Title: An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript
Author: Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771
Language: English
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The Augustan Reprint Society



THOMAS GRAY

_An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard_

(1751)

and

_The Eton College Manuscript_



With an Introduction by

George Sherburn


Publication Number 31


Los Angeles
Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1951



GENERAL EDITORS

H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_
RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_
JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_


ASSISTANT EDITOR

W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_


ADVISORY EDITORS

EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_
BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_
LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_
CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_
LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_
SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_
ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_
JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_
H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_



INTRODUCTION


To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter is
unacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not
"must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed,"
Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement--perhaps (accepting the
definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its
success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to
"the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr.
Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images which
find a mirrour in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosom
returns an echo." Universality, clarity, incisive lapidary
diction--these qualities may be somewhat staled in praise of the
"classical" style, yet it is precisely in these traits that the
"Elegy" proves most nobly. The artificial figures of rhetorical
arrangement that are so omnipresent in the antitheses, chiasmuses,
parallelisms, etc., of Pope and his school are in Gray's best
quatrains unobtrusive or even infrequent.

Often in the art of the period an affectation of simplicity covers and
reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fair
example; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sight
there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but pry
beneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled by
their coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you are
watching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignity
of Dr. Johnson's exquisitely chosen diction is likewise ingeniously
studied and self-conscious. When Gray soared into the somewhat turgid
pindaric tradition of his day, he too was slaking a thirst for
rhetorical complexities. But in the "Elegy" we have none of that. Nor
do we have artifices like the "chaste Eve" or the "meek-eyed maiden"
apostrophized in Collins and Joseph Warton. For Gray the hour when the
sky turns from opal to dusk leaves one not "breathless with
adoration," but moved calmly to placid reflection tuned to drowsy
tinklings or to a moping owl. It endures no contortions of image or of
verse. It registers the sensations of the hour and the reflections
appropriate to it--simply.

It is not difficult to be clear--so we are told by some who habitually
fail of that quality--if you have nothing subtle to say. And it has
been urged on high authority in our day that there is nothing really
"fine" in Gray's "Churchyard." However conscious Gray was in limiting
his address to "the common reader," we may be certain he was not
writing to the obtuse, the illiterate or the insensitive. He was to
create an evocation of evening: the evening of a day and the
approaching night of life. The poem was not to be perplexed by doubt;
it ends on a note of "trembling hope"--but on "hope." There are
perhaps better evocations of similar moods, but not of this precise
mood. Shakespeare's poignant Sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year"),
which suggests no hope, may be one. Blake's "Nurse's Song" is, in
contrast, subtly tinged with modernistic disillusion:

    When the voices of children are heard on the green
    And whisp'rings are in the dale,
    The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
    My face turns green and pale.

    Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
    And the dews of night arise;
    Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
    And your winter and night in disguise.

Here, too, are no tremblings of hope, no sound confidence in the
"average" man, such as Gray surprisingly glimpses. One begins to
suspect that it is more necessary to be subtle in evocations of
despair than in those of hope, even if the hope is tremulous. The mood
Gray sought required no obvious subtlety. The nearest approach to Gray
(found in Catullus) may likewise be said to be deficient in overtones;
but it also comes home to the heart of everyman:

    o quid solutis est beatius curis,
    cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
    labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum
    desideratoque acquiescimus lecto!

These simple lines convey what Gray's ploughman is achieving for one
evening, but not what the rude forefathers have achieved for eternity.
From the ploughman and the simple annals of the poor the poem diverges
to reproach the proud and great for their disregard of undistinguished
merit, and moves on to praise of the sequestered life, and to an
epitaph applicable either to a "poeta ignotus" or to Gray himself. The
epitaph with its trembling hope transforms the poem into something
like a personal yet universal requiem; and for one villager--perhaps
for himself--Gray seems to murmur through the gathering darkness: "et
lux perpetua luceat ei." Although in this epitaph we may seem to be
concerned with an individual, we do well to note that the youth to
fortune and fame unknown, whose great "bounty" was only a tear, is as
completely anonymous as the ploughman or the rude forefathers.

