SOURCE: "Contexts of Significance: Thomas Gray," in "The Stranger within Thee": Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980, pp. 82-98.

In the following chronological study of Gray's poetry, Cox considers the progression of Gray's ideas concerning humankind's limitations and the significance of the individual self.

The "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" expresses what Thomas Gray wished to believe—that the individual self is significant even when it lacks any visible signs of significance, such as power, wealth, or social recognition. Yet it was very difficult for Gray to find grounds for affirming the self. In some of his poems, he reduces human life to merely a lively consciousness of pain. In others, he finds reasons for portraying the self as significant, but his reasons are not always consistent with one another. In the "Ode to Adversity," he bases man's significance on his capacity...