Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Tenor
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Gray.—Elegy.
Through the sequester’d vale of rural life,
The venerable patriarch guileless held
The tenor of his way.
Dr. Porteus.—Death, a Poem, Line 109. The idea is Gray’s; he began his Elegy in the Autumn of 1742, when Porteus was only eleven years of age.