The somber aspects of evening are perhaps more steadily preserved by
Gray than by his contemporaries. From Milton to Joseph Warton all
poets had made their ploughman unwearied as (to quote Warton):

    He jocund whistles thro' the twilight groves.

With Gray all this blithe whistling stopped together. Evening poems by
Dyer, Warton, and Collins had tended to be "pretty," but here again
Gray resisted temptation and regretfully omitted a stanza designed to
precede immediately the epitaph:

    There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year
    By hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found;
    The Red-breast loves to build & warble there,
    And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground.

With similar critical tact Gray realized that one might have too much
of stately moral reflections unmixed with drama. Possibly such an
idea determined him in discarding four noble quatrains with which he
first designed to end his poem. After line 72 in the manuscript now in
Eton College appeared these stanzas:

    The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow
    Exalt the brave, & idolize Success
    But more to Innocence their Safety owe
    Than Power & Genius e'er conspired to bless

    And thou, who mindful of the unhonour'd Dead
    Dost in these Notes their artless Tale relate
    By Night & lonely Contemplation led
    To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate

    Hark how the sacred Calm, that broods around
    Bids ev'ry fierce tumultuous Passion cease
    In still small Accents, whisp'ring from the Ground
    A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace

    No more with Reason & thyself at Strife
    Give anxious Cares & endless Wishes room
    But thro the cool sequester'd Vale of Life
    Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom.

"And here," comments Mason, "the Poem was originally intended to
conclude, before the happy idea of the hoary-headed Swain, &c.
suggested itself to him." To reconstitute the poem with this original
ending gives an interesting structure. The first three quatrains evoke
the fall of darkness; four stanzas follow presenting the rude
forefathers in their narrow graves; eleven quatrains follow in
reproach of Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., for failure to realize
the high merit of humility. Then after line 72 of the final version
would come these four rejected stanzas, continuing the reproach of
"the thoughtless world," and turning all too briefly to one who could
"their artless tale relate," and to the calm that then breathes around
tumultuous passion and speaks of eternal peace--and "the silent tenor
of thy doom."

That would give a simpler structure; and one may argue whether turning
back from the thoughtless world to praise again the "cool sequester'd
vale of life" and then appending "the happy idea of the hoary-headed
swain, &c." does really improve the poem structurally. Its method is,
however, more acceptable in that now the reflections are imbedded in
"drama" (or at least in narrative), and the total effect is more
pleasing to present-day readers since we escape, or seem to escape,
from the cool universality of humble life to a focus on an individual
grief. To end on a grim note of generalized "doom," would have given
the poem a temporary success such as it deserved; and it must be
acknowledged that the knell-like sound of "No more ... No more" (lines
20, 21) echoed and re-echoed for decades through the imaginations of
gloom-fed poets. But Gray, although an undoubted "graveyard" poet, is
no mere graveyard poet: he stands above and apart from the lot of
them, and he was not content to end despondently in a descending
gloom. His, as he told West, in a celebrated letter, was a "white
melancholy, or rather leucocholy"; and he wrote of "lachrymae rerum"
rather than of private mordant sorrows.

The poem is couched in universals: Gray writes in "a" country
churchyard, and the actual Stoke Poges, dear and lovely as it
doubtless was to Gray, clings to the fame of the poem almost by
accident. And yet, by a sort of paradox, this "universal" poem in its
setting and mood is completely English. One could go too far from home
for examples of distinction--for the polar stars of the rude
forefathers--just as one could err by excess of "commonplace"
reflections. Some such idea encouraged Gray to modify his fifteenth
quatrain, which in the Eton MS reads (the first line has partly
perished from folding of the paper):

    Some [Village] Cato [who] with dauntless Breast
    The little Tyrant of his Fields withstood;
    Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest;
    Some Caesar, guiltless of his Country's Blood.

The substitution of English names is an obvious attempt to bring truth
closer to the souls of his readers by use of "domestica facta" and the
avoidance of school-boy learning.

