Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732), Author of &quot;The Beggar&#x27;s Opera&quot;

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVIII, p. 65.

[pg xi]

CHAP.	PAGE
[PREFACE]	[vii]
I.[—EARLY YEARS]	[1]
II.[—GAY COMMENCES AUTHOR]	[7]
III.[—"RURAL SPORTS"—"THE FAN"—"THE WIFE OF BATH"—ETC.]	[18]
IV.[—"THE SHEPHERD'S WEEK"—"A LETTER TO A LADY"]	[24]
V.[—"THE WHAT D'YE CALL IT"—"AN EPISTLE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF BURLINGTON"—"TRIVIA, OR, THE ART OF WALKING THE STREETS OF LONDON"—"THREE HOURS AFTER MARRIAGE"]	[36]
VI.[—"POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS"—GAY INVESTS HIS EARNINGS IN THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY—THE SOUTH SEA "BUBBLE" BREAKS, AND GAY LOSES ALL HIS MONEY—APPOINTED A COMMISSIONER OF THE STATE LOTTERY—LORD LINCOLN GIVES HIM AN APARTMENT IN WHITEHALL—AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS—CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. HOWARD]	[50]
VII.[—"THE CAPTIVES"—THE FIRST SERIES OF "FABLES"—GAY AND THE COURT—POPE, SWIFT AND MRS. HOWARD]	[65]
VIII.[—"THE BEGGAR'S OPERA"]	[78]
[pg xii]IX.[—"POLLY"]	[92]
X.[—CORRESPONDENCE (1729)]	[105]
XI.[—CORRESPONDENCE (1730)]	[115]
XII.[—CORRESPONDENCE (1731)]	[126]
XIII.[—DEATH]	[133]
APPENDIX:—
I.[—NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF THE TONES OF "THE BEGGAR'S OPERA," by W.H. GRATTAN FLOOD, Mus.D.]	[150]
II.[—A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN GAY]	[156]
III.[—PROGRAMME OF THE REVIVAL OF "THE BEGGAR'S OPERA," LYRIC THEATRE; HAMMERSMITH, JUNE 7th, 1920]	[162]
[INDEX]	[163]

[pg 1]

CHAPTER I

1685-1706
EARLY YEARS

The Gays were an old family, who settled in Devonshire when Gilbert le Gay, through his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Curtoyse, came into possession of the manor of Goldsworthy, in Parkham. This they held until 1630, when it passed out of their hands to the Coffins.[^[1]] Subsequently they were associated with the parish of Frittelstock, near Great Torrington. In the Parish Registers of Barnstaple the name appears from time to time: in 1544 is recorded the death of Richard Gaye, and later of John Gaye, "gentill man," and Johans Gay. From other sources it is known that Richard Gay was Mayor of the town in 1533, and Anthony Gay in 1638.[^[2]] The records of the family have not been preserved, but at some time early in the seventeenth century there was at Frittelstock one John Gay, whose second son, William, was the father of the poet.

William Gay resided at Barnstaple, and since he lived in a large house, called the Red Cross, at the corner of Joy Street, facing Holland Street, it is reasonable to assume that he was in easy circumstances. He married a daughter of Jonathan Hanmer, the leading Nonconformist divine of the town, and by her had five children. The first-born was a girl, who died in 1685; then came Katherine, born [pg 2]in 1676, who married Anthony Baller, whose son Joseph issued in 1820 the slim volume bearing the title of "Gay's Chair";[^[3]]in 1778, Jonathan; and three years later, Joanna, who married John Fortescue—possibly a relation of William Fortescue, afterwards Master of the Rolls, who is still remembered as a friend of Pope. The youngest child was John, the subject of this memoir, stated by his earlier biographers to have been born in 1688, but now known, from an entry in the Barnstaple Parish Register, to have been baptised in the Old Church on September 16th, 1685.

Mrs. Gay died in 1694, her husband a year later; and the custody of the four surviving orphaned children devolved upon their uncles. William Gay's brothers were John and Richard, who resided at Frittelstock; James, Rector of Meeth; and Thomas, who lived at Barnstaple. Mrs. Gay's only brother was John Hanmer, who succeeded to his father's pastoral office among the Congregational or Independent Dissenters at Barnstaple. Jonathan, the elder son of William Gay, who inherited the family property, was intended for the Church, but "severe studies not well suiting his natural genius, he betook himself to military pursuits,"[^[4]] and, probably about the time of his father's death, entered the army. Who took charge of the two girls is not known; but it is on record that John, after his father's death, and then in his tenth year, went to live at Barnstaple with his paternal uncle, Thomas Gay. It is interesting to note that in 1882, "among the pieces of timber carted away from the Barnstaple Parish Church [which was then undergoing restoration] has been found a portion of a pew, with the name 'John Gay,' and the date, 1695, cut upon it.... No other John Gay appears in the Parish Register."[^[5]]

Gay attended the Free Grammar School at Barnstaple, and among his schoolfellows there with whom he cemented [pg 3]an enduring friendship, were William Fortescue, to whom reference has been made above, and Aaron Hill.[^[6]] William Raynor was the headmaster when Gay first went to the Grammar School, but soon he removed to Tiverton, and was succeeded by the Rev. Robert Luck. Luck subsequently claimed that Gay's dramatic instincts were developed by taking part in the amateur theatricals promoted by him, and when in April, 1736, he published a volume of verse, he wrote, in his dedication to the Duke of Queensberry.[^[7]] Gay's patron and friend:—

"O Queensberry! could happy Gay

This offering to thee bring,

''Tis he, my Lord' (he'd smiling say),

'Who taught your Gay to sing.'"

These lines suggest that an intimacy between Gay and Luck existed long after their relations as pupil and master had ceased, but it is doubtful if this was the case. It is certainly improbable that the lad saw much of the pedagogue when he returned to Barnstaple for a while as the guest of the Rev. John Hanmer, since Luck was a bitter opponent of the Dissenters and in open antagonism to John Hanmer.

How long Gay remained at the Grammar School is not known. There are, indeed, no records upon which to base a narrative of his early years. It is, however, generally accepted that, on leaving school, he was apprenticed to a silk-mercer in London. This was not so unaccountable a proceeding then as appears to-day, for we know from Gibbon's "Memoirs" that "our most respectable families have not disdained the counting-house, or even the shop;... and in England, as well as in the Italian commonwealths, heralds have been compelled to declare that gentility is not degraded by the exercise of trade": for example, the historian's great grandfather, son of a [pg 4]country gentleman, became a linen-draper in Leadenhall Street.

Gay had no taste for trade, and did not long remain in this employment. According to one authority, "he grew so fond of reading and study that he frequently neglected to exert himself in putting oft silks and velvets to the ladies";[^[8]] while his nephew, the Rev. Joseph Bailer, says: "Young Gay, not being able to bear the confinement of a shop, soon felt a remarkable depression of spirits, and consequent decline of health; he was, therefore, obliged to quit that situation, and retire to Barnstaple, in the hope of receiving benefit from his native air."[^[9]] No doubt the mercer was willing enough to cancel the indentures of an apprentice so unsatisfactory as Gay probably was. Anyhow, Gay returned to Barnstaple, and stayed awhile with his maternal uncle, the Rev. John Hanmer.

It has been said that it was during this visit to Barnstaple that Gay began to write verses; and as most men who take to poetry began to dabble in ink in their youth, this statement may well be accepted. Only, so far no bibliographer has traced any of these early writings. Some poems, said to have been written by him in these days have been printed in the volume to which reference has already been made, "Gay's Chair: Poems never before printed, written by John Gay.... With a Sketch of his Life from the MSS. of the Rev. Joseph Bailer, his nephew. Edited by Henry Lee ... 1820," but the authenticity of these cannot definitely be accepted. A chair, said to have been the property of Gay at Barnstaple, was sold early in the nineteenth century to Henry Lee, who sent it to be repaired. "On taking out the drawer in front, which was somewhat broken," so runs the story, "I found at the back part of the chair a concealed drawer, ingeniously fastened with a small wooden bolt;... it was full of manuscript papers, some of which appeared to have [pg 5]slipped over, as I found them stuck to the bottom or seat of the chair."[^[10]] The poems in question are: "The Ladies' Petition to the Honorable the House of Commons," the longest and most ambitious of the pieces; "To Miss Jane Scott," "Prediction," "Comparisons," "Absence," "Fable," "Congratulation to a Newly-married Pair," "A Devonshire Hill," "Letter to a Young Lady," and "To My Chair." Of this small collection, Mr. John Underhill, who includes it in his admirable edition of Gay's poems in the "Muses' Library," writes: "The evidence in support of their authenticity is (1) the fact that they were found in a chair which was always spoken of by Gay's 'immediate descendants' as 'having been the property of the poet, and which, as his favourite easy chair, he highly valued'; and (2) that 'The Ladies' Petition' was printed nearly verbatim from a manuscript in the handwriting of the poet ... If really Gay's, they [the verses] may, we think, a great many of them, be safely regarded as the production of his youth, written, perhaps, during the somewhat extended visit to Devonshire which preceded his introduction to the literary world of Pope. The least doubtful piece, 'The Ladies' Petition' was probably 'thrown off' upon the occasion of his visit to Exeter in 1715."

If the verses are genuine, they have such biographical interest as is afforded by an allusion to a youthful love-affair. There are lines "To Miss Jane Scott":—

The Welsh girl is pretty.

The English girl fair,

The Irish deem'd witty,

The French débonnaire;

Though all may invite me,

I'd value them not;

The charms that delight me

I find in a SCOT.

It is presumedly to the same young lady he was referring [pg 6]in the verses written probably shortly after he returned to London after his visit to Devonshire:—

ABSENCE.

Augustus, frowning, gave command.

And Ovid left his native land;

From Julia, as an exile sent.

He long with barb'rous Goths was pent.

So fortune frown'd on me, and I was driven

From friends, from home, from Jane, and happy Devon!

And Jane, sore grieved when from me torn away;—

loved her sorrow, though I wish'd her—GAY.

That another girl there was may be gathered from the "Letter to a Young Lady," who was not so devoted as Jane Scott, for the poet writes:

Begging you will not mock his sighing.

And keep him thus whole years a-dying!

"Whole years!"—Excuse my freely speaking.

Such tortures, why a month—a week in?

Caress, or kill him quite in one day,

Obliging thus your servant, JOHN GAY.

Footnotes:

Risdon: Survey of Devon (1811), p. 243.

Gribble: Memorials of Devonshire.

Gay's Chair, p. 12.

Gay's Chair, p. 13.

Notes and Queries, N.S. VI, 488, December 16th, 1882, from the North Devon Herald of December 7th.

Aaron Hill (1685-1750), dramatist and journalist.

Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensbury and second Duke of Dover (1698-1777), married Catherine, second daughter of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Rochester.

Ayre: Pope, pp. 11, 97.

Gay's Chair, p. 13.

Gay's Chair, p. 5.

[pg 7]

CHAPTER II

1706-1712
GAY COMMENCES AUTHOR

Gay's health was improved by his stay in his native town, and presently he returned to London, where, according to the family tradition, he "lived for some time as a private gentleman."[^[1]] Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out that this is "a statement scarcely reconcilable with the opening in life his friends had found for him";[^[2]] but it may be urged against this view that Gay and his sisters had each a small patrimony.[^[3]] If it is assumed that he returned to the metropolis after he came of age in September, 1706, he may have been possessed of a sum of money, small, no doubt, but sufficient to provide him with the necessaries of life for some little time. When his brother, Jonathan, who had been promoted lieutenant at Cologne by Marlborough, under whom he served at Hochstadt and elsewhere, and captain by Queen Anne, committed suicide in 1709, after a quarrel with his colonel, John may have inherited some further share of the paternal estate.

When Gay was one-and-twenty, ginger was hot in his mouth. Wine, woman, and song appealed to him. It is not on record that he had any love-affair, save those indicated in the verses in "Gay's Chair"; but the indelicacy of many passages in his writings suggests that he was rather intimately acquainted with the bagnios of the town. No man whose sense of decency had not been denied could [pg 8]possibly have written the verses "To a Young Lady, with some Lamphreys," and this, even after making allowance for the freedom of the early eighteenth century. He certainly frequented the coffee-houses of Covent Garden and Pall Mall. Also, he roamed about the metropolis, and became learned in the highways and byways, north and south, and east and west—a knowledge which bore excellent fruit in "Trivia."

But I, who ne'er was bless'd by Fortune's hand,

Nor brighten'd plough-shares in paternal land.

Long in the noisy town have been immured,

Respired its smoke, and all its cares endured.

Where news and politics divide mankind,

And schemes of state involve th' uneasy mind.[^[4]]

Gay was then, as ever, a great eater. "As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito, ergo sum," Congreve wrote to Pope long after, "the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edit, ergo est."[^[5]] He ate in excess always, and not infrequently drank too much, and for exercise had no liking, though he was not averse from a ramble around London streets. As the years passed, he became fat, but found comfort in the fact that some of his intimates were yet more corpulent. To this, he made humorous reference in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

And wondering Maine so fat, with laughing eyes,

(Gay, Maine and Cheney,[^[6]] boon companions dear,

Gay fat, Maine fatter, and Cheney huge of size).

Gay had a passion for finery. To this foible Pope, in the early days of his acquaintance with the young man, made reference in a letter to Swift, December 8th, 1713: "One Mr. Gay, an unhappy youth, who writes pastorals during the time of Divine Service, whose case is the more deplorable, as he hath miserably lavished away all that silver he should have reserved for his soul's health, in [pg 9]buttons and loops for his coat." Gay was not only well aware of this weakness, but he deplored it, though he could never contrive to overcome it. He made allusion to it in some lines known as the "Epigrammatical Petition," addressed to Lord Oxford,[^[7]] in June, 1714, and also in the prologue to "The Shepherd's Week":—

I sold my sheep and lambkins too,

For silver loops and garments blue:

My boxen hautboy sweet of sound,

For lace that edged mine hat around;

For Lightfoot and my scrip I got

A gorgeous sword, and eke a knot.

