An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard and The Eton College
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."