Item 168 - Letter from D. C. Tovey to Henry Sidgwick

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Declares that the author of the poem Contemplation was the Reverend Richard Gifford, who lived until 1807. States that the poem appeared in 1753, three years after the Elegy [Written in a Country Churchyard], and claims that there is no doubt that the form of Contemplation 'was suggested by Gray's successful precedent.' Relates that Birkbeck Hill thought that he had discovered the poem in the British Museum, but that it had been well known before this, and it is quoted in Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature, volume one. States that the name is sometimes given as 'Giffard', and that he was domestic chaplain to the Marquis of Tweeddale, and related to that family.