Gay now renewed his acquaintance with his old schoolfellow, Aaron Hill, who, it is said, though on doubtful authority, employed him as an amanuensis when setting on foot the project of answering questions in a paper, styled the British Apollo, or, Curious Amusements for the Ingenious.[^[8]] The first number of this publication appeared on March 13th, 1708, and it was issued on Wednesdays and Fridays until March 16th, 1711. Gay referred to it in his pamphlet, "The Present State of Wit," published in May 1711: "Upon a review of my letter, I find I have quite forgotten the British Apollo, which might possibly have happened from its having of late retreated out of this end of the town into the country, where I am informed, however, that it still recommends itself by deciding wagers at cards and giving good advice to shopkeepers and their apprentices." Whether or no Gay ever contributed to the British Apollo, it seems likely that it was through the good offices of Hill that in May, 1708, Gay's poem, "Wine," was published by William Keble at the Black-Spread-eagle in Westminster Hall, who, about the same time, brought out a translation by Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate, and Hill, of a portion of the thirteenth book of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

"[pg 10]Wine," a subject on which Gay, even at the age of twenty-two, could write with some authority, secured a sufficient popularity to be paid the doubtful compliment of piracy in 1709, by Henry Hill, of Blackfriars, on whom presently the author neatly revenged himself in his verses, "On a Miscellany of Poems to Bernard Lintott," by the following reference:—

While neat old Elzevir is reckon'd better

Than Pirate Hill's brown sheets and scurvy letter.

This blank-verse poem, which may have been suggested by John Philips' "Cider," published in 1708, is written in the mock-heroic strain, and although it has no particular value, shows some sense of humorous exaggeration, of which Gay was presently to show himself a master.

Of happiness terrestrial, and the source

Whence human pleasures flow, sing, Heavenly Muse,

Of sparkling juices, of th' enlivening grape,

Whose quick'ning taste adds vigour to the soul.

Whose sov'reign power revives decaying Nature,

And thaws the frozen blood of hoary age,

A kindly warmth diffusing—youthful fires

Gild his dim eyes, and paint with ruddy hue

His wrinkled visage, ghastly wan before—

Cordial restorative to mortal man,

With copious hand by bounteous gods bestow'd.

These are the opening lines. The concluding passage describing the tippling revellers leaving the tavern suggests, as has more than once been pointed out, the hand that afterwards wrote "Trivia."

Thus we the winged hours in harmless mirth

And joys unsullied pass, till humid night

Has half her race perform'd; now all abroad

Is hush'd and silent, now the rumbling noise

Of coach or cart, or smoky link-boy's call

Is heard—but universal Silence reigns:

When we in merry plight, airy and gay.

Surprised to find the hours so swiftly fly.

With hasty knock, or twang of pendent cord.

Alarm the drowsy youth from slumb'ring nod;

Startled he flies, and stumbles o'er the stairs

[pg 11]

Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies

His yet clung eyelids, and with stagg'ring reel

Enters confused, and muttering asks our wills;

When we with liberal hand the score discharge,

And homeward each his course with steady step

Unerring steers, of cares and coin bereft.

So far as is known, Gay preserved a profound silence for three years after his publication of "Wine," and then, on May 3rd, 1711, appeared from his pen, "The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country," sold at the reasonable price of three-pence. This attracted the attention of Swift. "Dr. Freind [^[9]] ... pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called 'The State of Wit', giving the characters of all the papers that have come out of late," he wrote in the "Journal to Stella," May 12: "The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift. But, above all things, he praises the Tatlers and Spectators, and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus is one treated by the impudent dogs." In this unambitious little sketch, as the author puts it, he gives "the histories and characters of all our periodical papers, whether monthly, weekly or diurnal," and it is, therefore, of value to the student of the early days of English journalism. He claimed to write without political bias: "I shall only promise that, as you know, I never cared one farthing either for Whig or Tory, so I shall consider our writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which party they belong." In "The Present State of Wit" most of the better-known periodical writers are introduced. Dr. William King is mentioned, not he who was the Archbishop of Dublin, nor he who was the Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, but he of whom it was said that he "could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak," who was the author of the "Art of Cookery" and the "Art of Love," and [pg 12]who in 1709 had fluttered the scientific dovecotes by parodying the "Philosophical Transactions" in the Useful Transactions in Philosophy and Other Sorts of Learning, of which, however, only three numbers were issued. John Ozell was pilloried as the author of the Monthly Amusement, which was not, as the title suggests, a periodical, but was merely a title invented to summarise his frequent appearances in print. "It is generally some French novel or play, indifferently translated, it is more or less taken notice of, as the original piece is more or less agreeable." Defoe takes his place in the gallery as the editor and principal contributor to the weekly Poor Review, that is, the Weekly Review (which was published weekly from February 19th, 1704, until 1712) which, says Gay, "is quite exhausted and grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his brothers of the quill round, none of them will enter into a controversy with him."

The periodical publications of the day are passed under review: the Observer, founded in 1702 by John Tutchin, and after his death five years later, conducted by George Ridpath, editor of the Flying Post, until 1712, when it had almost entirely ceased to please, and was finally extinguished by the Stamp Tax; the weekly Examiner, set up in August, 1710, in opposition to the Whig Taller, numbering among its contributors Dr. King, St. John, Prior, Atterbury, and Freind, and managed by Swift from No. 14 (October 26th, 1710); the Whig Examiner, the first issue of which appeared on September 14th, 1710, its five numbers being written by Addison; the Medley, another Whig paper, which ran from August, 1710, to August, 1711, and was edited by Arthur Mainwaring, with the assistance of Steele, Oldmixon, and Anthony Henley (a wit and a man of fortune, to whom Garth dedicated "The Dispensary," and who distinguished himself by describing Swift as "a beast for ever after the order of Melchisedec"). The Tatter, which appeared three times a week from April 12th, 1709, to January 2nd, 1711, was of course mentioned, [pg 13]and well-deserved tributes were paid to Steele and Addison. Of Addison he wrote with appreciation, but briefly: "This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much, and who refuses to have his pen set before those pieces which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this gentleman's reputation, whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the world that he was the greatest master in Europe of those two languages." Of Steele, Gay wrote at greater length: "To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings, I shall, in the first place, observe that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encourage them in their fashionable views and false notion of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town that they were a parcel of fops, fools and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half-inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying with the false sentiments and vicious tastes of the age—either in morality, criticism, or good breeding—he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for virtue and good sense. It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or given a very great check to! how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion! how many people they have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if they were not so! and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages [pg 14]of learning! He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amicable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the 'Change. Accordingly there is not a lady at Court, nor a banker in Lombard Street who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England. Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since."

Gay's agreeable personality secured him many friends. Not later than the spring of 1711 he made the acquaintance of Henry Cromwell, whom he later described as "the honest hatless Cromwell with red breeches," by whom he was introduced to Pope, who was at this time a member of Addison's circle, and generally recognised as a rising man of letters. Pope evidently liked Gay, who was his senior by nearly three years, but was as a child in worldly wisdom. On July 15th, 1711, Pope wrote to Cromwell, "Pray give my service to all my friends, and to Mr. Gay in particular";[^[10]] and again, nine days later, addressing the same correspondent, he said: "My humble services, too, to Mr. Gay, of whose paper ['The Present State of Wit'] I have made mention to [Erasmus] Lewis."[^[11]] Gay, ever anxious to please those whom he liked and, perhaps, especially those who might be of use to him, when writing the verses, "On a Miscellany of Poems to Bernard Lintott" (which appeared in that publisher's Miscellany issued in May, 1712), eagerly took advantage to ingratiate himself with a number of people, in so far as he could do this [pg 15]by means of compliments. Gay tells the publisher that if he will only choose his authors from "the successful bards" praised by the author, then "praise with profit shall reward thy pains"; and—

So long shall live thy praise in books of fame,

And Tonson yield to Lintott's lofty name;

but, since an author should not praise one publisher at the expense of another, he has already had a kindly word for that more celebrated publisher, Jacob Tonson—"Jacob's mighty name." It may be mentioned in passing that Gay's "Poems on Several Occasions" bear the joint imprint of Lintott and Tonson. Gay waxed eloquent in these verses, when writing of the other contributors to the Miscellany, and bestowed praise upon his brother-poets in no measured quantity:—

Where Buckingham will condescend to give

That honour'd piece to distant times must live;

When noble Sheffield strikes the trembling strings,

The little loves rejoice and clap their wings.

Anacreon lives, they cry, th' harmonious swain }

Retunes the lyre, and tries his wonted strain, }

'Tis he,—our lost Anacreon lives again. }

But when th' illustrious poet soars above

The sportive revels of the god of love,

Like Maro's muse he takes a loftier flight,

And towers beyond the wond'ring Cupid's sight.

If thou wouldst have thy volume stand the test,

And of all others be reputed best,

Let Congreve teach the list'ning groves to mourn,

As when he wept o'er fair Pastora's urn.[^[12]]

Let Prior's muse with soft'ning accents move,

Soft as the strain of constant Emma's love:

Or let his fancy choose some jovial theme.

As when he told Hans Carvel's jealous dream;

Prior th' admiring reader entertains,

With Chaucer's humour, and with Spenser's strains.[^[13]]

Waller in Granville lives; when Mira sings

[pg 16]

With Waller's hands he strikes the sounding strings.

With sprightly turns his noble genius shines,

And manly sense adorns his easy lines.

On Addison's sweet lays attention waits,

And silence guards the place while he repeats;

His muse alike on ev'ry subject charms,

Whether she paints the god of love, or arms:

In him pathetic Ovid sings again,

And Homer's "Iliad" shines in his "Campaign."

Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly song,

Sense flows in easy numbers from his tongue;

Great Phoebus in his learned son we see,

Alike in physic, as in poetry.

When Pope's harmonious muse with pleasure roves,

Amidst the plains, the murm'ring streams and groves.

Attentive Echo, pleased to hear his songs,

Thro' the glad shade each warbling note prolongs;

His various numbers charm our ravish'd ears, }

His steady judgment far out-shoots his years, }

And early in the youth the god appears. }

It was in reference to these complimentary lines (which Pope saw in manuscript) that, on December 21st, 1711, Pope wrote to Cromwell: "I will willingly return Mr. Gay my thanks for the favour of his poem, and in particular for his kind mention of me."[^[14]] That letter is interesting also as being the last exchanged between Pope and his old friend; and it is instructive, as showing how the acquaintance between the poets was already ripening, that Pope turned to Gay in his distress at the defection of his earlier friend. "Our friend, Mr. Cromwell, too, has been silent all this year. I believe he has been displeased at some or other of my freedoms, which I very innocently take, and most with those I think my friends," he wrote to Gay on November 13th, 1712. "But this I know nothing of; perhaps he may have opened to you, and if I know you right, you are of a temper to cement friendships, and not to divide them. I really very much love Mr. Cromwell, [pg 17]and have a true affection for yourself, which, if I had any interest in the world, or power with those who have, I should not be long without manifesting to you."[^[15]]

If Pope had lost the friendship of Henry Cromwell, he was certainly anxious to strengthen the bond that was beginning to be forged between himself and Gay, to whom he wrote again: "I desire you will not, either out of modesty, or a vicious distrust of another's value for you—those two eternal foes to merit—imagine that your letters and conversation are not always welcome to me. There is no man more entirely fond of good-nature or ingenuity than myself, and I have seen too much of these qualities in Mr. Gay to be anything less than his most affectionate friend and real servant."[^[16]] That the intimacy between the poets waxed apace is evident, for when Pope wrote "A Farewell to London in the year 1715," the concluding stanza was:—

Adieu to all but Gay alone.

Whose soul, sincere and free.

Loves all mankind, but flatters none.

And so may starve with me.

Footnotes:

Gay's Chair, p. 13.

Dictionary of National Biography.

Gay's Chair.

Rural Sports.

Spence: Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 13.

George Cheyne (1671-1743), physician, practised first at London, and then at Bath.

"The Epigrammatical Petition" is printed on p. 29 of this work,

"Key to 'Three Hours after Marriage,'" p. 7.

John Freind (1675-1728), physician.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VI, p. 123.

Ibid., VI, p. 124.

A reference to "The Mourning Muse of Alexis: A Pastoral Lamentary on the Death of Queen Mary." In this piece the Queen is spoken of as "Pastora."

The references are to "Henry and Emma" and "Hans Carvel."

[14]

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VI, p. 130.

[15]

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 408.

[16]

Ibid., VII, p. 409.

[pg 18]

CHAPTER III

1713
"RURAL SPORTS," "THE FAN," "THE WIFE OF BATH," ETC.

