Here’s an attempt at a link to Isobel Grundy’s take on Arthur Gray. I mentioned her interpretation in class. It’s from google books, so who knows if it will work, but if you find the Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, edited by Christine Gerrard (2006), and then search for Arthur Gray, that will work. Or use the library!
And here is the account of Arthur Gray from the Newgate Calender, of which the highlight is the conclusion:
The single reflection arising from this story is, that illicit pleasure leads to disgrace: there is no doubt but there was some foundation for this prosecution. If Gray had been previously too intimate with the lady, she was punished by the exposure of a public trial; if otherwise, he was punished for the attempt, in the ignominy of a public conviction. Hence let it be learnt that chastity is a virtue which cannot be prized at too high a rate.
I should have remembered this, but he was in fact tried for burglary, not rape or attempted rape.
