SOURCE: "Gray's Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes," in Augustan Studies, The Athlone Press, 1961, pp. 216-23.

In the following essay, Tillotson explains some of the literary allusions in Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat," at the same time remarking on Samuel Johnson's criticism of the poem.

Gray's ["Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"] is one of those poems that make allusions to other poems, and that expect the reader to catch them. We all know how the Rape of the Lock depends for the tone of its narrative and meaning on contrasts with the great epics, and the same is true in smaller compass of Gray's poem.

Nowadays, if a poet announced such a subject as the death of a cat, we should expect him to treat...