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 happiness⁵; but Gray seems to have been very little...