In 1744, through the intervention of a lady, the difference between Walpole and Gray was so far made up, that they resumed their correspondence, although never their intimacy.  About this time he got acquainted with Mason, then a scholar in St John’s College, who became a minor Boswell to a minor Johnson; although he used liberties with Gray’s correspondence and poetry, such as Boswell never durst have attempted with his idol.  Mason had first introduced himself to Gray by showing him some MS. poetry.  With the famous Dr Conyers Middleton, too, he became intimate, and lived to lament his death.

In 1747, Dodsley published for him his “Ode to Eton College,” the first of Gray’s productions which appeared in print.  It excited no notice whatever.  Walpole wished him to publish his poems in conjunction with the remains of West; but this he declined, on account of want of materials—­perhaps also feeling the great superiority of his own poetry.  At Walpole’s request, however, he wrote an ode on the death of his favourite cat!

Greek became now his constant study.  He read its more recondite authors, such as Pausanias, Athenaeus, Pindar, Lysias, and AEschylus, with great care, and commenced the preparation of a Table of Greek Chronology, on a very minute and elaborate scale.

In 1749 he lost his aunt, Mrs Antrobus, and her death, which he felt as a heavy affliction, led him to complete his “Elegy,” which he sent to Walpole, who handed it about in MS., to the great delight of those who were privileged to peruse it.  When published, it sold rapidly, and continues still the most popular of his poems.

In March 1753, his beloved and revered mother died, and he erected over her dust a monument, with an inscription testifying to the strength of his filial love and sorrow.  In 1755 he finished his “Ode on the Progress of Poetry,” and in the same year began his “Bard.”  All his poems, however short, were most laboriously composed, written and rewritten, subjected, in whole or in part, to the criticism of his friends, and, according to their verdict, either published, or left fragments, or consigned to the flames.  About this time he begins, in his letters, to complain of depression of spirits, of severe attacks of the gout, of sleepless nights, feverish mornings, and heavy days.  He was now, and during the rest of his life, to pay the penalty of a lettered indolence and studious sloth, of a neglected body and an over-cultivated mind.  The accident, it is said, of seeing a blind Welsh harper performing on a harp, excited him to finish his “Bard,” which in MS. appears to have divided the opinion of his friends, as it still does that of the critics.