There has been preserved a letter written by Aaron Hill to Richard Savage, June 23rd, 1766, which contains information concerning the life of the poet during the next two years. "I would willingly satisfy the curiosity of your friend, in relation to Mr. Gay, if it were not easy to get much further information than I am able to give, from Mr. Budgell or Mr. Pope; to the first of whom, the beginning of his life was best known, and to the last, its afternoon and evening," Hill wrote. "As to your question, whether Mr. Gay was ever a domestic of the Duchess of Monmouth, I can answer it in the affirmative; he was her secretary about the year 1713, and continued so, till he went over to Hanover, in the beginning of the following year, with Lord Clarendon, who was sent thither by Queen Anne. At his return, upon the death of that Queen, all his hopes became withered, but Mr. Pope (who you know, is an excellent planter) revived and invigorated his bays, and indeed, very generously supported him, in some more solid improvements; for remember a letter, wherein he invited him, with a very impoetical warmth that, so long as he himself had a shilling, Mr. Gay should be welcome to sixpence of it, nay, to eightpence, if he could but contrive to live on a groat."[^[1]]

It is now happily possible to elaborate the information given in this letter. Owing to the kindly offices of one or other of his friends, Gay had secured the appointment of domestic secretary to the Duchess of [pg 19]Monmouth. Anne Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch in her own right, had in 1663 married the Duke of Monmouth. He was executed for high treason in 1683, and three years later his widow married Charles, third Baron Cornwallis. Though she had not long mourned her first husband, she did not forget that he was on his father's side of the blood royal, and to the end of her days she preserved a regal state, which, however, did not make her unpopular at Court. "The Princess," wrote Lady Cowper, "loved her mightily, and certainly no woman of her years ever deserved it so well. She had all the life and fire of youth, and it was marvellous to see that the many afflictions she had suffered had not touched her wit and good nature, but at upwards of three-score she had both in their full perfection." Upon this appointment Dr. Johnson commented: "By quitting a shop for such service Gay might gain leisure, but he certainly advanced little on the boast of independence." As has been seen, however, there was an interval of several years between Gay's apprenticeship and his taking up this position as the Duchess's amanuensis—for it is doubtful if he ever attained to an office more responsible than this—he secured board and lodging, a little pocket money, and no doubt ample leisure. It was necessary for Gay to earn his livelihood, for he had spent his patrimony, and the earnings of his pen were as yet negligible. Indeed, the situation was almost ideal for an impecunious young man of letters. Anyhow, Gay was delighted, and Pope not less so. "It has been my good fortune within this month past to hear more things that have pleased me than, I think, in all my time besides," Pope wrote to Gay, December 24th, 1712; "but nothing, upon my word, has been so homefelt a satisfaction as the news you tell me of yourself; and you are not in the least mistaken when you congratulate me upon your own good success, for I have more people out of whom to be happy, than any ill-natured man can boast of." Pope, now well aware of Gay's natural indolence, was careful [pg 20]in this same letter to urge him to devote himself to literary labours in his leisure hours. "I shall see you this winter with much greater pleasure than I could the last, and I hope as much of your time as your Duchess will allow you to spare to any friend will not be thought lost upon one who is as much so as any man," he added. "I must also put you in mind, though you are now secretary to this lady, you are likewise secretary to nine other ladies, and are to write sometimes for them too. He who is forced to live wholly upon those ladies' favours is indeed in as precarious a condition as any who does what Chaucer says for subsistence; but they are very agreeable companions, like other ladies, when a man only passes a night or so with them at his leisure, and away."[^[2]]

Gay, the most amiable of men, never resented advice, perhaps because he so rarely followed it. In this case, however, he was surprisingly amenable. During the short time he was in the service of the Duchess of Monmouth, he drove his quill with some assiduity, and, indeed, at this period of his life he, who was presently distinguished as the laziest of men, worked diligently.

Before joining the household of the Duchess, he had written "Rural Sports: A Georgic," and this was published on January 13th, 1713, by Jacob Tonson, with an inscription to Pope:—

You, who the sweets of rural life have known,

Despise th' ungrateful hurry of the town;

In Windsor groves your easy hours employ,

And, undisturb'd, yourself and Muse enjoy.

During 1713 Gay wrote such trifles as papers on "Reproof and Flattery," and "Dress," which were printed in the Guardian on March 24th and September 21st respectively; and some verses, "Panthea," "Araminta," "A Thought on Eternity," and "A Contemplation on Night," which appeared in Steele's "Poetical Miscellany." A more ambitious work was "The Fan," which had [pg 21]occupied him during the earlier part of the year. He was greatly interested in its composition, and corresponded with Pope while it was being written. "I am very much recreated and refreshed with the news of the advancement of 'The Fan,' which I doubt not will delight the eye and sense of the fair, as long as that agreeable machine shall play in the hands of posterity," Pope wrote to him, August 23rd, 1713: "I am glad your Fan is mounted so soon, but I would have you varnish and glaze it at your leisure, and polish the sticks as much as you can. You may then cause it to be borne in the hands of both sexes, no less in Britain than it is in China, where it is ordinary for a mandarin to fan himself cool after a debate, and a statesman to hide his face with it when he tells a grave lie."[^[3]] Again, on October 23rd, Pope wrote: "I shall go into the country about a month hence, and shall then desire to take along with me your poem of 'The Fan.'" The most ambitious as yet of Gay's writings, there are few to-day, however, who will question the judgment of Mr. Austin Dobson, "one of his least successful efforts, and, though touched by Pope, now unreadable."

Gay had thus early a leaning to the theatre, where presently he was to score one of his greatest successes, and he wrote "The Wife of Bath," which was produced at Drury Lane on May 12th, 1713. Steele gave it a "puff preliminary" in No. 50 of the Guardian (May 8th).

Gay was now become known as a man of letters, and had made many friends. Johnson says: "Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they regarded him as a playfellow rather than as a partner, and treated him with more fondness than respect."[^[4]] There is some truth in this view, but of the affection he inspired there is no doubt. To know him was to love him. Wherein exactly lay his charm it is not easy now to say; but his gentle good-nature and his utter helplessness seems [pg 22]to have appealed to those of sterner mould. The extracts already given from Pope's correspondence show the affection with which he was inspired for his brother of the pen. Pope took him so completely under his massive wing that he remarked later, "they would call him one of my éleves."[^[5]] Pope accepted the position, and introduced him to his circle. He made him known to Swift, and that great man loved him as he loved no other man; and to Parnell, Arbuthnot, Ford—the "joyous Ford" of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece"—and Bolingbroke, in all of whom he inspired an affection, which endured through life. Parnell and Pope wrote jointly to him, and while in 1714 Pope was still addressing him as "Dear Mr. Gay," Parnell had already thrown aside all formality and greeted him as "Dear Gay." His old schoolfellow, William Fortescue, cleaved to him, and they were in such constant communication that when Pope wanted to see Fortescue, it was to Gay he appealed to arrange a meeting. The terms on which Gay was with the set is shown in Pope's letter to him, written from Binfield, May 4th, 1714: "Pray give, with the utmost fidelity and esteem, my hearty service to the Dean, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Ford, and to Mr. Fortescue. Let them also know at Button's that I am mindful of them."[^[6]] Erasmus Lewis Gay knew now, and Caryll too, and the rest of the small literary set, who, with gusto, made him welcome among them. Indeed, when the "Memoirs of Scriblerus" were in contemplation, and, indeed, begun in 1713, Gay, then comparatively unknown, was invited to take a hand in the composition with the greatest men of the day. "The design of the Memoirs of Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under a character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each," we have been told. "It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age. Lord Oxford, [pg 23]the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Pope, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Swift, and others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it well enough, and was not disinclined to come in to it."[^[7]] It does not transpire whether Gay had at this time met Swift, but that soon after they were in correspondence, appears from a letter from Pope to Swift, June 18th, 1714: "I shall translate Homer by the by. Mr. Gay has acquainted you with what progress I have made in it. I cannot name Mr. Gay without all the acknowledgments which I shall owe you, on his account."[^[8]]

Footnotes:

Hill: Works (ed. 1754), I, p. 325.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 409.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 412.

Johnson: Lives of the Poets (ed. Hill), III, p. 268.

Spence: Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 145.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 415.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 123.

Spence: Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 10.

[pg 24]

CHAPTER IV

1714
"THE SHEPHERD'S WEEK," "A LETTER TO A LADY."

The outstanding literary event in Gay's career in 1714 was the pastoral, "The Shepherd's Week," which was published by R. Burleigh on April 15th, which contained a "Proeme to the Courteous Reader," and a "Prologue to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke," which was, in fact, a dedication:—

Lo, I who erst beneath a tree

Sung Bumkinet and Bowzybee,

And Blouzelind and Marian bright,

In apron blue or apron white,

Now write my sonnets in a book,

For my good lord of Bolingbroke.

The author then states that he had heard of the Queen's illness and how the skill of Arbuthnot had restored her to health:—

A skilful leech (so God him speed)

They said had wrought this blessed deed,

This leech Arbuthnot was yclept,

Who many a night not once had slept;

But watch'd our gracious Sov'reign still:

For who could rest when she was ill?

O may'st thou henceforth sweetly sleep!

Shear, swains, oh shear your softest sheep

To swell his couch; for well I ween,

He saved the realm who saved his Queen.

Quoth I, please God, I'll his with glee

To court, this Arbuthnot to see.

[pg 25]Such loyalty, of course, the hardest heart must touch, but loyalty in this case had its reward, and the journey to Court was well worth the pains:—

There saw I ladies all a-row

Before their Queen in seemly show.

No more I'll sing Buxoma brown,

Like goldfinch in her Sunday gown;

Nor Clumsilis, nor Marian bright,

Nor damsel that Hobnelia hight.

But Lansdown fresh as flowers of May,

And Berkely lady blithe and gay,

And Anglesea, whose speech exceeds

The voice of pipe or oaten reeds;

And blooming Hyde, with eyes so rare,

And Montague beyond compare.

Such ladies fair wou'd I depaint

In roundelay or sonnet quaint.

But charming as were these ladies, there was still a better sight in store for the visitor:—

There saw I St. John, sweet of mien.

Full steadfast both to Church and Queen.

With whose fair name I'll deck my strain,

St. John, right courteous to the swain.

For thus he told me on a day,

Trim are thy sonnets, gentle Gay,

And certes, mirth it were to see

Thy joyous madrigals twice three,

With preface meet and notes profound.

Imprinted fair, and well y-bound.

All suddenly then home I sped,

And did ev'n as my Lord had said.

It was not Bolingbroke who inspired the pastorals, though he accepted the dedication. The true history of the origin of "The Shepherd's Week" is well set out by Mr. Underhill. "These pastorals, it should be explained, were written at the instigation of Pope," he has written. "The sixth volume of Tonson's 'Miscellany' had concluded with Pope's Pastorals and begun with those of Ambrose Philips. A few years after its publication a [pg 26]writer in the Guardian[^[1]] (probably Tickell [^[2]]) discussed the Pastoral in a series of papers, and gave the most extravagant praise to Philips. 'Theocritus,' he remarked, 'left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil left his to his son Spenser; and Spenser was succeeded by his eldest born, Philips.' Pope was not mentioned, and he set himself to redress the injustice by a device of characteristic subtlety. He wrote a sixth paper, in which he continued to illustrate the true principles of pastoral poetry from Philips' practice, but in such a way as to show the judicious reader by the examples given either the absurdity of Philips or the superior merit of Pope. The article was anonymously or pseudonymously forwarded to the Guardian, and was in due course published. Philips was furious, and providing himself with a birch rod, threatened to flog Pope. The latter, not content with his ingenious revenge, prevailed upon his friend Gay to continue the warfare and to burlesque Philips' performances in a series of realistic representations of country life."[^[3]] Gay entered into the sport with joy—it was a game after his own heart, and one for which his talent was particularly fitted. He begins his "Proeme to the Gentle Reader" with a most palpable hit: "Great marvel hath it been (and that not unworthily) to diverse worthy wits, that in this our island of Britain, in all rare sciences so greatly abounding, more especially in all kinds of poesie highly flourishing, no poet (though other ways of notable cunning in roundelays) hath hit on the right simple eclogue after this true ancient guise of Theocritus, before this mine attempt. Other Poet travelling in this plain highway of Pastoral I know none." Presently comes an attack but little disguised on Philips: "Thou will not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, [pg 27]or if the hogs are astray driving them to their styes. My shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields, he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge, nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none, as maister Spenser well observeth:—

Well is known that since the Saxon King

Never was wolf seen, many or some,

Nor in all Kent nor in Christendom."

Yet a third extract from this satirical "Proeme" must be given, and this in connection with the language of these eclogues: "That principally, courteous reader, whereof I would have thee to be advertised (seeing I depart from the vulgar usage) is touching the language of my shepherds; which is soothly to say, such as is neither spoken by the country maiden or the courtly dame; nay, not only such as in the present times is not uttered, but was never uttered in times past; and, if I judge aright, will never be uttered in times future. It having too much of the country to be fit for the court, too much of the court to be fit for the country; too much of the language of old times to be fit for the present, too much of the present to have been fit for the old, and too much of both to be fit for any time to come. Granted also it is, that in this my language, I seem unto myself, as a London mason, who calculateth his work for a term of years, when he buildeth with old material upon a ground-rent that is not his own, which soon turneth to rubbish and ruins. For this point, no reason can I allege, only deep learned examples having led me thereunto."

All this is pretty fooling; but Gay, who in the beginning intended "The Shepherd's Week" to be merely a burlesque, according to the suggestion of Pope, was carried away by his interest in the subject-matter, and produced a poem of undoubted value as a picture of rural life in his own day. With it he won approval as an original poet in his own day, and three centuries after critics still write in praise of it.

"[pg 28]These Pastorals were originally intended, I suppose, as a burlesque on those of Philips'; but, perhaps without designing it, Gay has hit the true spirit of pastoral poetry," Goldsmith said; and Dr. Johnson wrote: "The effect of reality of truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded. These pastorals became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical disputes."[^[4]] Southey, too, had a kind word to say: "In attempting the burlesque Gay copied nature, and his unexpected success might have taught his contemporaries a better taste. Few poets seem to have possessed so quick and observing an eye"[^[5]]; and, coming to the present critics, Mr. Austin Dobson utters commendation: "The object went far beyond its avowed object of ridicule, and Gay's eclogues abound with interesting folk-lore and closely studied rural pictures."[^[6]]

With all his unworldliness Gay always had an eager, if not very keen, eye on the main chance, and finding himself surrounded by men of influence, he not unnaturally, in a day when men of letters often found their reward in Government places or in sinecures, looked to his acquaintances to further his interests. Great Britain was at this time represented at the Court of Hanover by a Mission which was from 1709 in charge of the Secretary, J. D'Alais, except when Special Missions were dispatched. Lord Rivers was Minister Plenipotentiary in 1710, and Thomas Harley went there as Ambassador Extraordinary in July, 1712, and again in the following February. Henry Paget, first Lord Burton, was appointed Ambassador in April, 1714, but resigned before he set forth, and Lord Clarendon was nominated in his stead.

[pg 29]JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

"Since you went out of town, my Lord Clarendon was appointed Envoy-Extraordinary to Hanover in the room of Mr. Paget, and by making use of those friends, which I entirely owe to you, he has accepted me for his Secretary. This day, by appointment, I met his Lordship at Mr. Secretary Bromley's office; he then ordered me to be ready by Saturday. I am quite off from the Duchess of Monmouth. Mr. Lewis was very ready to serve me upon this occasion, as were Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Ford. I am every day attending my Lord Treasurer [Oxford] for his bounty, in order to set me out, which he has promised me upon the following petition, which I sent him by Dr. Arbuthnot:—

We had the honour of the Treasurer's company last Saturday, when we sat upon Scriblerus. Pope is in town and has brought with him the first book of Homer. I am this evening to be at Mr. Lewis's with [Dr. Benjamin Pratt] the Provost [of Dublin College], Mr. Ford, Parnell, and Pope."

