Graveyard Poets | Samuel Johnson (essay date 1781)
Samuel Johnson (essay date 1781)
SOURCE: Johnson, Samuel. “Gray.” In Lives of the English Poets, Vol. 3, edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 421-45. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.
[In the following essay, originally published in 1781, Johnson provides a brief overview of Gray's life and claims that there is more to be celebrated in the life that he lived than in the poetry he created, in which he finds very little originality.]
Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener1 of London, was born in Cornhill2, November 26, 17163. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then assistant to Dr. George, and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge4.
The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and...
[The entire page is 12583 words long]
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