Step 1 : Introduction to the question "4. I am an English Poet and writer of the 18th century - and a muted colour often associated with the elderly. What is my name?"
...1. Percy Purple 2. Thomas Gray 3. William Green 4. George Mellow-Yellow Thomas Gray was born in 1716 and died in 1771. Not only a well known writer, he was also a professor at the Cambridge University. As a child he was rather delicate, so spent the greater part of his spare time reading all the great classics. As a young man, he went to university to study law, but instead concentrated on reading great literature written through the ages, and the somewhat lighter literature of his time - well, comparatively speaking at any rate. He was also very fond of music and playing the harpsichord. In his twenties he began writing poetry, and also commenced a much deeper study of the great literary works. This earned him the reputation as one of the most learned men of his time and a predominant poet of the 18th century. His most famous poem is "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". Just to give you a glimpse of the more human side of this writer, though, Gray was terrified of being burned to death in a fire, so he always kept a steel bar installed on a part of his bedroom window where he lived. This meant that, in case of a fire, he could tie his sheets to the bar, and climb down to safety. The image of a sophisticated university professor slithering down a set of sheets tends to make my lips twitch a bit.