"It is thought my Lord Clarendon will make but a short stay at Hanover. If it was possible that any recommendation could be procured to make me more distinguished than ordinary, during my stay at that Court, I should think myself very happy if you could contrive any method to prosecute it, for I am told that their civilities very rarely descend so low as to the Secretary. I have all the reason in the world to acknowledge this as wholly [pg 30]owing to you. And the many favours I have received from you, purely out of your love for doing good, assures me you will not forget me during my absence. As for myself, whether I am at home or abroad, gratitude will always put me in mind of the man to whom I owe so many benefits."[^[7]]

These tidings were confirmed to Swift by Arbuthnot, who wrote from St. James's on June 12th: "You know that Gay goes to Hanover, and my Lord Treasurer has promised to equip him. Monday is the day of departure, and he is now dancing attendance for money to buy him shoes, stockings, and linen. The Duchess [of Monmouth] has turned him off, which I am afraid will make the poor man's condition worse instead of better."[^[8]] As Arbuthnot reported fourteen days later, Gay received a hundred pounds from the Treasury, and "went away a happy man."[^[9]] Lord Clarendon, whose mission it was formally to offer to the Elector George Lewis the condolences of Queen Anne on the death of his aged mother, the Electress Sophia, the heiress-presumptive to the British throne, who had passed away on June 8th, 1714, arrived at Hanover on July 16th.

Despite Gay's forebodings, the civilities of the Court of Hanover did happily "descend so low as to the Secretary." That he was presented to the royal circle and held converse with the highest in the land, is clear from a sentence in a letter from Arbuthnot to Swift, August 13th, 1714: "I have a letter from Gay, just before the Queen's death. Is he not a true poet, who had not one of his own books to give to the Princess that asked for one?"[^[10]] Here it was that Gay first made the acquaintance of Henrietta Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, with whom he was presently on a footing of intimate friendship.

[pg 31]JOHN GAY TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.

"You remember, I suppose, that I was to write you abundance of letters from Hanover; but as one of the most distinguished qualities of a publician is secrecy, you must not expect from me any arcanas of state. There is another thing that is necessary to establish the character of a politician, which is to seem always to be full of affairs of State; to know the consultations of the Cabinet Council when at the same time his politics are collected from newspapers. Which of these two causes my secrecy is owing to I leave you to determine. There is yet one thing more that is extremely necessary for a foreign minister, which he can no more be without than an artisan without his tools; I mean the terms of his art. I call it an art or a science because I think the King of France has established an academy to instruct the young Machiavelians of his country in the deep and profound science of politics. To the end I might be qualified for an employment of this nature, and not only be qualified myself, but (to speak in the style of Sir John Falstaff) be the cause of qualification in others, I have made it my business to read memoirs, treatises, etc. And as a dictionary of law-terms is thought necessary for young beginners, so I thought a dictionary of terms of State would be no less useful for young politicians. The terms of politics being not so numerous as to swell into a volume, especially in times of peace (for in times of war all the terms of fortifications are included), I thought fit to extract them in the same manner for the benefit of young practitioners as a famous author has compiled his learned treatise of the law, called the 'Doctor and Student.' I have not made any great progress in this piece; but, however, I will give you a specimen of it, which will make you in the same manner a judge of the design and nature of this treatise.

"Politician: What are the necessary tools for a Prince to work with?

"[pg 32]Student: Ministers of State.

"Politician: What are the two great qualities of a Minister of State?

"Student: Secrecy and despatch.

"Politician: Into how many parts are the Ministers of State divided?

"Student: Into two. First, Ministers of State at home; secondly, Ministers of State abroad, who are called Foreign Ministers.

"Politician: Very right. Now as I design you for the latter of these employments I shall waive saying anything about the first of these. What are the different degrees of Foreign Ministers?

"Student: The different degrees of Foreign Ministers are as follows: First, Plenipotentiaries; second, Ambassadors-Extraordinary; third, Ambassadors in ordinary; fourth, Envoys-Extraordinary; fifth, Envoys-in-ordinary; sixth, Residents; seventh, Consuls; and eighth, Secretaries.

"Politician: How is a Foreign Minister to be known?

"Student: By his credentials.

"Politician: When are a Foreign Minister's credentials to be delivered?

"Student: Upon his first admission into the presence of the Prince to whom he is sent, otherwise called his first audience.

"Politician: How many kinds of audience are there?

"Student: Two, which are called a public audience and a private audience.

"Politician: What should a Foreign Minister's behaviour be when he has his first audience?

"Student: He should bow profoundly, speak deliberately, and wear both sides of his long periwig before, etc.

"By these few questions and answers you may be able to make some judgment of the usefulness of this politic treatise. Wicquefort, it is true, can never be sufficiently admired for his elaborate treatise of the conduct of an Ambassador in all his negotiations; but I design this only [pg 33]as a compendium, or the Ambassador's Manual, or vade mecum.

"I have writ so far of this letter, and do not know who to send it to; but I have now determined to send it either to Dr. Arbuthnot, the Dean of St. Patrick's, or to both. My Lord Clarendon is very much approved of at Court, and I believe is not dissatisfied with his reception. We have not very much variety of divisions; what we did yesterday and to-day we shall do to-morrow, which is to go to Court and walk in the gardens at Herrenhausen. If I write any more my letter will be just like my diversion, the same thing over and over again."[^[11]]

Lord Clarendon stayed at Hanover even a shorter time than he had expected. On July 30th Lord Oxford was dismissed, and the white staff was given to the Duke of Shrewsbury, one of whose first acts was to recall the Tory Ambassador. Two days later Queen Anne died, and the Elector George Lewis succeeded to her throne under the style of George I. Lord Clarendon returned at once to England, and with him came Gay, saddened by the blasting of his hopes of advancement.

He was welcomed back by his friends, and received in particular an enthusiastic greeting from Pope, who wrote on September 23rd: "Welcome to your native soil! Welcome to your friend! Thrice welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blessed with Court interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes, or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the future—whether returned a triumphant Whig or a desponding Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and welcome to me! If happy, I am to share in your elevation; if unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart and a retreat at Binfield in the worst of times at your service." In this same letter Pope, always anxious to assist Gay, added: "Pardon me if I add a word of advice in the practical way. Write something [pg 34]on the King, or Prince or Princess. On whatever foot you may be with the Court, this can do no harm."[^[12]]

The change of Government having dashed to the ground his hopes of advancement in the diplomatic service, Gay thought that he could not do better than follow Pope's suggestion. Like the majority of men of letters of his day, and not having the independence of spirit of Swift and Pope, he hungered after a patron—a Minister might be good, but Ministers go out of office, and a member of the reigning family would be better. Remembering the kindly welcome given him at Hanover by the royal lady who was now Princess of Wales, he had indulged in a dream that a place would be offered him in her household. "Poor Gay is much where he was, only out of the Duchess [of Monmouth]'s family and service," Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, October 19th, 1714. "He has some confidence in the Princess and Countess of Picborough; I wish it may be significant to him. I advised him to make a poem upon the Princess before she came over, describing her to the English ladies; for it seems that the Princess does not dislike that. (She is really a person that I believe will give great content to everybody). But Gay was in such a grovelling condition as to the affairs of this world, that his Muse would not stoop to visit him."[^[13]]

No proposal, however, being made to him, Gay, following the advice of Pope and Arbuthnot, proceeded to remind the new Court of his existence, and in November published "A Letter to a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of Her Royal Highness "—the "Lady" being, it is generally assumed, Mrs. Howard. In these verses he gave the assurance that he had desired the elements to arrange for the Princess an agreeable passage to England:—

My strains with Carolina's name I grace.

The lovely parent of our royal race.

Breathe soft, ye winds, ye waves in silence sleep;

Let prosp'rous breezes wanton o'er the deep,

[pg 35]

Swell the white sails, and with the streamers play,

To waft her gently o'er the wat'ry way.

With true poetic exaggeration he extolled Caroline's virtues, and then, so that there should be no excuse for misunderstanding, said in plain terms that he had desired a post at Court, and made it perfectly clear that he was still prepared to accept such employment, if so be as it was coupled with suitable remuneration:—

Since all my schemes were baulk'd, my last resort,

I left the Muses to frequent the Court;

Pensive each night, from room to room I walk'd,

To one I bow'd, and with another talk'd;

Inquir'd what news, or such a lady's name,

And did the next day, and the next, the same.

Places I found, were daily giv'n away,

And yet no friendly Gazette mention'd Gay.

Gay's protestations of delight at the accession to the throne of the House of Hanover would probably have been regarded as more sincere if, unfortunately, he had not a few months before dedicated "The Shepherd's Week" to Bolingbroke. His very outspoken hint in the "Letter to a Lady" was ignored; but Caroline, who liked eulogy as much as anyone, received him kindly; and when in February, 1715, he produced "The What D'ye Call It" at Drury Lane Theatre, she and her consort attended the first performance. But still, no place was found for him at Court. "Tell me," Swift asked him so much later as 1723, "are you not under original sin by the dedication of your Eclogue to Lord Bolingbroke?"

Footnotes:

The Guardian, No. 32; April 17th, 1713.

Dr. Johnson in his "Lives of the Poets" attributes the authorship to Steele (Works, ed. Hill), III, p. 269.

Introductory Memoir by John Underhill, in his edition of the Poems of John Gay ("The Muses' Library"), I, xxxi.

Works (ed. Hill), III, p. 269.

Specimens, I, p. 298.

Dictionary of National Biography, article, Gay.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 113.

Ibid., XVI, p. 117.

Ibid., XVI, p. 123.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 193.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 204.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 415.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 213.

[pg 36]

CHAPTER V

1715-1719
"The What D'ye Call It"—An Epistle to the Right Honourable the
Earl of Burlington—"Trivia, or, The Art of Walking the Streets of
London"—"Three Hours After Marriage."

Undismayed by the failure of his first play, "The Wife of Bath," Gay made another bid for theatrical success with "The What D'ye Call It," which was performed at Drury Lane Theatre in February, 1715, and published in March of that year. In the preface Gay wrote: "I have not called it a tragedy, comedy, pastoral, or farce, but left the name entirely undetermined in the doubtful appellation of 'The What D'ye Call It' ... but I added to it 'A Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Farce,' as it contained all these several kinds of drama." Pope saw the play and wrote about it to Congreve, March 19th, 1715: "The farce of 'The What D'ye Call It' has occasioned many different speculations in the town, some looking upon it as a mere jest upon the tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late war. Mr. Cromwell, hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to find the audience laugh, and says the Prince and Princess [of Wales] must doubtless be under no less amazement on the same account. Several Templars and others of the more vociferous kind of critics went with a resolution to hiss, and confessed they were forced to laugh so much that they forgot the design they came with. The Court in general has come in a very particular manner into the jest, and the three nights, notwithstanding two of them were Court [pg 37]nights, were distinguished by very full audiences of the first quality. The common people of the pit and gallery received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, and some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been very loud in their claps. There are still sober men who cannot be of the general opinion, but the laughers are so much the majority that one or two critics seemed determined to undeceive the town at their proper cost, by writing dissertations against it to encourage them in this laudable design. It is resolved a preface shall be prefixed to the farce, in vindication of the nature and dignity of this new way of writing."[^[1]] The fact is that, as Johnson put it, "the images were comic and the action grave," and there were many mock-heroic passages which parodied tragedies, including Addison's "Cato" and Otway's "Venice Preserved," well-known in that day. Also it contained several ballads, of which perhaps the best is "'Twas when the seas were roaring" (Act II., Scene 8).

"The What D'ye Call It" was not a piece of much value, but it pleased the audience, and Gay was highly delighted. "Now my benefit night is over, it should be my first care to return my thanks to those to whom I am mostly obliged, and the civilities I have always received from you, and upon this occasion too, claims this acknowledgment," the author wrote to Caryll on March 3rd: "'The What D'ye Call It' met with more success than could be expected from a thing so out of the common taste of the town. It has been played already five nights, and the galleries, who did not know at first what to make of it, now enter thoroughly into the humour, and it seems to please in general better than at first. The parts in general were not so well played as I could have wished, and in particular the part of Filbert, to speak in the style of the French Gazette. Penkethman did wonders; Mrs. Bicknell performed miraculously, and there was much honour gained [pg 38]by Miss Younger, though she was but a parish child."[^[2]] Filbert was played by Johnson, Jonas Dock by Penkethman, Joyce ("Peascod's daughter, left upon the parish") by Miss Younger, and Kitty by Mrs. Bicknell, mentioned by the author in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

And frolic Bicknell, and her sister young.

The welcome given by the public to the play brought in its train some annoyance to the author: "I find success, even in the most trivial things, raises the indignation of scribblers," he wrote to Parnell on March 18th, "for I, for my 'What D'ye Call It' could neither escape the fury of Mr. Burnet or the German doctor. Then, where will rage end when Homer is to be translated? Let Zoilus hasten to your friend's assistance, and envious criticism shall be no more."[^[3]] A more biting attack than that of Thomas Burnet's Grumbler (No. 1, February 14th, 1715) or that of Philip Horneck in "The High German Doctor" was the "Key to 'The What D'ye Call It,'" written by the actor Griffin in collaboration with Lewis Theobald. About this Gay wrote to Caryll in April: "There is a sixpenny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of 'The What D'ye Call It,' wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against 'The Pilgrim's Progress' being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato. To back this censure he goes on to tell you that 'The Pilgrim's Progress' being mentioned to be the eighth edition makes the reflection evident, the tragedy of 'Cato' being just eight times printed. He has also endeavoured to show that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of the tragedy, which he says I have injudiciously and profanely abused."[^[4]]

Still, Gay could really afford to laugh at those who attacked or parodied him, for the play brought him, if [pg 39]not fame, at least notoriety. It also brought him some much-needed money. Pope told Caryll in March that Gay "will have made about £100 out of this farce"; and it is known that for the publishing rights Lintott gave him on February 14th £16 2s. 6d.