All these changes illustrate the quality of Gray's curious felicity.
His assault on the reader's sensibilities was organized and careful:
here is no sign of that contradiction in terms, "unpremeditated art."
He probably did not work on the poem so long as historians have said
he did, but he scanted neither time nor attention. Mason thought the
poem begun and perhaps finished in 1742, and he connected its
somberness with Gray's great sorrow over the death of his close friend
Richard West. All this seems more than doubtful: to Dr. Thomas
Wharton in September 1746 Gray mentioned recently composing "a few
autumnal verses," and there is no real evidence of work on the poem
before this time. Walpole evidently inclined to 1746 as the date of
commencement, and it may be pointed out that Mason himself is not so
sure of 1742 as have been his Victorian successors. All he says is, "I
am inclined to believe that the Elegy ... was begun, if not concluded,
at this time [1742] also." Gray's reputation for extreme leisurely
composition depends largely on the "inclination" to believe that the
"Elegy" was begun in 1742 and on a later remark by Walpole concerning
Gray's project for a History of Poetry. In a letter of 5 May 1761
Walpole joked to Montagu saying that Gray, "if he rides Pegasus at his
usual foot-pace, will finish the first page two years hence." Not
really so slow as this remark suggests, Gray finally sent his "Elegy"
to Walpole in June of 1750, and in December he sent perhaps an earlier
form of the poem to Dr. Wharton. Naturally delighted with the
perfected utterance of this finely chiseled work, these two friends
passed it about in manuscript, and allowed copies to be taken.

Publication, normally abhorrent to Gray, thus became inevitable,
though apparently not contemplated by Gray himself. The private
success of the poem was greater than he had anticipated, and in
February of 1751 he was horrified to receive a letter from the editor
of a young and undistinguished periodical, "The Magazine of
Magazines," who planned to print forthwith the "ingenious poem,
call'd Reflections in a Country-Churchyard." Gray hastily wrote to
Walpole (11 February), insisting that he should "make Dodsley print it
immediately" from Walpole's copy, without Gray's name, but with good
paper and letter. He prescribed the titlepage as well as other
details, and within four days Dodsley had the poem in print, and
anticipated the piratical "Magazine" by one day. But the "Magazine"
named Gray as the author, and success without anonymity was the fate
of the "Elegy." Edition followed edition, and the poem was almost from
birth an international classic.

One of the author's prescriptions for publication concerned the verse
form. He told Walpole that Dodsley must "print it without any Interval
between the Stanza's, because the Sense is in some Places continued
beyond them." In the Egerton MS Gray had written the poem with no
breaks to set off quatrains, but in the earlier MS (Eton College),
where the poem is entitled, "Stanza's, wrote in a Country
Church-Yard," the quatrains are spaced in normal fashion. The
injunction shows Gray's sensitiveness as to metrical form. He had
called the poem an Elegy only after urging by Mason, and he possibly
doubted if his metre was "soft" enough for true elegy. The metre
hitherto had not been common in elegies, though James Hammond's "Love
Elegies" (1743) had used it and won acclaim. But the heroic
(hendecasyllabic) quatrain was regarded in general as too lofty,
stately, cool, for elegy. For the universal aspect of Gray's lament,
however, it was highly apt as compared with the less majestic
octosyllabic line, hitherto normal in this genre. For years after
Gray's great success, however, most elegies, if in quatrain form,
followed Gray's quatrain in manner, whether or not their subjects
demanded the stately line.

The reasons why Gray is almost a poet of only one poem are not far to
seek. He did not covet applause, and apart from melancholy his own
emotions were too private to be published. In the "Elegy" he is true
to himself and to the spirit of his age--perhaps of most ages. When he
sought for material outside of his own experience, he went curiously
to books, and was captivated by the "récherché." He was also caught by
the rising cult of sublimity in his two great pindaric odes, and by
the cult of the picturesque in his flirtations with Scandinavian
materials. In these later poems he broadened the field of poetic
material notably; but in them he hardly deepened the imaginative or
emotional tone: his manner, rather, became elaborate and theatrical.
The "Elegy" is the language of the heart sincerely perfected.

