, and that G. wrote his second conclusion to the Elegy so as to enable him to work the 'Epitaph' in. In this way the poem as a whole became 'a lament for a friend who died of a broken heart'. Shepard's theory consisted of sheer guesswork at almost every point, attractive as parts of it may seem. There is no evidence that the 'Epitaph' was ever a separate poem and it is noteworthy that in 1773 Walpole (a close friend of both G. and West) clearly saw no connection between the Elegy and West's death, being quite convinced, at least at first, that the poem was written several years later.

The case for dating the beginning of the Elegy in 1742 is not strong and must, in fact, rest almost entirely on whatever one supposes Mason's unknown arguments for that date to have been and on the faith one puts in his judgement. The case for dating the beginning of the poem in the summer or autumn of 1746 is more elaborate but not perhaps much more definite. Walpole's initial conviction that the poem had been started then must perhaps be ruled out in the light of his later withdrawal of it; but there is no reason to doubt that it was at this time that he saw the opening lines, and the question posed above has still not been answered. Why, if G. had already written at least the first version of the poem, did he show Walpole only some twelve lines of it? There are, moreover, two cryptic remarks by G. at this period which suggest that, for the first time since 1742, he was once more writing poetry. On 10 Aug. 1746 he told Wharton that 'the Muse, I doubt, is gone, & has left me in far worse Company: if she returns, you will hear of her' (Corresp i 238). He made a more significant statement in another letter to Wharton on 11 Sept. 1746: after mentioning that he had been reading Aristotle, he added, 'this & a few autumnal Verses are my Entertainments dureing the Fall of the Leaf' (Corresp i 241). There would appear to be no other poem than the Elegy to which G. could have been referring.

One argument on behalf of dating the beginning of the Elegy in 1742 is that it is known to have been, for G., a prolific creative period. But it can be argued on the other hand that the resumption of the friendship with Walpole, which was really re-established in the summer of 1746, marked the beginning of a renewal of G.'s literary activities. Since the death of West he had lacked an audience, but now he began showing what he had already written to Walpole and starting new poems. He wrote for Walpole his Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, considered continuing Agrippina and began Education and Government. It was at least as good a period as any for G. to have started and slowly worked on the Elegy. There are also circumstantial arguments for dating the beginning of the poem at this period, which can be described as at least no worse than some of those for 1742. Apparently the first such argument was a spirited but extravagant article by W. H. Newman, 'When curfew tolled the knell', National Review, cxxvii (1946) 244-8, which attempted to demonstrate that the Elegy was inspired by various events in Aug. 1746. G.'s reflections on the inevitability of death and the dangers of ambition and power are connected with his visits in that month to various royal homes, with a number of recent royal deaths, with the famous trial in Westminster Hall of three Jacobite peers involved in the '45 rebellion, and with the triumphant return of the Duke of Cumberland from quelling that rebellion in the previous July. By combining with these events a quantity of meteorological information, Newman demonstrated to his own satisfaction that he possessed an 'abundance of evidence' for identifying the moment at which G. began writing the Elegy as 8 p.m. on 18 Aug. 1746. A similar, but more restrained and detailed, argument for connecting the Elegy with the trial of the Scottish lords in Aug. 1746 was offered by F. H. Ellis, 'Gray's Elegy: The biographical problem in literary criticism', PMLA, lxvi (1951) 971-1008. The 'biographical problem' is, of course, whether or not such connections between the poet's life and contemporary events on the one hand, and the poem itself on the other, can or need to be made. As far as the poem is concerned, G.'s generalities on rich and poor and on life and death are obviously self-sufficient and in no way need to be related to specific events of Aug. 1746 or of any other particular period; and the very generality of G.'s themes in itself makes it impossible in the end to accept the arguments of Newman and Ellis, however plausible they may appear in parts. Nevertheless, they may be thought to add something to the argument for dating the Elegy in 1746.

