1 AUGUST 1952, Page 16

Thomas Gray

SIR,—Janus was facing the wrong side of the London road in his parenthesis on Thomas Gray. The only sense in which Pembroke College " produced " Gray was that in which a conjuror can " produce " a pre-extant rabbit from a hat. The poet was educated at Peterhouse between July 3rd, 1734, and September, 1738, and returned there in 1742. It is. true that he had been entered at Pembroke first; but he was not resident there until the age of 40. His admission " ex Collegio Divi Petro" is dated March 6th, 1756; and by that time his

" production " as a poet was over.—Yours, &c., A. P. R.