 Johnson 's general criticism prompted many others to join in the debate . Some reviewers of his Lives of the Poets , and many of Gray 's editors , thought that he was too harsh . An article in the Annual Register for 1782 recognised , with relation to the Elegy , " That the doctor was not over zealous to allow [ Gray ] the degree of praise that the public voice had universally assigned him , is , we think , sufficiently apparent " ; but it went on to qualify this with the opinion that " partiality to [ Gray 's ] beautiful elegy had perhaps allotted him a rank above his general merits . " Debate over Gray 's work continued into the 19th century , and Victorian critics remained unconvinced by the rest of it . At the end of the century , Matthew Arnold , in his 1881 collection of critical writings , summed up the general response : " The Elegy pleased ; it could not but please : but Gray 's poetry , on the whole , astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them ; it was so unfamiliar , so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue . " 
