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.