Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray
1716-1771
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poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and Cambridge professor, one of the most learned men of his time (alchetron); generally considered the second most important English poet of the eighteen century, next to Pope (Poetry Foundation); as weird as it sounds, also the most disappointing (Poetry Foundation), due to the small body of his works, this in turn motivated by his reclusiveness and timidity; Samuel Johnson put this in his own way: Gray was speaking in two languages, one public and the other private, and the latter was too seldom heard; all this been said, Thomas Gray remains in history for his masterpiece, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, seminal in the further life of the common English lexicon; I should come soon to it.




(A Life in Books)