Gay, now a popular dramatist as well as an intimate friend of many of the leading men in literary circles, became known to people of high social rank, who, like his brethren of the pen, took him up and made a pet of him. In the summer of 1715 Lord Burlington, the "generous Burlington" of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece," invited him to accompany him to Devonshire, and Gay repaid the compliment by describing his "Visit to Exeter" in a poetical "Epistle to the Right Honourable the Earl of Burlington," the first lines of which are:—

While you, my Lord, bid stately piles ascend,

Or in your Chiswick bowers enjoy your friend;

Where Pope unloads the boughs within his reach,

The purple vine, blue plum, and blushing peach;

I journey far.—You know fat bards might tire.

And, mounted, sent me forth your trusty squire.

During his stay in Devonshire Gay began the composition of "Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London." It was to this that Pope made allusion when writing to Caryll, January 10th, 1716: "Gay's poem [is] just on the brink of the press, which we have had the interest to procure him subscription of a guinea a book to a tolerable number. I believe it may be worth £150 to him on the whole."[^[5]] In addition to the subscriptions, Gay received from Lintott £43 for the copyright of the book, the copies of which were sold to the public at one shilling and sixpence each; and as, with humorous exaggeration, Arbuthnot wrote to Parnell: "Gay has got as much money by his 'Art of Walking the Streets' that he is ready to set up his equipage; he is just going to the bank to negotiate [pg 40]some exchange bills."[^[6]] The "Advertisement" prefaced to the poem runs:—

"The world, I believe, will take so little notice of me that I need not take much of it. The critics may see by this poem that I walk on foot, which probably may save me from their envy. I should be sorry to raise that passion in men whom I am so much obliged to, since they allowed me an honour hitherto only shown to better writers: that of denying me to be author of my own works. I am sensible this must be done in pure generosity; because whoever writ them, provided they did not themselves, they are still in the same condition. Gentlemen, if there be any thing in this poem good enough to displease you, and if it be any advantage to you to ascribe it to some person of greater merit, I shall acquaint you for your comfort, that among many other obligations, I owe several hints of it to Dr. Swift. And if you will so far continue your favour as to write against it, I beg you to oblige me in accepting the following motto:—

—Non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas

Stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen?"

Whether Swift gave any direct assistance is doubtful. Mr. Austin Dobson thinks that it is not improbable that "Trivia" was actually suggested by the "Morning" and "City Shower" which Swift had previously contributed to Steele's Tatler. Probably these are among the "several hints" which Gay had in mind.

"Trivia" was published on January 26th, 1716, and was the one outstanding feature in the year in the biography of Gay. In the following March 26th there appeared a volume of "Court Poems," published by J. Roberts, who advertised them as from the pen of Pope, though the preface makes the authorship doubtful between Pope, Gay, and a Lady of quality, who was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. To the volume Lady Mary Wortley Montagu contributed "The Drawing Room," Pope "The Basset [pg 41]Table," and Gay "The Toilet." This last has been attributed to Lady Mary, and it has actually been printed among her poems; but, according to Pope, it is "almost wholly Gay's," there being "only five or six lines in it by that lady."

In 1716 Gay paid a second visit to Devonshire, and during the year he composed the "sober eclogue," "The Espousal," which probably arose out of a suggestion of Swift. "There is an ingenious Quaker [^[7]] in this town, who writes verses to his mistress, not very correct, but in a strain purely what a poetical Quaker should do, commending her looks and habit, etc." Swift wrote to Pope on August 30th, 1716: "It gave me a hint that a set of Quaker pastorals might succeed if our friend Gay could fancy it, and I think it a fruitful subject. Pray hear what he says. I believe farther, the pastoral ridicule is not exhausted, and that a porter, footman, or chairman's pastoral might do well; or what think you of a Newgate pastoral, among the whores and thieves there?"[^[8]] This letter is of especial importance in the biography of Gay, as it may well have sown in his mind the seed of "The Beggar's Opera."

About this time Gay was labouring on another play, "Three Hours After Marriage," which he wrote in collaboration with Pope and Arbuthnot. It is a sorry piece of work, and unworthy of any one, much less of the three distinguished men associated in the authorship. In the Epilogue it is written:—

Join then your voices, be the play excused

For once, though no one living is abused;

but as a matter of fact one purpose of the play was, as Dr. Johnson said, "to bring into contempt Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly contemptible." Woodward was the author of a "History of Fossils," and his name survives in the Woodwardian Professorship of [pg 42]Geology at Cambridge. He was introduced as Dr. Cornelius in "Martin Scriblerus":—

Who nature's treasures would explore,

Her mysteries and arcana know.

Must high as lofty Newton soar,

Must stoop as delving Woodward low.

The bridegroom in the play is called Fossile, and there was no mistaking the intention. Dr. Woodward had many friends, and these made known their disgust in the most unmistakable manner when "Three Hours After Marriage" was produced on January 16th, 1717, at Drury Lane Theatre. It ran for seven nights. "It had the fate which such outrages deserved," Dr. Johnson has written; "the scene in which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed by the introduction of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the performance was driven off the stage with general condemnation."[^[9]] The farce was not only dull, it was vulgar. And the geologist (played by Johnson) was not the only person introduced for the purpose of ridicule. Dennis was brought in as Sir Tremendous, and it was believed that Phoebe Clinket (played by Mrs. Bicknell) was intended for Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, who, says Mr. Austin Dobson, "was alleged to have spoken contemptuously of Gay." Of this farce, Mr. Dobson writes: "It is perhaps fairer to say that he bore the blame, than that he is justly charged with its errors of taste"; and it is very probable that, while Gay generously accepted responsibility, Pope and Arbuthnot were equally culpable. "Too late I see, and confess myself mistaken in relation to the comedy; yet I do not think had I followed your advice and only introduced the mummy, that the absence of the crocodile had saved it," Gay wrote to Pope. "I cannot help laughing myself (though the vulgar do not consider it was designed to look ridiculous) to think how the poor monster and mummy were dashed at their reception; and when the [pg 43]cry was loudest I thought that if the thing had been written by another I should have deemed the town in some measure mistaken; and, as to your apprehension that this may do us future injury, do not think it; the Doctor [Arbuthnot] has a more valuable name than can be hurt by anything of this nature, and yours is doubly safe. I will, if any shame there be, take it all to myself, as indeed I ought, the notion being first mine, and never heartily approved of by you.... I beg of you not to suffer this, or anything else, to hurt your health. As I have publicly said that I was assisted by two friends, I shall still continue in the same story, professing obstinate silence about Dr. Arbuthnot and yourself."[^[10]]

The publication in book form of "Three Hours After Marriage" by Lintott, who paid £16 2s. 6d. for the copyright, a few days after the production, did nothing to arrest the torrent of abuse. "Gay's play, among the rest, has cost much time and long suffering to stem a tide of malice and party, that certain authors have raised against it," Pope wrote to Parnell. Amongst those foremost among the attackers was Addison, who perhaps had not forgotten or forgiven the parody of some of the lines in his play "Cato," which was introduced by Gay in "The What D'ye Call It." Gay, the most easy-going of men, was always stirred by criticism, and in this case he, with unusual energy, sat down to reply to his detractors. "Mr. Addison and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's 'Three Hours After Marriage' for obscenities, that it provoked him to write 'A Letter from a Lady in the City to a Lady in the Country' on that subject," so runs a passage in Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. "In it he quoted the passages which had been most exclaimed against, and opposed other passages to them from Addison's and Steele's plays. These were aggravated in the same manner that they served his, and appeared worse. Had it been published it would have made Addison appear ridiculous, [pg 44]which he could bear as little as any man. I therefore prevailed upon Gay not to print it, and have the manuscript now by me."[^[11]] In Spence's Anecdotes there is another passage bearing on the same matter: "A fortnight before Addison's death, [^[12]] Lord Warwick [^[13]] came to Gay and pressed him in a very particular manner 'to go and see Mr. Addison,' which he had not done for a great while. Gay went, and found Addison in a very weak way. He received him in the kindest manner and told him, 'that he had desired this visit to beg his pardon, that he had injured him greatly, but that if he lived he should find that he would make it up to him.' Gay, on his going to Hanover, had great reason to hope for some good preferment; but all his views came to nothing. It is not impossible but that Mr. Addison might prevent them, from his thinking Gay too well with some of the great men of the former Ministry. He did not at all explain himself, in which he had injured him, and Gay could not guess at anything else in which he could have injured him so considerably."[^[14]] It seems, however, more probable that Addison really had in mind the part he had taken in connection with "Three Hours After Marriage." Two critical publications, "A Complete Key to 'Three Hours After Marriage,'" and "A Letter to John Gay, Concerning his late Farce, entitled a Comedy," annoyed Gay; while Pope, too, and, in a minor degree, Arbuthnot, were attacked for their share in the farce. John Durand Breval, writing over the signature of Joseph Gay, published in 1717 "The Confederates: A Farce," in which he introduced a humorous caricature print of Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot, so that, says Professor Courthope, "Pope, at the height of his fame, found himself credited, though he seems to have had little to do with it, with the past paternity of a condemned play."[^[15]] Another incident, [pg 45]recorded by Professor Courthope, further angered Pope: "While he was still sore at the mishap, Colley Cibber, playing in 'The Rehearsal,' happened to make an impromptu allusion to the unlucky farce, saying that he had intended to introduce the two kings of Brentford, 'one of them in the shape of a mummy, and t'other in that of a crocodile.' The audience laughed, but Pope, who was in the house, appeared (according to Cibber's account) behind the scenes and abused the actor in unmeasured terms for his impertinence. Cibber's only reply was to assure the enraged poet that, so long as the play was acted, he should never fail to repeat the same words. He kept his promise, thus committing the first of that series of offences which, in the poet's vindictive memory, marked him down for elevation to the throne of Dulness which was rendered vacant by the deposition of King Tibbald."[^[16]] There is a rumour that Gay, in revenge for Cibber's banter of "Three Hours After Marriage," personally chastised the actor-dramatist,[^[17]] but there is nothing definitely known about this. Anyhow, Gay was so irritated by the failure of this play that he did not produce anything at a theatre during the next seven years.

How Gay managed to exist through the three years after the production of "Three Hours After Marriage" is one of the stumbling blocks for the biographer. Of literary achievement during this period his life was barren. It is true that when he was abroad or in the country he was a guest, but even with this his expenses must have amounted to something. As he earned nothing by his pen, unless his friends provided him with money as well as giving him hospitality, it looks as if some relative must have died and left him a small sum. "As for Gay," Pope wrote to Caryll, June 7th, 1717, "he is just on the wing for Aix-la-Chapelle, with Mr. Pulteney, the late Secretary (at War)."[^[18]] Pulteney who had resigned office when there was a split in the Ministry, had in December, 1714, married a very beautiful [pg 46]woman, Anne Maria Gumley, daughter of a wealthy glass manufacturer. With them Gay went abroad for some months, and perhaps the solution of the problem above stated, is that while he went nominally as their guest, he was actually paid a salary as companion or secretary.

It is evident from Gay's "Epistle to the Right Honourable William Pulteney, Esq." (published in 1717) that the party stayed some while at Paris, for therein is an account of that city, an account in which the author betrays a sad insularity; and he was certainly at Aix in November. "I should not forget to acknowledge your letter sent from Aix. You told me that writing was not good with the waters, and I find since, you are of my opinion, that it is as bad without the waters. But, I fancy, it is not writing, but thinking, that is so bad with the waters; and then you might write without any manner of prejudice if you write like our brother poets of these days." Pope wrote to him on November 8th: "... That Duchess [of Hamilton],[^[19]] Lord Warwick, Lord Stanhope, Mrs. Bellenden, Mrs. Lepell, and I cannot tell who else, had your letters ... I would send my services to Mr. Pulteney, but that he is out at Court, and make some compliment to Mrs. Pulteney, if she was not a Whig."[^[20]]

From this letter it is evident that Gay was becoming well known in fashionable circles, and it is also clear that he had friends in the Court circle. "Gay is well at Court, and more than ever in the way of being served than ever.... Gay dines daily with the Maids of Honour," Pope had written to Martha Blount in December, 1716; and Gay, who would rather have had a place in the Household with nothing to do and no responsibility than anything else in the world, was not the man to refrain from endeavouring to improve the occasion. Mrs. Howard he had first met at Hanover, and in London contrived to turn the acquaintanceship into friendship. Knowing Gay's [pg 47]character and his ambition, it is probably doing him no injustice to say that he was first drawn to the lady by the belief that she might further his aims. However, it is only fair to say that he soon came to like her for herself, and long after he was convinced that she could be of no service to him he remained a very loyal and intimate friend. He was taken entirely into her confidence, as will presently be seen, and she even called him in to assist her when she was conducting an elaborate and stilted epistolatory flirtation with Lord Peterborough. It was most probably she who introduced him to Mrs. Bellenden, Mrs. Lepell, and the other ladies of the Court. Of Mrs. Howard and Gay, Dr. Johnson wrote: "Diligent court was paid to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the King and Queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations, verses, and flatteries were thrown away; the lady heard them and did nothing." This, however, is manifestly unfair, for it is now known that Mrs. Howard's influence was negligible.

To the ladies of the Court and others of Pope's friends, Gay paid tribute in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

What lady's that to whom he gently bends?

Who knows her not? Ah, those are Wortley's eyes.

How art thou honour'd, number'd with her friends;

For she distinguishes the good and wise.

The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends:

Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;

Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well

With thee, youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.

I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,

The fair-hair'd Martha and Teresa brown;

Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;

And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.

Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,

For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known:

Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?

Why all the Hamiltons are in her train.

See next the decent Scudamore advance

[pg 48]

With Winchelsea, still meditating song,

With her perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance.

Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along.

Gay was now on intimate terms with Lord Harcourt, whom he presently introduced into "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

Harcourt I see, for eloquence renown'd,

The mouth of justice, oracle of law!