The poem has pleased many and pleased long--throughout two centuries.
In part it works through "pleasing melancholy"; in part it appeals to
innumerable humble readers conscious of their own unheralded merit.
Inevitably, since the industrial revolution, modernist critics have
tended to stress its appeal to class consciousness. This appeal, real
though it is, can be overemphasized. The rude forefathers are not
primarily presented as underprivileged. Though poverty-stricken and
ignorant, they are happy in family life and jocund in the field.
"Nature is nature wherever placed," as the intellectuals of Gray's
time loved to say, and the powers of the village fathers, potentially,
equal the greatest; their virtue is contentment. They neither want nor
need "storied urn or animated bust." If they are unappreciated by
Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., the lack of appreciation is due to
a corruption of values. The value commended in the "Elegy" is that of
the simple life, which alone is rational and virtuous--it is the life
according to nature. Sophisticated living, Gray implies in the stanza
that once ended the poem, finds man at war with himself and with
reason; but the cool sequestered path--its goal identical with that of
the paths of Glory--finds man at peace with himself and with reason.
The theme was not new before Gray made it peculiarly his own, and it
has become somewhat hackneyed in the last two hundred years; but the
fact that it is seldom unheard in any decade testifies to its
permanency of appeal, and the fact that it was "ne'er so well
express'd" as in the "Elegy" justifies our love for that poem.

George Sherburn
Harvard University



A NOTE ON THE TEXTS


The first edition of the "Elegy" is here reproduced from a copy in the
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

By permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, the
manuscript preserved in the library of Eton College is also
reproduced. This manuscript once belonged to Gray's friend,
biographer, and editor, William Mason. In spite of its dimness, due to
creases in the paper and to the fact that the ink shows through from
the other side of the paper, this manuscript is chosen for
reproduction because it preserves the quatrains discarded before
printing the poem, and has other interesting variants in text. Two
other MSS of the poem in Gray's hand are known to exist. One is
preserved in the British Museum (Egerton 2400, ff. 45-6) and the other
is the copy made by Gray in Volume II of his Commonplace Books. This,
is appropriately preserved in the library of Pembroke College,
Cambridge. Sir William Fraser bequeathed to Eton College the MS there
found, which in certain editions of the poem is called "the Fraser
manuscript."



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.]



Advertisement.


     _The following_ POEM _came into my Hands by Accident, if the
     general Approbation with which this little Piece has been
     spread, may be call'd by so slight a Term as Accident. It is
     this Approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make
     any Apology but to the Author: As he cannot but feel some
     Satisfaction in having pleas'd so many Readers already, I
     flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that
     Pleasure to many more._

