<P> The poem was praised for its universal aspects, and Gray became one of the most famous English poets of his era . Despite this, after his death only his elegy remained popular until 20th - century critics began to re-evaluate his poetry . The 18th - century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet to have written a letter to him claiming, "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with justice; yet there are comparatively speaking but a few who know of anything of his, but his' Church - yard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works ." </P> <P> There is a story that the British General James Wolfe read the poem before his troops arrived at the Plains of Abraham in September 1759 as part of the Seven Years' War . After reading the poem, he is reported to have said: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec tomorrow ." Adam Smith, in his 21st lecture on rhetoric in 1763, argued that poetry should deal with "A temper of mind that differs very little from the common tranquillity of mind is what we can best enter into, by the perusal of a small piece of a small length...an Ode or Elegy in which there is no odds but in the measure which differ little from the common state of mind are what most please us . Such is that on the Church yard, or Eton College by Mr Grey . The Best of Horaces (tho inferior to Mr Greys) are all of this sort ." Even Samuel Johnson, who knew Gray but did not like his poetry, later praised the poem when he wrote in his Life of Gray (1779) that it "abounds with images which find a mirror in every breast; and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo . The four stanzas beginning Yet even these bones, are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them ." </P> <P> Johnson's general criticism prompted many others to join in the debate . Some reviewers of his Lives of the Poets, and many of Gray's editors, thought that he was too harsh . An article in the Annual Register for 1782 recognised, with relation to the Elegy, "That the doctor was not over zealous to allow (Gray) the degree of praise that the public voice had universally assigned him, is, we think, sufficiently apparent"; but it went on to qualify this with the opinion that "partiality to (Gray's) beautiful elegy had perhaps allotted him a rank above his general merits ." Debate over Gray's work continued into the 19th century, and Victorian critics remained unconvinced by the rest of it . At the end of the century, Matthew Arnold, in his 1881 collection of critical writings, summed up the general response: "The Elegy pleased; it could not but please: but Gray's poetry, on the whole, astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them; it was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue ." </P> <P> In 1882, Edmund Gosse analyzed the reception of Gray's poem: "It is curious to reflect upon the modest and careless mode in which that poem was first circulated which was destined to enjoy and to retain a higher reputation in literature than any other English poem perhaps than any other poem of the world written between Milton and Wordsworth ." He continued by stressing the poem's wide acceptance: "The fame of the Elegy has spread to all countries and has exercised an influence on all the poetry of Europe, from Denmark to Italy, from France to Russia . With the exception of certain works of Byron and Shakespeare, no English poem has been so widely admired and imitated abroad and after more than a century of existence we find it as fresh as ever, when its copies, even the most popular of all those of Lamartine, are faded and tarnished ." He concluded with a reinforcing claim on the poem's place in English poetry: "It possesses the charm of incomparable felicity, of a melody that is not too subtle to charm every ear, of a moral persuasiveness that appeals to every generation, and of metrical skill that in each line proclaims the master . The Elegy may almost be looked upon as the typical piece of English verse, our poem of poems; not that it is the most brilliant or original or profound lyric in our language, but because it combines in more balanced perfection than any other all the qualities that go to the production of a fine poetical effect ." </P>

What specific event is thomas facing in the poem