Another Simon is beside him found,

Another Simon like as straw to straw;

and early in 1718 he visited him, first at Cockthorpe and then at Stanton Harcourt, at which latter seat Pope was staying, working on the fifth volume of the "Iliad." In the following year Gay again crossed the Channel, possibly for the second time with the Pulteneys, but the only record of this trip is to be found in the following letter:—

JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.

"If it be absolutely necessary that I make an apology for my not writing, I must give you an account of very bad physicians, and a fever which I had at Spa, that confined me for a month; but I do not see that I need make the least excuse, or that I can find any reason for writing to you at all; for can you believe that I would wish to converse with you if it were not for the pleasure to hear you talk again? Then why should I write to you when there is no possibility of receiving an answer? I have been looking everywhere since I came into France to find out some object that might take you from my thoughts, that my journey might seem less tedious; but since nothing could ever do it in England I can much less expect it in France.

"I am rambling from place to place. In about a month I hope to be at Paris, and in the next month to be in England, and the next minute to see you. I am now at [pg 49]Dijon in Burgundy, where last night, at an ordinary, I was surprised by a question from an English gentleman whom I had never seen before; hearing my name, he asked me if I had any relation or acquaintance with myself, and when I told him I knew no such person, he assured me that he was an intimate acquaintance of Mr. Gay's of London. There was a Scotch gentleman, who all supper time was teaching some French gentlemen the force and propriety of the English language; and, what is seen very commonly, a young English gentleman with a Jacobite governor. A French marquis drove an Abbé from the table by railing against the vast riches of the Church, and another marquis, who squinted, endeavoured to explain transubstantiation: 'That a thing might not be what it really appeared to be, my eyes,' says he, 'may convince you. I seem at present to be looking on you; but, on the contrary, I see quite on the other side of the table.' I do not believe that this argument converted one of the heretics present, for all that I learned by him was, that to believe transubstantiation it is necessary not to see the thing you seem to look at.

"So much I have observed on the conversation and manners of the people. As for the animals of the country, it abounds with bugs, which are exceedingly familiar with strangers; and as for plants, garlick seems to be the favourite production of the country, though for my own part I think the vine preferable to it. When I publish my travels at large I shall be more particular; in order to which, to-morrow I set out for Lyons, from thence to Montpelier, and so to Paris; and soon after I shall pray that the winds may be favourable, I mean, to bring you from Richmond to London, or me from London to Richmond; so prays, etc., JOHN GAY.

"I beg you, madam, to assure Miss Lepell and Miss Bellenden, that I am their humble servant."[^[21]]

Footnotes:

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), IV, p. 412.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VI, p. 223.

Ibid., VII, p. 455.

Ibid., VI, p. 227.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VI, p. 237.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 460.

George Rooke, a Dublin linendraper.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 251.

Johnson: Works (ed. Hill), II, p. 271.

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 418.

Spence: Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 202.

Addison died on June 17th, 1719.

Stepson of Addison.

[14]

Spence: Anecdotes (ed. Singer), p. 149.

[15]

Life of Pope, p. 126.

[16]

Life of Pope, p. 126.

[17]

Cibber's Apology (ed. Lowe).

[18]

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VI, p. 244.

[19]

Daughter of Lord Gerard, widow of the Duke of Hamilton, who in 1712 was killed in a duel with Lord Mohun.

[20]

Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope) VII. p. 420.

[21]

B.M., Add MSS., 22626, f. 22.

[pg 50]

CHAPTER VI

1720 "Poems on Several Occasions"—Gay Invests His Earnings in the South
Sea Company—The South Sea "Bubble" Breaks, and Gay Loses all His
Money—Appointed a Commissioner of the State Lottery—Lord Lincoln
Gives Him an Apartment in Whitehall—At Tunbridge Wells—Correspondence
with Mrs. Howard.

Gay in 1720 was in his thirty-fifth year, and he had commenced author some twelve years before this date. During this period his output had been very small, and his success not conspicuous. As a dramatist he had been a complete failure—his first play, "The Wife of Bath," was still-born, and the others, "The What D'ye Call It" and "Three Hours After Marriage," had practically been hooted off the stage, and had brought him in their train a considerable degree of unpopularity. Of his poems, the only ones of any marked merit were "The Shepherd's Week," and "Trivia," and even these were unambitious, though not without merit. Gay now bethought him of collecting his poems, published and unpublished, and they were issued in two quarto volumes early in 1720, with the joint imprint of Jacob Tonson and his old publisher, Bernard Lintott, and with a frontispiece by William Kent.

The "Poems on Several Occasions," as the collection was styled, were issued by subscription. His friends supported him admirably. Lord Burlington and Lord Chandos each put down his name for fifty copies, Lord Bathurst for ten copies; in all Gay made more than [pg 51]£1,000 by the publication. To this success he alluded in his "Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esq."[^[1]]

Yet there are ways for authors to be great;

Write ranc'rous libels to reform the State;

Or if you choose more sun and readier ways,

Spatter a minister with fulsome praise:

Launch out with freedom, flatter him enough;

Fear not, all men are dedication-proof.

Be bolder yet, you must go farther still,

Dip deep in gall thy mercenary quill.

He who his pen in party quarrels draws,

Lists an hired bravo to support the cause;

He must indulge his patron's hate and spleen,

And stab the fame of those he ne'er has seen.

Why then should authors mourn their desp'rate case?

Be brave, do this, and then demand a place.

Why art thou poor? exert the gifts to rise,

And vanish tim'rous virtue from thy eyes.

All this seems modern preface, where we're told

That wit is praised, but hungry lives and cold:

Against th' ungrateful age these authors roar,

And fancy learning starves because they're poor.

Yet why should learning hope success at Court?

Why should our patriots virtue's cause support?

Why to true merit should they have regard?

They know that virtue is its own reward.

Yet let me not of grievances complain.

Who (though the meanest of the Muse's train)

Can boast subscriptions to my humble lays,

And mingle profit with my little praise.

What to do with the thousand pounds—a sum certainly far larger than any of which he had ever been possessed—Gay had not the slightest idea. He had just enough wisdom to consult his friends. Erasmus Lewis, a prudent man of affairs, advised him to invest it in the Funds and live upon the interest; Arbuthnot advised him to put his faith in Providence and live upon the capital; Swift and Pope, who understood him best, advised him to purchase [pg 52]an annuity. Bewildered by these divergent counsels, he did none of these things. Just when he was confronted with the necessity of making up his mind, Pope's friend, James Craggs the younger, of whom he wrote in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":—

Bold, generous Craggs, whose heart was ne'er disguised,

made him a present of some stock of the South Sea Company, at the same time, no doubt, telling him that in all probability it would rise in value. Here was a chance, dear to the heart of this hunter after sinecures, of getting something for nothing—or next to nothing. With his thousand pounds he purchased more South Sea stock. At what price Gay bought it is impossible to say, but it is not unlikely that Craggs' present was made in April, 1720, when the first money-subscription was issued at the price of £300 for each £100 stock. The poet's good fortune was at this moment in the ascendant. A mania for speculation burst over the town, and everybody bought and sold South Sea stock. In July it was quoted at £1,000. If Gay had then sold out he would have realised a sum in the neighbourhood of £20,000. His friends implored him to content himself with this handsome profit, but in vain. As Dr. Johnson put it, "he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune."[^[2]] He who a few months ago had been practically penniless, could not now bring himself to be satisfied with an income of about a thousand a year. Realising that it was impossible entirely to overcome his obduracy, his friends then begged him at least to sell so much as would produce even a hundred a year in the Funds, "which," Fenton said to him, "will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." Gay was not to be moved from his resolve to become a great capitalist. Arguments were of no avail. The wilful man finally had his way. Almost from the moment he refused to yield to his friends' entreaties the price of South Sea stock declined rapidly. [pg 53]The "Bubble" burst, and in October South Sea stock was unsaleable at any price. Gay lost not only his profit but his capital, and was again reduced to penury.

Gay spoke his mind about the "Bubble" in "A Panegyrical Epistle to Mr. Thomas Snow, Goldsmith, near Temple Bar: Occasioned by his Buying and Selling of the Third Subscriptions, taken in by the Directors of the South Sea Company, at a thousand per cent," which was published by Lintott in 1721:—

O thou, whose penetrative wisdom found

The South-Sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown'd,

When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay,

Thou stood'st; nor sent one bill unpaid away.

When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's boards,

And Atwill's self was drain'd of all his hoards,

Thou stood'st (an Indian king in size and hue)

Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru.

Why did 'Change-Alley waste thy precious hours,

Among the fools who gaped for golden showers?

No wonder if we found some poets there,

Who live on fancy, and can feed on air;

No wonder they were caught by South-Sea schemes

Who ne'er enjoy'd a guinea but in dreams;

No wonder they their third subscription sold,

For millions of imaginary gold:

No wonder that their fancies wild can frame }

Strange reasons, that a thing is still the same, }

Tho' changed throughout in substance and in name. }

But you (whose judgment scorns poetic flights)

With contracts furnish boys for paper kites.

One of the immediate results of the disaster was Gay's inability to fulfil his obligations to one of the publishers of his "Poems on Several Occasions":—

JOHN GAY TO JACOB TONSON.

"Sir,—I received your letter with the accounts of the books you had delivered. I have not seen Mr. Lintott's account, but shall take the first opportunity to call on him. I cannot think your letter consists of the utmost civility, [pg 54]in five lines to press me twice to make up my account just at a time when it is impracticable to sell out of the stocks in which my fortune is engaged. Between Mr. Lintott and you the greatest part of the money is received, and I imagine you have a sufficient number of books in your hands for the security of the rest. To go to the strictness of the matter, I own my note engages me to make the whole payment in the beginning of September. Had it been in my power, I had not given you occasion to send to me, for I can assure you I am as impatient and uneasy to pay the money I owe, as some men are to receive it, and it is no small mortification to refuse you so reasonable a request, which is that I may no longer be obliged to you."[^[3]]

The loss of his fortune was, of course, a very severe blow to Gay, but as ever, his friends gathered round him. Instead of being angry with him for his folly—but no one of his friends was ever angry with him—they looked upon him, and treated him, just as a spoilt child who had disobediently tried to get over a hedge and had scratched himself in the endeavour. They put their heads together to find "something" for him. Gay, of course, was not easy to deal with; it was difficult to make him listen to reason. He could not be brought to believe that it was not his due to receive something for nothing. He had been secretary to Lord Clarendon's brief Mission to Hanover; why had not diplomacy something to offer him? The Princess of Wales had asked for a copy of a set of his verses; was there no place for him at Court? He had praised members of the Royal Family in verse; was there somewhere—somehow—a sinecure in the Household for him? It seems that Gay really could not understand the position. Could not Mrs. Howard do something in his interest? Could not the friends of Pope do aught to secure that little post? Or Lord Burlington, or Lord Bathurst, or William Pulteney, or some one of the rest? [pg 55]He became petulant, and it is a tribute to his charm that not one of these persons was ever disgusted with him, but continued to feed him, keep him, and pet him, and made their friends and their friends' friends do likewise. In fact, this delightful, whimsical, helpless creature leant upon all who were stronger, and each one upon whom he leant loved him to his dying day.

Gay's health, which was never robust, gave way under his bitter disappointment, and in 1721 he went in the early autumn to Bath, where Mrs. Bradshaw wrote to Mrs. Howard, September 19th: "He is always with the Duchess of Queensberry." In the following year he was again ill, and went again to recuperate at the Somersetshire watering place.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

"After every post-day, for these eight or nine years, I have been troubled with an uneasiness of spirit, and at last I have resolved to get rid of it and write to you. I do not deserve you should think so well of me as I really deserve, for I have not professed to you that I love you as much as ever I did; but you are the only person of my acquaintance, almost, that does not know it. Whomever I see that comes from Ireland, the first question I ask is after your health ... I think of you very often; nobody wishes you better, or longs more to see you ... I was there [at Bath] for near eleven weeks for a colic that I have been troubled with of late; but have not found all the benefit I expected ... I lodge at present at Burlington House, and have received many civilities from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all. Experience has given me some knowledge of them, so that I can say, that it is not in their power to disappoint me."[^[4]]

[pg 56]This was certainly ungrateful of Gay, but allowance may perhaps be made for him on the ground that he was, as Coxe has written, "of a sanguine disposition, was easily raised and as easily depressed. He mistook the usual civilities of persons of distinction for offers of assistance, and argued from the common promises of a Court certain preferment." He accordingly always suffered from mortification, about which he was prone to discourse. This was a foible well known to his friends, and even Pope could not refrain from gently chaffing him: "I wish you joy of the birth of the young Prince,[^[5]] because he is the only prince we have from whom you have had no expectations and no disappointments."[^[6]]

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

"Although I care not to talk to you as a divine, yet I hope you have not been the author of your colic. Do you drink bad wine or keep bad company?... I am heartily sorry you have any dealings with that ugly distemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnot will recommend you to temperance and exercise ...

"I am extremely glad he [Pope] is not in your case of needing great men's favour, and could heartily wish that you were in his.

"I have been considering why poets have such ill success in making their court, since they are allowed to be the greatest and best of all flatterers. The defect is, that they flatter only in print or in writing, but not by word of mouth; they will give things under their hand which they make a conscience of speaking. Besides, they are too libertine to haunt antechambers, too poor to bribe porters and footmen, and too proud to cringe to second-hand favourites in a great family.

"[pg 57]Tell me, are you not under original sin by the dedication of your Eclogues to Lord Bolingbroke?

"I am an ill judge at this distance, and besides am, for my case, utterly ignorant of the commonest things that pass in the world; but if all Courts have a sameness in them (as the parsons phrase it), things may be as they were in my time, when all employments went to Parliament-men's friends, who had been useful in elections, and there was always a huge list of names in arrears at the Treasury, which would at least take up your seven years' expedient to discharge even one-half.

