Although his collected works published during his lifetime amount to
less than 1,000 lines, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate in
1757; he refused.
Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard" (1751) is one of the
most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English
language.
Met Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford, while studying at Cambridge,
and went with him on the Grand Tour (a period of European travel where
young men of noble birth learned about the politics, culture and art).
It is believed the two had an affair.