adopted the solution of selecting only a part. W.Tindal's musical setting for voices was of the "Epitaph" (1785), which was perhaps the item performed as a trio after a recitation of the poem at the newly opened Royalty Theatre in London in 1787. At about that time too, Stephen Storace set the first two stanzas in his “The curfew tolls” for voice and keyboard, with a reprise of the first stanza at the end. At the period there were guides for the dramatic performance of such pieces involving expressive hand gestures, and they included directions for this piece. There is also an item described as "Gray's Elegy set to music" in various settings for voice accompanied by harpsichord or harp by Thomas Billington (1754–1832), although this too may have only been an excerpt. A member of the theatrical world, Billington was noted as "fond of setting the more serious and gloomier passages in English verse” In 1830, a well known composer of glees, George Hargreaves, set "Full many a gem", the Elegy's fourteenth stanza, for four voices. And finally, at the other end of the century, Alfred Cellier did set the whole work in a cantata composed expressly for the Leeds Festival, 1883. The work was “dedicated to Mrs Coleman of Stoke Park, in memory of some pleasant hours at the very spot where the scene of the elegy is supposed to be laid.” A nearly contemporary cantata was also composed by Gertrude E. Quinton as Musa elegeia: being a setting to music of Gray's Elegy (London, 1885). The only other example yet discovered of a translation of the Elegy set to music was the few lines rendered into German by Ella Backus Behr (1897–1928) in America. Critical response The immediate response to the final draft version of the poem was positive and Walpole was very pleased with the work. During the summer of 1750, Gray received so much positive support regarding the poem that he was in dismay, but did not mention it in his letters until an 18 December 1750 letter to Wharton. In the letter, Gray said, The poem was praised for its universal aspects, and Gray became one of the most famous English poets of his era. Despite this, after his death only his elegy remained popular until 20th-century critics began to re-evaluate his poetry. The 18th-century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes,