The next year the British Museum was opened (15th January 1759), and Gray went to London to read and transcribe the MSS. collected there from the Harleian and Cottoman libraries. During his residence in the capital, appeared two odes to "Obscurity" and "Oblivion," in ridicule of his lyrics, from the pens of Colman and Lloyd, full of spirited satire, which failed, however, to disturb the poet's equanimity. Like many fastidious writers, he was more afraid of his own taste, and of the strictures of good-natured friends, than of the attacks of foes. In 1762 he applied for the Professorship of Modern History, vacant by the death of Turner; but it was given to Brochet, the tutor of Sir James Lowther.
In 1765 he took a tour to Scotland, and saw many of its more interesting points--Stirling, Loch Tay, the Pass of Killierankie, and Glammis Castle, where he met Beattie. He wrote a very entertaining account of the journey, in his letters to his friends. He was offered an LL.D. by the College of Aberdeen; but out of respect to his own University, declined the honour. In 1767 he added his "Imitations of Welsh and Norwegian Poetry" to his other productions. Sir Walter Scott tells us, that when Gray's poems reached the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and when the "Fatal Sisters" was repeated by a clergyman to some of the old inhabitants, they remembered having sung it all in its native language to him years before. In 1768, the Professorship of Modern History falling again vacant by Mr Brochet's death, the Duke of Grafton instantly bestowed it on Gray, who, out of gratitude, wrote an ode on the installation of his patron to the Chancellorship of Cambridge University. He went from witnessing this ceremony to the Lakes of Cumberland, and kept an interesting journal of his tour to that then little known and most enchanting region. In 1770, he visited Wales; but owing probably to poor health, has left no notes of his journey. In May the next year, his health became worse, his spirits more depressed, an incurable cough preyed on his lungs; he resigned his Professorship, and shortly after removed to London. There he rallied a little, and returned to Cambridge, where, on the 24th of July, he was seized with a severe attack of gout in the stomach. Of this he expired on the 30th, in the 55th year of his age, without any apparent fear of death. He was buried by the side of his mother, in the churchyard of Stoke. A monument was erected by Mason to his memory, in Westminster Abbey.