grayt.ead.0001-mss.0055 Thomas Gray Manuscripts: An Inventory at the Thomas Gray Archive. Alexander Huber Thomas Gray Archive 2006 Catalogued in EAD 2002 by Alexander Huber, Editor, Thomas Gray Archive, 2005- English grayt.ead.0001-mss.0055#did0001 mss.poems Poems [ca. 1725]-1771 poems.epmm [Epitaph on Mrs Mason] Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die [1767] (pr. 1784) Starr/Hendrickson (eds.), Complete Poems (1966), 105 Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 255-256

Written between 27 March and 23 May 1767 for Mason's wife Mary who died on 27 March 1767 aged 28. Inscribed on a monument in Bristol Cathedral, [1767]. First published in The New Foundling Hospital for Wit (London, new edn. 1784), vi. 45. Transcripts of Mason's own epitaph on his wife beginning "Take, holy Earth, all that my soul holds dear", are at PwV 304 and 1010(ii), Portland Collection, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.

mss.0055 poems.epmm Epitaph [1767?] [1?] autograph and autograph transcript Hurd Library HARC Smith (ed.), Index (1989), item GrT 43, 83 Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 256

Autograph of Gray's four lines, preceding a transcript in Gray's hand of the 12 lines composed by Mason , the whole entitled Epitaph, endorsed in the hand of Richard Hurd "Mr. Mason's Ep. on his wife in Mr. Gray's hand-writing", in the papers of Richard Hurd.