THOMAS GRAY
(1716-1771)
49. An | Elegy | Wrote In A | Country Church Yard | London: | Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall; | And ſold by M. Cooper in Pater-noſter-Row. 1751. | [Price Six-pence.]
In 1750 Gray finished a poem which he had begun eight years before, and it was circulated freely, in manuscript, among his delighted friends. One of them, Horace Walpole, received the following communication from the author, dated at Cambridge, February 11, 1751:
"As you have brought me into a little sort of distress, you must assist me, I believe, to get out of it as well as I can.
"Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as their bookseller expresses it), who have taken the Magazine of Magazines into their hands. They tell me that an ingenious Poem, called reflections in a Country Church-yard has been communicated to them, which they are printing forthwith; that they are informed that the excellent author of it is I by name, and that they beg not only his indulgence, but the honour of his correspondence. As I am not at all disposed to be either so indulgent or so correspondent as they desire, I have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be,—Elegy, written in a Country Church-yard. If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the Magazine of Magazines in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone."
"You have indeed, conducted with great decency my little misfortune:" (this was written to Walpole on Ash-Wednesday, after the book was published): "you have taken a paternal care of it, and expressed much more kindness than could have been expressed from so near a relation. But we are all frail; and I hope to do as much for you another time.
"Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter: we have ourselves suffered under her hands before now; and besides it will only look the more careless and by accident as it were. I thank you for your advertisement [the preface, signed 'The Editor'], which saves my honour, and in a manner bien flatteuse pour moi, who should be put to it even to make myself a compliment in good English."
Dodsley's promptness was noteworthy; on February 16 the book was issued, having been six days, at most, in the printer's hands. The author, even if he had desired, could hardly have complained about the ornaments on the title-page, since he had given Dodsley a free hand. It would be pleasant to see in the woodcuts, with their death's-heads, spades, cross-bones, hour-glasses, pickaxes and crowns, an argument for a sense of decoration, or even of a sense of humour, rather than the evidences of a habit of the use of such things for funeral sermons.