Serendipity language was by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a (lost) painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip". The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". The name comes from "Serendip", an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence "Sarandib" by Arab traders. It is derived from the Sanskrit "Siṃhaladvīpaḥ" (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island).
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard childhood Horace Walpole had been almost killed by two highwaymen. Although Walpole survived and later joked about the event, the incident disrupted Gray's ability to pursue his scholarship. The events dampened the mood that Christmas, and Antrobus's death was ever fresh in the minds of the Gray family. As a side effect, the events caused Gray to spend much of his time contemplating his own mortality. As he began to contemplate various aspects of mortality, he combined his desire to determine a view of order and progress present in the Classical world with aspects of his own life. With spring