Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard - Critical Response

Critical Response

The immediate response to the final draft version of the poem was positive, and Walpole was very pleased with the work. During the summer of 1750, Gray received so much positive support regarding the poem that he was in dismay, but did not mention it in his letters until an 18 December 1750 letter to Wharton. In the letter, Gray said,

The Stanza's, which I now enclose to you have had the Misfortune by Mr W:s Fault to be made ... publick, for which they certainly were never meant, but it is too late to complain. They have been so applauded, it is quite a Shame to repeat it. I mean not to be modest; but I mean, it is a shame for those who have said such superlative Things about them, that I can't repeat them. I should have been glad, that you & two or three more People had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply.

The poem was praised for its universal aspects, and Gray became one of the most famous English poets of his era. Despite his popularity, after his death only his elegy remained popular until 20th-century critics began to re-evaluate his poetry. The 18th-century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet to have written a letter to him claiming, "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with justice; yet there are comparatively speaking but a few who know of anything of his, but his 'Church-yard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works."

The poem remained popular, and, in Canadian history, it is claimed that the British General James Wolfe read the poem before his British troops arrived at the Plains of Abraham in September 1759 as part of the Seven Years' War. After reading the poem, he is reported to have said: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec tomorrow." Adam Smith, in his 21st lecture on rhetoric in 1763, argued that poetry should deal with "A temper of mind that differs very little from the common tranquillity of mind is what we can best enter into, by the perusal of a small piece of a small length ... an Ode or Elegy in which there is no odds but in the measure which differ little from the common state of mind are what most please us. Such is that on the Church yard, or Eton College by Mr Grey. The Best of Horaces (tho inferior to Mr Greys) are all of this sort." Even Samuel Johnson, who knew Gray but did not like his poetry, later praised the poem when he wrote in his Life of Gray (1779) that it "abounds with images which find a mirror in every breast; and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning Yet even these bones, are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them." Many reviews of Johnson's Lives of the Poets thought that Johnson was too harsh towards Gray, but a 1781 review in the Critical Review declared, "On his Elegy in a Country Church-Yard, we agree with Dr. Johnson, that too much praise cannot well be lavished;" Attacks continued until a 1782 review of the work in the Annual Register, which proclaimed, "That the doctor was not over zealous to allow him the degree of praise that the public voice had universally assigned him, is, we think, sufficiently apparent. Partiality to his beautiful elegy, had perhaps allotted him a rank above his general merits."