The _EDITOR_



AN

ELEGY, _&c._


      The _Curfeu_ tolls the Knell of parting Day,
    The lowing Herd winds slowly o'er the Lea,
    The Plow-man homeward plods his weary Way,
    And leaves the World to Darkness, and to me.
      Now fades the glimmering Landscape on the Sight,
    And all the Air a solemn Stillness holds;
    Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight,
    And drowsy Tinklings lull the distant Folds.
      Save that from yonder Ivy-mantled Tow'r
    The mopeing Owl does to the Moon complain
    Of such, as wand'ring near her sacred Bow'r,
    Molest her ancient solitary Reign.
      Beneath those rugged Elms, that Yew-Tree's Shade,
    Where heaves the Turf in many a mould'ring Heap,
    Each in his narrow Cell for ever laid,
    The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet sleep.
      The breezy Call of Incense-breathing Morn,
    The Swallow twitt'ring from the Straw-built Shed,
    The Cock's shrill Clarion, or the ecchoing Horn,
    No more shall wake them from their lowly Bed.
      For them no more the blazing Hearth shall burn,
    Or busy Houswife ply her Evening Care:
    No Children run to lisp their Sire's Return,
    Or climb his Knees the envied Kiss to share.
      Oft did the Harvest to their Sickle yield,
    Their Furrow oft the stubborn Glebe has broke;
    How jocund did they they drive their Team afield!
    How bow'd the Woods beneath their sturdy Stroke!
      Let not Ambition mock their useful Toil,
    Their homely Joys and Destiny obscure;
    Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful Smile,
    The short and simple Annals of the Poor.
      The Boast of Heraldry, the Pomp of Pow'r,
    And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave,
    Awaits alike th' inevitable Hour.
    The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave.
      Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary Fault,
    If Memory to these no Trophies raise,
    Where thro' the long-drawn Isle and fretted Vault
    The pealing Anthem swells the Note of Praise.
      Can storied Urn or animated Bust
    Back to its Mansion call the fleeting Breath?
    Can Honour's Voice provoke the silent Dust,
    Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold Ear of Death!
      Perhaps in this neglected Spot is laid
    Some Heart once pregnant with celestial Fire,
    Hands that the Reins of Empire might have sway'd,
    Or wak'd to Extacy the living Lyre.
      But Knowledge to their Eyes her ample Page
    Rich with the Spoils of Time did ne'er unroll;
    Chill Penury repress'd their noble Rage,
    And froze the genial Current of the Soul.
      Full many a Gem of purest Ray serene,
    The dark unfathom'd Caves of Ocean bear:
    Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,
    And waste its Sweetness on the desart Air.
      Some Village-_Hampden_ that with dauntless Breast
    The little Tyrant of his Fields withstood;
    Some mute inglorious _Milton_ here may rest,
    Some _Cromwell_ guiltless of his Country's Blood.
      Th' Applause of list'ning Senates to command,
    The Threats of Pain and Ruin to despise,
    To scatter Plenty o'er a smiling Land,
    And read their Hist'ry in a Nation's Eyes
      Their Lot forbad: nor circumscrib'd alone
    Their growing Virtues, but their Crimes confin'd;
    Forbad to wade through Slaughter to a Throne,
    And shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind,
      The struggling Pangs of conscious Truth to hide,
    To quench the Blushes of ingenuous Shame,
    Or heap the Shrine of Luxury and Pride
    With Incense, kindled at the Muse's Flame.
      Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble Strife,
    Their sober Wishes never learn'd to stray;
    Along the cool sequester'd Vale of Life
    They kept the noiseless Tenor of their Way.
      Yet ev'n these Bones from Insult to protect
    Some frail Memorial still erected nigh,
    With uncouth Rhimes and shapeless Sculpture deck'd,
    Implores the passing Tribute of a Sigh.
      Their Name, their Years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
    The Place of Fame and Elegy supply:
    And many a holy Text around she strews,
    That teach the rustic Moralist to dye.
      For who to dumb Forgetfulness a Prey,
    This pleasing anxious Being e'er resign'd,
    Left the warm Precincts of the chearful Day,
    Nor cast one longing ling'ring Look behind!
      On some fond Breast the parting Soul relies,
    Some pious Drops the closing Eye requires;
    Ev'n from the Tomb the Voice of Nature cries
    Awake, and faithful to her wonted Fires.
       For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
    Dost in these Lines their artless Tale relate;
    If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
    Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
       Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
    'Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
    'Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
    'To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
       'There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
    'That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
    'His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
    'And pore upon the Brook that babbles by.
       'Hard by yon Wood, now frowning as in Scorn,
    'Mutt'ring his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove,
    'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
    'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love.
       'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill,
    'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree;
    'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill,
    'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he.
      'The next with Dirges due in sad Array
    'Slow thro' the Church-way Path we saw him born.
    'Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the Lay,
    'Grav'd on the Stone beneath yon aged Thorn.


                    The EPITAPH.

      _Here rests his Head upon the Lap of Earth
    A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown:
    Fair Science frown'd not on his humble Birth,
    And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
      Large was his Bounty, and his Soul sincere,
    Heav'n did a Recompense as largely send:
    He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear:
    He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend
      No farther seek his Merits to disclose,
    Or draw his Frailties from their dread Abode,
    (There they alike in trembling Hope repose)
    The Bosom of his Father and his God._


FINIS.



PUBLICATIONS OF THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

FIRST YEAR (1946-47)

Numbers 1-4 out of print.

5. Samuel Wesley's _Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry_ (1700) and
_Essay on Heroic Poetry_ (1693).

6. _Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the Stage_ (1704) and
_Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage_ (1704).

