1716-1761. English poet, whose `Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard' 1750 is one of the
most quoted poems in English. Other poems
include `Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
College', `The Progress of Poesy', and `The
Bard'; these poems are now seen as the
precursors of Romanticism. A close friend of
Horace Walpole at Eton, Gray made a
continental tour with him 1739-41, an account
of which is given in his vivid letters. In
1748 his first poems appeared anonymously in
Dodsley's Miscellany.