In character Gray was high-minded, and in temperament reserved and shy.  It is said that after he was acknowledged to be the greatest poet living in England, people used to watch eagerly for a glimpse of him; but he usually managed to elude them and to slip away unnoticed.  His sensitiveness may have been due in part to the fact that his health was delicate and that he was much alone when a child—­for all his brothers and sisters died in infancy.  Although unfortunate in his father, he was blessed with a devoted mother, who by her exertions enabled him to go to Cambridge University.  It is pleasant to know that he warmly returned her love and that he now rests by her side in the churchyard at Stoke Poges, which is always associated with the Elegy.  On her tomb he placed the inscription “—­mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.”  Gray’s friends were warmly attached to him.  With one of them, Horace Walpole, the well-known author and collector, he traveled on the continent soon after leaving the university; and although they quarreled and separated the friendship was renewed later.  Gray never married.  In 1742 he returned to Cambridge and lived there during the rest of his life, with the exception of two years spent in London.  After he became famous the laureateship was offered to him, but his dislike of publicity caused him to refuse it.  In 1768 he was made Professor of Modern History and Languages at Cambridge.  All his life he was a student; indeed he was the most learned of the English poets, except possibly Milton.  In some respects he was in advance of his age.  He appreciated certain kinds of poetry that no one else liked in his time, and he cared greatly for wild nature.  In these days, when almost every one loves rugged mountains and remote regions by the sea, it is hard to realize that there ever was a time when most persons preferred to look upon trim or even stiff gardens or the cultivated grounds of a country seat; but such was the case.  Gray’s admiration for wild nature comes out in his prose, especially in his letters, and in his Journal in the Lakes written in 1769; but later writers, Wordsworth above all, have expressed the same feeling in delightful verse.

As a poet Gray stands for beauty of form rather than for depth of thought or breadth of sympathy.  He is first of all an artist, and his poems are among the most perfect in the English language.

  ELEGY

  WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

  The curfew[1] tolls the knell of parting day,
    The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
  The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
    And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

  Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 5
    And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
  Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
    And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;