<P> Instead, Walpole wrote to Mason to say: "The Churchyard was, I am persuaded, posterior to West's death at least three or four years, as you will see by my note . At least I am sure that I had the twelve or more first lines from himself above three years after that period, and it was long before he finished it ." </P> <P> The two did not resolve their disagreement, but Walpole did concede the matter, possibly to keep the letters between them polite . But Gray's outline of the events provides the second possible way the poem was composed: the first lines of the poem were written some time in 1746 and he probably wrote more of the poem during the time than Walpole claimed . The letters show the likelihood of Walpole's date for the composition, as a 12 June 1750 letter from Gray to Walpole stated that Walpole was provided lines from the poem years before and the two were not on speaking terms until after 1745 . The only other letter to discuss the poem was one sent to Wharton on 11 September 1746, which alludes to the poem being worked on . </P> <P> The poem is not a conventional part of the Classical genre of Theocritan elegy, because it does not mourn an individual . The use of "elegy" is related to the poem relying on the concept of lacrimae rerum, or disquiet regarding the human condition . The poem lacks many standard features of the elegy: an invocation, mourners, flowers, and shepherds . The theme does not emphasise loss as do other elegies, and its natural setting is not a primary component of its theme . Through the "Epitaph" at the end, it can be included in the tradition as a memorial poem, and it contains thematic elements of the elegiac genre, especially mourning . But as compared to a poem recording personal loss such as Milton's "Lycidas", it lacks many of the ornamental aspects found in that poem . Gray's is natural, whereas Milton's is more artificially designed . </P> <P> In evoking the English countryside, the poem belongs to the picturesque tradition found in John Dyer's Grongar Hill (1726), and the long line of topographical imitations it inspired . However, it diverges from this tradition in focusing on the death of a poet . Much of the poem deals with questions that were linked to Gray's own life; during the poem's composition, he was confronted with the death of others and questioned his own mortality . Although universal in its statements on life and death, the poem was grounded in Gray's feelings about his own life, and served as an epitaph for himself . As such, it falls within an old poetic tradition of poets contemplating their legacy . The poem, as an elegy, also serves to lament the death of others, including West, though at a remove . This is not to say that Gray's poem was like others of the graveyard school of poetry; instead, Gray tried to avoid a description that would evoke the horror common to other poems in the elegiac tradition . This is compounded further by the narrator trying to avoid an emotional response to death, by relying on rhetorical questions and discussing what his surroundings lack . Nevertheless, the sense of kinship with Robert Blair's "The Grave" was so generally recognised that Gray's Elegy was added to several editions of Blair's poem between 1761 - 1808, after which other works began to be included as well . </P>

Summarise elegy written in a country churchyard or the progress of poesy