There is another kind of internal evidence about the dating which is perhaps slightly more conclusive, although by its nature it can be used only with caution. G.'s use of the quatrain in the Elegy was to be greatly imitated by his contemporaries and later poets, but he was not of course the first English poet to have used it nor was he by any means solely responsible for its vogue in the later eighteenth-century. Very early in his Commonplace Book he transcribed part of Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum, a poem in quatrains which he admired. In his 'Observations on English Metre', Works, ed. Gosse, i 344, G. noted its use by Surrey, Spenser, Gascoigne and by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis. Another notable use of the quatrain in the seventeenth-century was in Davenant's Gondibert; Thomas Hobbes employed it in his translation of Homer; and it occasionally appeared in the works of early eighteenth-century poets, such as William Walsh (The Retirement). G. had therefore no lack of models in the use of the quatrain but it is worth noting that this stanzaic form had been brought into some kind of fashion by a work published several years before the Elegy, James Hammond's Elegies, dated 1743 but published in Dec. 1742. Hammond's poems, largely imitations of Tibullus, were undoubtedly imitated by other poets and did much to establish the quatrain as 'elegiac'. It must of course be remembered that in the Eton MS G.'s poem is entitled 'Stanzas' and that it was Mason, according to his own story (Poems p. 108), who persuaded him to call it an Elegy. (For some discussion of the meaning of 'Elegy' at this period, see Joseph Trapp, Lectures on Poetry ... Translated from the Latin (1742) pp. 163-71; William Shenstone, Works in Verse and Prose (1764) i 3-12: and the Annual Register for 1767, pt ii, pp. 220-2.) In addition, there is little to suggest, apart from the quatrain itself and the occasional echo, that G. was influenced by Hammond's Elegies. The possibility that he was, however, has been explored by J. Fisher, 'James Hammond and the quatrain of Gray's Elegy', MP xxxii (1935) 301-10; and if G. was imitating Hammond, he could not have begun the Elegy in the summer of 1742. In a later article, 'Shenstone, Gray, and the ''Moral Elegy'' ', MP xxxiv (1937) 273-94, Fisher argued that Shenstone's Elegies, which appear to contain many parallels with G.'s Elegy but which were not published until 1764, were in fact written between 1743 and 1749, most of them by 1745. At this period they were circulating in MS and Fisher suggested that they might even have reached G. This theory is unconvincing and it is much more probable that in revising his elegies after 1751 Shenstone imitated G.'s celebrated poem. Fisher's two articles, nevertheless, are of interest in that they show that G. cannot be regarded as the sole pioneer in the use of the quatrain and the popularity of the 'elegy'.

G.'s borrowings or echoes within the Elegy provide more evidence, although the possibility that any particular parallel may be no more than coincidental must always be borne in mind. It is surely significant, however, that consciously or unconsciously G. seems to have remembered phrases and longer passages from a number of poems written in the early 1740s: Blair's The Grave (1743), Akenside's Epistle to Curio and The Pleasures of Imagination (1744) and Odes (1745), the Odes of Collins and Joseph Warton (1746) and Thomas Warton's Five Pastoral Eclogues (1745) and The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747). G. could of course merely have shared common sources of inspiration with these poets and some of the echoes occur in the later part of the Elegy: but, considered as a whole and with the greatest caution, this evidence would certainly suggest that G. began the poem in 1746-47. The same conclusion would have to be reached if the Elegy is considered in relation to the vogue for 'graveyard' poetry and prose which emerged in the early 1740s. The Elegy could have been quite independent, but it must appear more likely that it came after rather than preceded such contemplations as Young's Night Thoughts (1742-45), Blair's The Grave (1743) and James Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs (1746).

Finally it may be noted that there would appear to be some relationship between the Elegy and the unfinished fragment on Education and Government, which G. probably wrote in 1747-48. Both poems deal with the subject of genius which circumstances have prevented from flourishing, and both may be related to Plato's discussion of education and its effect on 'virtue', which G. was reading at this time and commenting on in his Commonplace Book (see headnote to Education and Government, p. 89 above, and Elegy 65-6 n). Once again, this evidence cannot be decisive and, although G.'s treatment of the theme is clearer in the Elegy than in Education and Government, it would be impossible to demonstrate from this fact which poem came first.

This discussion has tried to make clear that all of the evidence is ambiguous and nothing more confident than an assertion of likelihood can be achieved. Even if it may appear that most of the poem was written in 1746 and later, it is still possible that G. began drafting it in 1742. Perhaps, like The Progress of Poesy, it was written 'by fits & starts at very distant intervals', although it may be pointed out here that G.'s method of working on his other poems suggests that he is unlikely to have taken eight years to complete a poem. Usually G. either abandoned a poem without finishing it, or took at most some two or three years, as was the case with his Pindaric Odes."

The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Roger Lonsdale. Longman Annotated English Poets Series. London and Harlow: Longmans, 1969, 103-110.