but am much more concerned for your loss, the circumstances of which I forbear to dwell upon, as you must be too sensible of them yourself; and will, I fear, more and more need a consolation that no one can give, except He who had preserved her to you so many years, and at last, when it was His pleasure, has taken her from us to Himself; and perhaps, if we reflect upon what she felt in this life, we may look upon this as an instance of His goodness both to her and to those who loved her. . . . However you may deplore your own loss, yet think that she is at last easy and happy; and has now more occasion to pity us than we her. I hope, and beg, you will support yourself with that resignation we owe to Him, who gave us our being for our good, and who deprives us of it for the same reason. I would have come to you directly, but you do not say whether you desire I should or not; if you do, I beg I may know it, for there is nothing to hinder me, and I am in very good health."

It does not seem clear whether Gray did go to Stoke Poges at this time, but there is no doubt that the death of his aunt revived the mood in which the "Elegy" was begun, and led to its completion. He finished the poem at Stoke in June of the following year, and in sending a

copy to Horace Walpole he wrote, "Having put an end to a thing whose beginning you have seen so long, I immediately send it to you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writings have wanted and are likely to want."

It is puerile, in the face of the overwhelming evidence available, to assert, as some have done, that the churchyard of the "Elegy" is not that of Stoke Poges. Even apart from that evidence, the testimony of the poem is conclusive on that point he who visits Stoke Poges with the

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Elegy" written clearly on the tablets of his memory realises at once that here is the very scene from which its pictures were drawn; he will feel, as Mr. Edmund Gosse has said, "a certain sense of confidence in the poet's sincerity." The harmony between the objective sights and

The

the subjective recollections is perfect. perfect. "ivy-mantled tower," the " rugged elms," the "yew-tree's shade," the frail memorials "with uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture decked," the "church-way path"- these all assert the truthfulness of the poet's picture, and prove that

it was here and nowhere else he garnered the images of his immortal verse.

In the fulness of time Gray himself was laid to rest in the peaceful graveyard of Stoke Poges, and thus the visitor thither has the added sad pleasure of pausing by the tomb of the poet whose verse was the motive of his pilgrimage. First to be laid in this grave was that aunt whose death he so deeply deplored, and then, four years later, there followed that tender mother to whom he owed so great a debt of affection. The inscription on the tomb, written by Gray, reads thus: "In the vault beneath are deposited, in the hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged 66. In the same pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died March 11, 1753, aged 67." Gray himself died in July, 1771, and in his will he left explicit instructions that his body was to be "deposited in the vault, made by my late dear mother in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, near Slough in Buckinghamshire, by her remains." Of course this wish was respected, but there is no inscription on the tomb

to show that the poet is buried there. In the wall of the church, however, close by, there is a stone which reads: "Opposite to this stone, in the same tomb upon which he has so feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent,

are deposited the remains of Thomas Gray, the author of the Elegy written in a country churchyard. He was buried August 6th, 1771."

There is, however, a monument to the poet in the field adjoining the churchyard on the east. This takes the form of a massive cenotaph, and upon the four sides of the pedestal there are various inscriptions. Three of these are quota