SECOND YEAR (1947-1948)

7. John Gay's _The Present State of Wit_ (1711); and a section on Wit from
_The English Theophrastus_ (1702).

8. Rapin's _De Carmine Pastorali_, translated by Creech (1684).

9. T. Hanmer's (?) _Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet_ (1736).

10. Corbyn Morris' _Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit,
etc._ (1744).

11. Thomas Purney's _Discourse on the Pastoral_ (1717).

12. Essays on the Stage, selected, with an Introduction by Joseph Wood
Krutch.

THIRD YEAR (1948-1949)

13. Sir John Falstaff (pseud.), _The Theatre_ (1720).

14. Edward Moore's _The Gamester_ (1753).

15. John Oldmixon's _Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley_
(1712); and Arthur Mainwaring's _The British Academy_ (1712).

16. Nevil Payne's _Fatal Jealousy_ (1673).

17. Nicholas Rowe's _Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare_
(1709).

18. "Of Genius," in _The Occasional Paper_, Vol. III, No. 10 (1719);
and Aaron Hill's Preface to _The Creation_ (1720).

FOURTH YEAR (1949-1950)

19. Susanna Centlivre's _The Busie Body_ (1709).

20. Lewis Theobold's _Preface to The Works of Shakespeare_ (1734).

21. _Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela_
(1754).

22. Samuel Johnson's _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749) and Two _Rambler_
papers (1750).

23. John Dryden's _His Majesties Declaration Defended_ (1681).

24. Pierre Nicole's _An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in Which
from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and
Rejecting Epigrams_, translated by J.V. Cunningham.

FIFTH YEAR (1950-51)

25. Thomas Baker's _The Fine Lady's Airs_ (1709).

26. Charles Macklin's _The Man of the World_ (1792).

27. Frances Reynolds' _An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste,
and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, etc._ (1785).

28. John Evelyn's _An Apologie for the Royal Party_ (1659); and _A
Panegyric to Charles the Second_ (1661).

29. Daniel Defoe's _A Vindication of the Press_ (1718).

30. Essays on Taste from John Gilbert Cooper's _Letters Concerning
Taste_, 3rd edition (1757), & John Armstrong's _Miscellanies_ (1770).



William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

_General Editors_

H. RICHARD ARCHER
  William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

R.C. BOYS
  University of Michigan

E.N. HOOKER
  University of California, Los Angeles

JOHN LOFTIS
  University of California, Los Angeles

The Society exists to make available inexpensive reprints (usually
facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century
works. The editorial policy of the Society continues unchanged. As in
the past, the editors welcome suggestions concerning publications. All
income of the Society is devoted to defraying cost of publication and
mailing.

All correspondence concerning subscriptions in the United States and
Canada should be addressed to the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, 2205 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles 18, California.
Correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to any of
the general editors. The membership fee is $3.00 a year for
subscribers in the United States and Canada and 15/-for subscribers in
Great Britain and Europe. British and European subscribers should
address B.H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England.

       *       *       *       *       *

Publications for the sixth year [1951-1952],

(At least six items, most of them from the following list, will be
reprinted.)


THOMAS GRAY: _An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard_ (1751).
Introduction by George Sherburn.

JAMES BOSWELL, ANDREW ERSKINE, and GEORGE DEMPSTER: _Critical
Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira_ (1763). Introduction by
Frederick A. Pottle.

_An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr. Fielding_
(1751). Introduction by James A. Work.

HENRY GALLY: _A Critical Essay on Characteristic Writing_ (1725).
Introduction by Alexander Chorney.

[JOHN PHILLIPS]: _Satyr Against Hypocrits_ (1655). Introduction by
Leon Howard.

_Prefaces to Fiction._ Selected and with an Introduction by Benjamin
Boyce.

THOMAS TYERS: _A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson_ ([1785]).
Introduction by Gerald Dennis Meyer.


Publications for the first five years (with the exception of NOS. 1-4,
which are out of print) are available at the rate of $3.00 a year.
Prices for individual numbers may be obtained by writing to the
Society.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
_WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY_
2205 WEST ADAMS BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES 18, CALIFORNIA

Make check or money order payable to THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA.



[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 1]

[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 2]

[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 3]

[Illustration: The Eton College Manuscript, Page 4]





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