"I am of opinion, if you will not be offended, that the surest course would be to get your friend [Lord Burlington] who lodgeth in your house to recommend you to the next Chief Governor who comes over here, for a good civil employment, or to be one of his secretaries, which your Parliament-men are fond enough of, when there is no room at home. The wine is good and reasonable; you may dine twice a week at the Deanery-house; there is a set of company in this town sufficient for one man; folks will admire you, because they have read you, and read of you; and a good employment will make you live tolerably in London, or sumptuously here; or, if you divide between both places, it will be for your health."[^[7]]

Gay's friends, who had persistently been on the look-out to help him, at last met with some small measure of success. "I am obliged to you for your advice, as I have been formerly for your assistance in introducing me into business," Gay wrote to Swift from London, February 3rd, 1723. "I shall this year be Commissioner of the State Lottery, which will be worth to me a hundred and fifty pounds. And I am not without hopes that I have friends that will think of some better and more certain provision for me."[^[8]] In addition to this post, the Earl of Lincoln [pg 58]was persuaded to give him an apartment in Whitehall. The Commissionship and the residence to some small extent soothed Gay's ruffled vanity, and were beyond question convenient.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

"As for the reigning amusements of the town, it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds. There's nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian woman. Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different styles of Handel, Bononcine, and Attilio. People have now forgot Homer and Virgil and Cæsar, or at least they have lost their ranks. For in London and Westminster, in all polite conversations, Senesino is daily voted to be the greatest man that ever lived.

"Mr. Congreve I see often; he always mentions you with the strongest expressions of esteem and friendship. He labours still under the same affliction as to his sight and gout; but in his intervals of health he has not lost anything of his cheerful temper. I passed all the last season with him at Bath, and I have great reason to value myself upon his friendship, for I am sure he sincerely wishes me well. Pope has just now embarked himself in another great undertaking as an author, for of late he has talked only as a gardener. He has engaged to translate the Odyssey in three years, I believe rather out of a prospect of gain than inclination, for I am persuaded he bore his part in the loss of the South Sea. I supped about a fortnight ago with Lord Bathurst and Lewis at Dr. Arbuthnot's."[^[9]]

During the summer of 1723 Gay, still troubled with the colic, went to Tunbridge Wells, where he carried on a vigorous correspondence with Mrs. Howard.

[pg 59]THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

"I was very sorry to hear, when I returned from Greenwich, that you had been at Richmond the same day; but I really thought you would have ordered your affairs in such a manner that I should have seen you before you went to Tunbridge. I dare say you are now with your friends, but not with one who more sincerely wishes to see you easy and happy than I do; if my power was equal to theirs the matter should soon be determined.

"I am glad to hear you frequent the church. You cannot fail of being often put in mind of the great virtue of patience, and how necessary that may be for you to practise I leave to your own experience. I applaud your prudence (for I hope it is entirely owing to it) that you have no money at Tunbridge. It is easier to avoid the means of temptation than to resist them when the power is in our own hands....

"The place you are in has strangely filled your head with cures and physicians; but (take my word for it) many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters without being sick, and many a man has complained of the loss of his heart who has had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours, for I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the number of mine."

JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS HOWARD.

"The next pleasure to seeing you is hearing from you, and when I hear you succeed in your wishes I succeed in mine—so I will not say a word more of the house.

"We have a young lady, Mary Jennings, here that is very particular in her desires. I have known some ladies who, if ever they prayed and were sure their prayers would prevail, would ask an equipage, a title, a husband or [pg 60]matadores; but this lady, who is but seventeen and has but thirty thousand pounds, places all her wishes in a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she can only lose a husband, but that ale is her passion. I have not as yet drank with her, though I must own I cannot help being fond of a lady who has so little disguise of her practice, either in her words or appearance. If to show you love her you must drink with her she has chosen an ill place for followers, for she is forbid with the waters. Her shape is not very unlike a barrel, and I would describe her eyes, if I could look over the agreeable swellings of her cheeks, in which the rose predominates; nor can I perceive the least of the lily in her whole countenance. You see what £30,000 can do, for without that I could never have discovered all these agreeable particularities. In short, she is the ortolan, or rather wheat-ear, of the place, for she is entirely a lump of fat; and the form of the universe itself is scarce more beautiful, for her figure is almost circular. After I have said all this, I believe it will be in vain for me to declare I am not in love, and I am afraid that I have showed some imprudence in talking upon this subject, since you have declared that you like a friend that has a heart in his disposal. I assure you I am not mercenary and that £30,000 have not half so much power with me as the woman I love."

THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

"I have taken some days to consider of your wheat-ear, but I find I can no more approve of your having a passion for that, than I did of your turning parson. But if ever you will take the one, I insist upon your taking the other; they ought not to be parted; they were made from the beginning for each other. But I do not forbid you to [ [pg 61]get the best intelligence of the ways, manners and customs of this wonderful phenomène, how it supports the disappointment of bad ale, and what are the consequences to the full enjoyment of her luxury? I have some thoughts of taking a hint from the ladies of your acquaintance who pray for matadores, and turn devotees for luck at ombre, for I have already lost above £100 since I came to Richmond.

"I do not like to have you too passionately fond of everything that has no disguise. I (that am grown old in Courts) can assure you sincerity is so very unthriving that I can never give consent that you should practise it, excepting to three or four people that I think may deserve it, of which number I am. I am resolved that you shall open a new scene of behaviour next winter and begin to pay in coin your debts of fair promises. I have some thoughts of giving you a few loose hints for a satire, and if you manage it right, and not indulge that foolish good-nature of yours, I do not question but I shall see you in good employment before Christmas."

JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.

"I have long wished to be able to put in practice that valuable worldly qualification of being insincere. One of my chief reasons is that I hate to be particular, and I think if a man cannot conform to the customs of the world, he is not fit to be encouraged or to live in it. I know that, if one would be agreeable to men of dignity one must study to imitate them, and I know which way they get money and places. I cannot indeed wonder that the talents requisite for a great statesman are so scarce in the world, since so many of those who possess them are every month cut off in the prime of their life at the Old Bailey.

"Another observation I have made upon courtiers is that if you have any friendship with any particular one, you must be entirely governed by his friendship and [pg 62]resentments, not your own; you are not only to flatter him but those that he flatters, and, if he chances to take a fancy to any man whom you know that he knows to have the talents of a statesman, you are immediately to think both of them men of the most exact honour. In short, you must think nothing dishonest or dishonourable that is required of you, because, if you know the world, you must know that no statesman has or ever will require anything of you that is dishonest or dishonourable.

"Then you must suppose that all statesmen, and your friend in particular (for statesmen's friends have always seemed to think so) have been, are, and always will be guided by strict justice, and are quite void of partiality and resentment. You are to believe that he never did or can propose any wrong thing, for whoever has it in his power to dissent from a statesman, in any one particular, is not capable of his friendship. This last word, friendship, I have been forced to make use of several times, though I know that I speak improperly, for it has never been allowed a Court term. This is some part of a Court creed, though it is impossible to fix all the articles, for as men of dignity believe one thing one day and another the next, so you must daily change your faith and opinion; therefore the mood to please these wonderful and mighty men is never to declare in the morning what you believe until your friend has declared what he believes—for one mistake this way is utter destruction.

"I hope these few reflections will convince you that I know something of the art of pleasing great men. I have strictly examined most favourites that I have known, and think I judge right, that almost all of them have practised most of these rules on their way to preferment. I cannot wonder that great men require all this from their creatures, since most of them have practised it themselves, or else they had never arrived to their dignities.

"As to your advice that you give me in relation to preaching and marrying and ale, I like it extremely, for this [pg 63]lady [Mary Jennings] must be born to be a parson's wife, and I never will think of marrying her till I have preached my first sermon. She was last night at a private ball—so private that not one man knew it till it was over, so that Mrs. Carr was disturbed at her lodgings by only a dozen ladies, who danced together without the least scandal.

"I fancy I shall not stay here much longer, though what will become of me I know not, for I have not, and fear never shall have, a will of my own."

THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

"After you have told me that you hate writing letters, it would be very ungrateful not to thank you for so many as you have written for me. Acting contrary to one's inclinations, for the service of those one likes, is a strong proof of friendship; yet, as it is painful, it ought never to be exacted but in case of great necessity. As such I look upon that correspondence in which I have engaged you.

"Perhaps you think I treat you very oddly, that while I own myself afraid of a man of wit [Lord Peterborough] and make that a pretence to ask your assistance, I can write to you myself without any concern; but do me justice and believe it is that I think it requires something more than wit to deserve esteem. So it is less uneasy for me to write to you than to the other, for I should fancy I purchased the letters I received (though very witty) at too great an expense, if at the least hazard of having my real answers exposed.

"The enclosed [^[10]] will discover that I did not make use of every argument with which you had furnished me; but I had a reason, of which I am not at this time disposed to make you a judge. Conquest is the last thing a woman cares to resign; but I should be very sorry to have you in the desperate state of my Knight-errant. No! I would [pg 64]spare you, out of self-interest, to secure to me those I have made by your assistance."

THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

"I am very much pleased to find you are of my opinion. I have always thought that the man who will be nothing but a man of wit oftener disobliges than entertains the company. There is nothing tries our patience more than that person who arrogantly is ever showing his superiority over the company he is engaged in. He and his fate I think very like the woman whose whole ambition is only to be handsome. She is in continual care about her own charms and neglects the world; and he is always endeavouring to be more witty than all the world, which makes them both disagreeable companions.

"The warmth with which I attack wit will, I am afraid, be thought to proceed from the same motive which makes the old and ugly attack the young and handsome; but if you examine well all those of the character I have mentioned you will find they are generally but pretenders to either wit or beauty, and in justification of myself I can say, and that with great sincerity, I respect wit with judgment, and beauty with humility, whenever I meet it.

"I have sent the enclosed [^[11]] and desire an answer. I make no more apologies, for I take you to be in earnest; but if you can talk of sincerity without having it, I am glad it is in my power to punish you, for sincerity is not only the favourite expression of my knight-errant, but it is my darling virtue.

"If I agree with you, that wit is very seldom to be found in sincerity, it is because I think neither wit nor sincerity is often found; but daily experience shows us it is want of wit, and not too much, makes people insincere."

Footnotes:

Paul Methuen (1672-1757), diplomatist; Comptroller of the Household 1720-1725; K.B., 1725.

Lives of the Poets (ed. Hill), III, p. 273.

B.M., Add. MSS., 28275, f. 8.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 385.

George William, born November 2nd, 1717, died February 6th, 1722.

Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 422.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, 390.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 398.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 297.

Probably a letter from Lord Peterborough to Mrs. Howard.

Probably a copy of a letter from Mrs. Howard to Lord Peterborough

[pg 65]

CHAPTER VII

1724-1727
"THE CAPTIVES"—THE FIRST SERIES OF "FABLES"—GAY AND THE
COURT—POPE, SWIFT AND MRS. HOWARD.

During 1723 Gay wrote a tragedy, "The Captives," which at the end of the year he read to the royal circle at Leicester House. "When the hour came," Johnson has recorded, "he saw the Princess [of Wales] and her ladies all in expectation, and, advancing with reverence, too great for any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and, falling forward, threw down a weighty Japanese screen. The Princess started, the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still to read his play."[^[1]] "The Captives" was produced at Drury Lane Theatre in January, 1724, and according to the Biographica Dramatica was "acted nine nights with great applause," the third, or author's night, being by the command of the Prince and Princess of Wales. According, however, to Fenton, "Gay's play had no success. I am told he gave thirty guineas to have it acted on the fifth night."[^[2]] When it was published, Gay prefaced it with the following dedication:—

TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS OF WALES.

"Madam,

"The honour I received from your Royal Highness in being permitted to read this play to you before it was [pg 66]acted, made me more happy than any other success that could have happened to me. If it had the good fortune to gain your Royal Highness's approbation, I have often been reflecting to what to impute it, and I think it must have been the catastrophe of the fall, the rewarding virtue and the relieving the distressed. For that could not fail to give some pleasure in fiction, which, it is plain, gives you the greatest in reality, or else your Royal Highness would not (as you always have done) make it your daily practice.

"I am, Madam,
"Your Royal Highness's most dutiful
and most humbly devoted servant,
"JOHN GAY."

Of what Gay did, or where he went during 1724, next to nothing is known. Presumably he spent most of his time in his apartment at Whitehall, eating much and drinking more than was good for him, and, to judge by results, writing nothing. The only trace of him during 1724 is in the following letter:—

JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.

"Since I came to the Bath I have written three letters; the first to you, the second to Mr. Pope, and the third to Mr. Fortescue. Every post gives me fresh mortification, for I am forgot by everybody. Dr. Arbuthnot and his brother went away this morning, and intend to see Oxford on their way to London. The talk of the Bath is the marriage of Lord Somerville and Mrs. Rolt. She left the Bath yesterday. He continues here but is to go away to-day or to-morrow; but as opinions differ I cannot decide whether they are married or no. Lord Essex gives a private ball in Hamson's great room to Mrs. Pelham this evening, so that in all probabilities some odd bodies being left out, we shall soon have the pleasure of being divided [pg 67]into fractions. I shall return to London with Lord Scarborough, who hath not as yet fixed his time of leaving the Bath. Lord Fitzwilliam this morning had an account that a ticket of his was come up £500. Lady Fitzwilliam wonders she has not heard from you, and has so little resolution that she cannot resist buttered rolls at breakfast, though she knows they prejudice her health.

"If you will write to me you will make me cheerful and happy, without which I am told the waters will have no good effect. Pray have some regard to my health, for my life is in your service."

There is no mention of Gay during the first nine months of the year 1724, after which it has been possible to gather scant information. Apparently, encouraged by the kindly interest displayed by the Princess of Wales, Gay, still obsessed with his desire for a place, went frequently to Court. "I hear nothing of our friend Gay, but I find the Court keep him at hard meat. I advised him to come over here with a Lord-Lieutenant,"[^[3]] Swift wrote to Pope, September 29th, 1725. To this Pope replied on October 15th: "Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs, and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift; in like manner as when anyone had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil. He puts his whole trust at Court in that lady whom I described to you."[^[4]] "That lady," presumably was Mrs. Howard. But Gay, unable to secure the interest of the politicians, and getting weary of waiting on his friends, suddenly bethought himself of making a direct appeal to royalty. "Gay is writing tales for Prince William,"[^[5]] Pope wrote to Swift on December 10th. "Mr. Philips [^[6]] will take this [pg 68]very ill for two reasons, one that he thinks all childish things belong to him, and the other because he will take it ill to be taught that one may write things to a child without being childish." Than which last few prettier compliments have been paid to Gay.

