Thomas Gray Manuscripts : Thomas Gray, ‘Melpomene. Difficulties’

Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Thomas Gray Manuscripts

Alongside his annotated books, pocket books, and Commonplace Book, Gray made notes on his reading and observations on loose leaves of paper. He usually used these at an earlier stage in his studies of a particular topic, or to organise information as he collated it from multiple sources. This example of Gray’s loose notes relates to his interest in classical texts and his study of Ancient Greece and Persia. It is a series of relatively rough notes mixing English summary of and Greek quotation from Herodotus’s history of the Graeco-Persian wars, beginning with ‘Melpomene’, the conventional title given to Book 4 of Herodotus’s history after it was divided into nine books named after the nine muses (Melpomene is the muse of tragedy). Gray wrote ‘Melpomene. Difficulties’ at the top of the loose sheet then began selectively summarising occasional phrases and accounts that interested him, beginning soon after the opening of Book 4 with Herodotus’s account of the Scythian sacred gold implements, then jumping to the account of the Scythians being driven by the Massagetes over the Araxes river where they expelled the Cimmerians. He continued in this highly sporadic style, interweaving occasional quotations from Herodotus’s Greek with his own English digests of odd moments here and there from Books 4 through 9.Most of these notes are not in full prose and many focus on comprehension questions or cruxes, which suggests that Gray made them only for himself to record intermittent incidents and vocabulary that puzzled him as he was reading – that is, the ‘Difficulties’ of his subtitle. He decoded proper names for places and people, for example, and glossed unusual vocabulary in the passage from Book 4 describing animals in the nomads’ country: ‘Βασσάρια, Δίκτυες, ϗ̀ βόρυες, Names of African Quadrupedes’. This latter note betrays a typical interest in multilingual animal names that is also apparent throughout his annotations to printed works of natural history and on other loose sheets such as the list headed ‘Pisces alii, qui in M: Mediterraneo habitant, de quorum nominibus Græcis Romanisve nihil scimus’ (that is, other fish, who live in the Mediterranean sea, of whose names we know nothing from the Greeks and Romans), also published in this collection (GBR/1058/GRA/4/9). Ultimately, however, Gray’s ‘Difficulties’ in reading Books 4-9 of Herodotus must have been few, given the rapidity with which his notes jump forward through the history: he was evidently reading Book 5 when he asked himself ‘Who were Damia & Auxesia’ half way down the page, for example, but only two lines later he was copying information about ‘the Sybarites, that inhabit Laüs & Scidrus’ from Book 6. His usual custom when making notes on classical texts was to include cross-references to other authors who mention the same places, people, or events, a habit on which more formal scholarly compositions such as the vast entries under the head ‘Persia’ in volume II of his Commonplace Book depend for their systematic account of ancient geography, and he did that once here too by linking Strabo’s account to his note on Herodotus’s reference in Book 6 to Phidon, tyrant of Argos. But in general this manuscript reads like idiosyncratic notes-to-self in the course of study, and therefore stands in sharp contrast to the reader-oriented, neat manuscript works he carefully assembled and shared with friends in his Commonplace Book.Gray had a lifelong interest in classical reading and often undertook it with pen in hand as he did here, producing annotations, translations, and commentary that sometimes covered hundreds of manuscript pages, as in the ‘Plato’ entries in volume II of his Commonplace Book. This small sheet illuminates a more personal, less organised aspect of such habits. Like other items in this collection, such as the extensive classical entries throughout his Commonplace Book and the many other notes and compositions in Greek and Latin he recorded on loose sheets, it sheds light on his skills and interests as a classical scholar and linguist. As an instance of rough preliminary work in this field, it rewards particular comparison with the loose sheets on which he sketched out a genealogy of the Roman Emperors and jotted notes on Ancient Greek biographical chronologies, both also published in this collection (GBR/1058/GRA/4/7 and GBR/1058/GRA/4/10). It is most illuminating to read it alongside the ‘Persia’/‘Persaæ’ entries in volume II of his Commonplace Book, in which Herodotus’s history is a frequent source: because it does not share either their concentrated geographical focus or their carefully assembled presentation, it usefully demonstrates how Gray worked at an earlier stage in the extensive course of reading that fed into that and his other classical projects. It was published in this digital edition in September 2025, with editorial and bibliographical metadata by Ruth Abbott, and images courtesy of The Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge.Ruth Abbott University of Cambridge <a href='/collections/thomasgray'>https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/thomasgray</a> How to cite: Thomas Gray, ‘‘Melpomene. Difficulties’ (GBR/1058/GRA/4/8)’, ed. Ruth Abbott, in Thomas Gray Manuscripts, ed. Ruth Abbott, assoc. ed. Ephraim Levinson, <a href='/collections/thomasgray'>https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/thomasgray</a>