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