Though they had long been in correspondence, Swift and Gay had not yet met. Swift, of course, had often in his mind a visit to London—he admitted the temptation, but resisted it. "I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the business to which fortune had condemned me, and stupidity was what I had recourse to,"[^[7]] he had written to Gay from Dublin, January 8th, 1723. "Besides, what a figure should I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron?" At last, however, in March, 1726, he did come to London, and he was the guest of Gay, whom he subsequently referred to as "my landlord at Whitehall." He saw much of Gay. "I have lived these two months past for the most part in the country, either at Twickenham with Mr. Pope, or rambling with him and Mr. Gay for a fortnight together. Yesterday Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Congreve made up five at dinner at Twickenham,"[^[8]] Swift wrote to Tickell from London on July 7th. Like the rest, Swift came to love Gay dearly, and Gay was no whit less attracted to the great man, who promised on his next visit to stay again in Whitehall. "My landlord," he wrote in a letter addressed jointly to Pope and Gay, October 15th, 1726, "who treats me with kindness and domesticity, and says that he is laying in a double stock of wine."[^[9]] Swift had been introduced to Mrs. Howard—it may be by Gay—and she too wished to entertain him. "I hope you will get your house and wine ready, to which Mr. Gay and I are to have access when you are at Court; for, as to Mr. Pope, he is not [pg 69]worth considering on such occasions,"[^[10]] he wrote to her from Dublin, February 1st, 1727.

Gay had become more and more on good terms with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, especially with the Duchess, who treated him as a sort of pet lap-dog. "Since I wrote last," Gay told Swift in a letter dated September 16th, 1726, "I have been always upon the ramble. I have been in Oxfordshire with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and at Petersham, and wheresoever they would carry me; but as they will go to Wiltshire [^[11]] without me on Tuesday next, for two or three months, I believe I shall then have finished my travels for this year, and shall not go further from London than now and then to Twickenham."[^[12]] It was as well that Gay remained in London, else probably his "Fables" would never have appeared. Gay, who had begun to compose the "Fables" in 1725, was, according to the habit of the man, not to be hurried. "I have of late been very much out of order with a slight fever, which I am not yet quite free from," he wrote to Swift in October, 1726. "If the engravers keep their word with me I shall be able to publish my poems soon after Christmas." But of course the engravers did not keep their word. Swift, a more energetic person, became almost fractious at the repeated delays in the publication, and wrote to Pope on November 17th: "How comes Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables."[^[13]] And still there were delays. "My Fables are printed," he told Swift on February 18th, 1727; "but I cannot get my plates finished, which hinders the publication. I expect nothing and am likely to get nothing."[^[14]] At last, in the spring, the volume appeared, with the imprint of J. Tonson and J. Watts, and with this dedication: "To His Highness [pg 70]William Duke of Cumberland these new Fables, invented for his amusement, are humbly dedicated by His Highness's most faithful and most obedient servant, John Gay."

Gay, of course, expected some reward for this courtier-like attention to the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the poet and his friends again believed that his future was assured when they heard that Her Royal Highness had said, or at least was reported to have said, that she should "take up the hare"—an allusion to the "Fable" of "The Hare and Many Friends":—

A Hare who in a civil way,

Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay,

Was known by all the bestial train,

Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain.

Her care was never to offend.

And ev'ry creature was her friend.

On June 12th, 1727, George I. died, and Gay felt sure that at last the hour had struck when the "place" so long and diligently sought, would be bestowed on him. The new Queen did not, indeed, forget him; she did what in his eyes was far worse, she offered him the sinecure post of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa,[^[15]] then two years old, with a salary of £200 a year. Gay's disappointment was bitter, and for a person usually so placid, his indignation tremendous. What ground for hope he had had, he, as Dr. Johnson has said, "had doubtless magnified with all the wild expectation and vanity,"[^[16]] "The Queen's family is at last settled," Gay wrote bitterly to Swift on October 22nd, "and in the list I was appointed Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa, the youngest Princess, which, upon account that I am so far advanced in life, I had declined accepting, and have endeavoured, in the best manner I could, to make my excuses by a letter to her Majesty. So now all my expectations are vanished and I have no [pg 71]prospect, but in depending wholly upon myself and my own conduct. As I am used to disappointments I can bear them, but as I can have no more hopes I can no more be disappointed, so that I am in a blessed condition."[^[17]] Pope, than whom no man loved Gay better, could not bring himself to sympathise with his irate brother poet.

ALEXANDER POPE TO JOHN GAY.

"I have many years ago magnified, in my own mind, and repeated to you, a ninth beatitude, added to the eight in the Scripture: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. I could find in my heart to congratulate you on this happy dismission from all Court dependance. I dare say I shall find you the better and the honester man for it many years hence; very probably the healthfuller, and the cheerfuller into the bargain. You are happily rid of many cursed ceremonies, as well as of many ill and vicious habits, of which few or no men escape the infection, who are hackneyed and trammelled in the ways of a Court. Princes, indeed, and Peers (the lackies of Princes) and Ladies (the fools of Peers) will smile on you the less; but men of worth and real friends will look on you the better. There is a thing, the only thing which kings and queens cannot give you, for they have it not to give—liberty, which is worth all they have, and which as yet Englishmen need not ask from their hands. You will enjoy that, and your own integrity, and the satisfactory consciousness of having not merited such graces from Courts as are bestowed only on the mean, servile, flattering, interested and undeserving. The only steps to the favour of the great are such complacencies, such compliances, such distant decorums, as delude them in their vanities, or engage them in their passions. He is their greatest favourite who is the falsest; and when a man, by such vile graduations arrives at the height of [pg 72]grandeur and power, he is then at best but in a circumstance to be hated, and in a condition to be hanged for serving their ends. So many a Minister has found it."

"I can only add a plain uncourtly speech," Pope wrote again to Gay ten days later. "While you are nobody's servant you may be anybody's friend, and, as such, I embrace you in all conditions of life. While I have a shilling you shall have sixpence, nay, eightpence, if I can contrive to live upon a groat." But if Pope took the matter calmly, Swift, on the other hand, completely lost his temper and wrote as if voluntary attendance at Court made it obligatory upon the Queen to provide for the courtier.

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

"I entirely approve your refusal of that employment, and your writing to the Queen. I am perfectly confident you have a firm enemy in the Ministry. God forgive him, but not till he puts himself in a state to be forgiven. Upon reasoning with myself, I should hope they are gone too far to discard you quite, and that they will give you something; which, although much less than they ought, will be (as far as it is worth) better circumstantiated; and since you already just live, a middling help will make you just tolerable. Your lateness in life (as you so soon call it) might be improper to begin the world with, but almost the eldest men may hope to see changes in a Court. A Minister is always seventy; you are thirty years younger; and consider, Cromwell did not begin to appear till he was older than you."[^[18]]

Swift could not forgive the Court for the offer, Mrs. Howard for not exerting her influence to get a better post for her protégé. "I desire my humble service to Lord Oxford, Lord Bathurst, and particularly to Miss Blount, but to no lady at Court. God bless you for being [pg 73]a greater dupe than I. I love that character too myself, but I want your charity," he wrote to Pope, August 11th, 1729; but Pope replying on October 9th said: "The Court lady [^[19]] I have a good opinion of. Yet I have treated her more negligently than you would do, because you will like to see the inside of a Court, which I do not ... after all, that lady means to do good and does no harm, which is a vast deal for a courtier."

More than once Swift took up his pen to avenge his friend for the slight that he considered had been passed upon him. In "A Libel on the Rev. Mr. Delany and His Excellency Lord Cartaret," he wrote in 1729:—

Thus Gay, the hare with many friends.

Twice seven long years the Court attends;

Who, under tales conveying truth,

To virtue form'd a princely youth;

Who paid his courtship with the crowd,

As far as modest pride allow'd;

Rejects a servile usher's place,

And leaves St. James's in disgrace.

Two years later he returned to the attack in "An Epistle to Mr. Gay ":—

How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse's train,

To serve a tasteless Court twelve years in vain!

Fain would I think our female friend sincere,

Till Bob,[^[20]] the poet's foe, possess'd her ear.

Did female virtue e'er so high ascend,

To lose an inch of favour for a friend?

Say, had the Court no better place to choose

For thee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?

How cheaply had thy liberty been sold,

To squire a royal girl of two years old:

In leading strings her infant steps to guide,

Or with her go-cart amble side by side!

It is a little difficult at this time of day to understand Swift's indignation. Gay was already in the enjoyment [pg 74]of a sinecure of £150 a year; he was offered another of £200 a year—for the post of Gentleman-Usher involved no duties save occasional attendance at Court, and to this the poet had shown himself by no means averse. A total gift of £350 a year for nothing really seems rather alluring to a man of letters, and it is difficult to understand why Gay refused the offer, unless it was, as the editors of the standard edition of Pope's Correspondence suggest: "The affluent friends who recommended Gay to reject the provisions were strangers to want, and with unconscious selfishness they thought less of his necessities than of venturing their spleen against the Court."

Swift, unable effectively to vent his anger on Caroline, chose to regard Mrs. Howard as the cause of the mortification of his friend. Mrs. Howard, however, not only had nothing to do with the offer of the place of Gentleman-Usher to Gay, the patronage being directly in the Queen's hands, but, as has been indicated, was unable to secure for him, or anyone else, a place at Court of any description. Certainly she was in blissful ignorance of having given offence, for as Gay wrote to the Dean so late as February 15th, 1728: "Mrs. Howard frequently asks after you and desires her compliments to you."

All the matters affected not a whit the relations between Mrs. Howard and Gay; against her he had no ill-feeling, and their correspondence continued on the same lines of intimacy as before.

THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

"I hear you expect, and have a mind to have, a letter from me, and though I have little to say, I find I don't care that you should be either disappointed or displeased. Tell her Grace of Queensberry I don't think she looked kindly upon me when I saw her last; she ought to have looked and thought very kindly, for I am much more her [ [pg 75]humble servant than those who tell her so every day. Don't let her cheat you in the pencils; she designs to give you nothing but her old ones. I suppose she always uses those worst who love her best, Mrs. Herbert excepted; but I hear she has done handsomely by her. I cannot help doing the woman this justice, that she can now and then distinguish merit.

"So much for her Grace; now for yourself, John. I desire you will mind the main chance, and be in town in time enough to let the opera [^[21]] have play enough for its life, and for your pockets. Your head is your best friend; it could clothe, lodge and wash you, but you neglect it, and follow that false friend, your heart, which is such a foolish, tender thing that it makes others despise your head that have not half so good a one upon their own shoulders. In short, John, you may be a snail or a silk-worm, but by my consent you shall never be a hare again.

"We go to town next week. Try your interest and bring the duchess up by the birthday. I did not think to have named her any more in this letter. I find I am a little foolish about her; don't you be a great deal so, for if she will not come, do you come without her."

Gay was not the man to keep his feelings of disappointment to himself, and his feelings were so widely known that at the time the following copy of verses was handed about in manuscript [^[22]]:—

A mother who vast pleasure finds,

In forming of the children's minds;

In midst of whom with vast delight,

She passes many a winter's night;

Mingles in every play to find,

What bias nature gives her mind;

Resolving there to take her aim.

To guide them to the realms of fame;

And wisely make those realms their way,

[pg 76]

To those of everlasting day;

Each boist'rous passion she'd control,

And early humanise the soul,

The noblest notions would inspire,

As they were sitting by the fire;

Her offspring, conscious of her care,

Transported hung around her chair.

Of Scripture heroes would she tell,

Whose names they'd lisp, ere they could spell;

Then the delighted mother smiles,

And shews the story in the tiles.

At other times her themes would be,

The sages of antiquity;

Who left a glorious name behind,

By being blessings to their kind:

Again she'd take a nobler scope,

And tell of Addison and Pope.

This happy mother met one day,

A book of fables writ by Gay;

And told her children, here's treasure,

A fund of wisdom, and of pleasure.

Such decency! such elegance!

Such morals! such exalted sense!

Well has the poet found the art,

To raise the mind, and mend the heart.

Her favourite boy the author seiz'd,

And as he read, seem'd highly pleas'd;

Made such reflections every page,

The mother thought above his age:

Delighted read, but scarce was able,

To finish the concluding fable.

"What ails my child?" the mother cries,

"Whose sorrows now have fill'd your eyes?"

"Oh, dear Mamma, can he want friends

Who writes for such exalted ends?

Oh, base, degenerate human kind!

Had I a fortune to my mind,

Should Gay complain; but now, alas!

Through what a world am I to pass;

Where friendship's but an empty name,

And merit's scarcely paid in fame."

Resolv'd to lull his woes to rest.

She told him he should hope the best;

That who instruct the royal race.

Can't fail of some distinguished place.

"Mamma, if you were queen," says he,

"And such a book was writ for me;

I know 'tis so much to your taste,

That Gay would keep his coach at least."

"My child, what you suppose is true,

I see its excellence in you;

[pg 77]

Poets whose writing mend the mind,

A noble recompense should find:

But I am barr'd by fortune's frowns.

From the best privilege of crowns;

The glorious godlike power to bless,

And raise up merit in distress."

"But, dear Mamma, I long to know.

Were that the case, what you'd bestow?"

"What I'd bestow," says she, "My dear,

At least five hundred pounds a year."

Footnotes:

Johnson: Lives of the Poets (ed. Hill), III, p. 274.

Letter to Broome, January 30th, 1724 (Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope, VIII, p. 75.))

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 6.

Ibid., XVII, p. 8.

William Augustus (1721-1765), third son of George III; created Duke of Cumberland, 1726.

Ambrose Philips, the poet.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVI, 389.

Ibid., XIX. p. 283.

Ibid., XVII, p. 99.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 94.

To Amesbury, the principal seat of the Duke of Queensberry.

Swift: Works (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 66.