grayt.ead.0001-mss.0229 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.0229#did0001 mss.poems Poems [ca. 1725]-1771 poems.epww [Epitaph on Sir William Williams] Here, foremost in the dangerous paths of fame, 1775 Starr/Hendrickson (eds.), Complete Poems (1966), 104-105 Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 238-240

Written between May and August 1761 at the request of one of the executors of Sir William Williams , a politician and soldier Gray briefly met early in October 1760, who died 27 April 1761 on an expedition against Belle Ile. First published, as Epitaph II. On Sir William Williams, in Mason's Poems (1775), 62.

mss.0229 poems.epww Epitaph on Sir Will<emph render="super">m.</emph> Williams 1780[?] 4 transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand on Whatman paper 180 mm x 110 mm MS Add. 439, Poems section, 113-116 The Archives YMAR

MS catalogued by Alexander Huber in The Archives, York Minster Library & Archives, on 27/03/2007.

Transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand, entitled Epitaph on Sir Will<emph render="super">m.</emph> Williams (p. 113) (Epitaph II. [p. 115]). The poem, which is annotated "This Epitaph (hitherto unpublished) was written at the request of Mr. Fred. Montagu, who intended to have inscribed it on a Monument at Bellisle, at the siege of which this accomplished youth was kill'd, 1761; but for some difficulty attending the erection of it, the design was not executed" on the title page, is part of a section called Poems, which is separately paginated and has its own table of contents (p. 129), in a volume entitled Gray's Poems. The book carries the bookplate of Gray's friend and biographer William Mason .