moon, let me go in your train, for I always had a passion to see foreign parts; and our world is to me extremely dull, though I hear there are brave doings at Hampton Court. I was much importuned to go on Tuesday to the play, but I have no notion of serving two masters.

2

I have seen my namesake *Bellenden, who tells me she diverted herself mighty well at Richmond; for all that, I wish you would come to town, for I have no acquaintance here to give me a lift, and I am afraid your master will forget my ridiculous face, unless you will be so good to deliver an humble petition I have to makeit is to put a boy into the Charter-House; he is qualified as being a gentleman: his father was an officer, and killed in the service about twelve years ago, and the child has nothing to educate him but what his relations do in charity for him. I know His R. H. has the putting in one every year, and Christmas is the time: if you would be so good as to take an opportunity when you think it proper to lift up this my humble request, I should take it as a great obligation;

2 Where the king now was.

3 Alluding to the dissensions between the king at Hampton Court and the prince at Richmond.

4 Margaret, sister of Mary Bellenden. Both are commemorated in Gay's "Welcome to Pope from Greece,” as "Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land,

And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."

and I fancy the readiest way to incline you is to let you know it is a very great charity, and though that is but an odd argument to use at court, yet I will venture it to you.

I must give you a hint that you are a little lazy, for you live at the fountain-head of news, and I really do not see the face of any animal but my own domestics in ten days together; and you know it is hard to spin all out of one's own bowels.

Since I wrote this Lady Mohun came in and caught me in the fact; she would know who I was writing to, and when I told her, she desired me to put in her service, and desires you will not forget to bring up her purse that she says you promised her. If she should go to Richmond in her own coach I shall get a lift, for I really have great yearnings after seeing dear Mrs. Howard, to whom I am a faithful slave in thought, word, and deed.

I know it is better manners to put this in a case, but then it is better housewifery to send it without.

5 An envelope, or cover.

JOHN GAY, ESQ. TO MRS. HOWARD.

[Gay, beloved by every body, was supposed to be especially patronized by Mrs. Howard; but that patronage (and perhaps some indiscretions of the simple bard himself) ensured him, it is said, the discountenance of Queen Caroline, and the opposition of Sir Robert Walpole. Swift, displeased with Mrs. Howard on his own account, affected to quarrel with her for her imputed neglect of poor Gay. Lady Betty Germain-in two excellent letters printed amongst those of Pope and Swift-defended the sincerity of Mrs. Howard; but it was not till after the death of both the queen and George II. that it was fully known how little was the influence of the favourite, and how absolute that of the queen. But, after all, there is reason to doubt whether Gay's grievances were not over-rated. His tory friends, who did not choose to avow their own cause of quarrel against Walpole and the queen, were not unwilling to make a pretext of his. Let us endeavour to set right a point of literary history. Gay, far from being persecuted, appears to have been favoured by people in power. He was selected in 1714 to be secretary of the mission which conveyed to the Brunswick family the news of the illness of Queen Anne, and of its own approaching accession. Gay's friends confess that his own awkwardness and simplicity threw away this opportunity of recommending himself; and the truth is, that "in simplicity a child," he was wholly incapable of business. In 1724 we find him publicly and actively patronised by the prince's court. In 1727, on the accession of George II. he was offered the situation of gentleman usher to one of the young princesses. This office, Gay-under the advice of his friends-refused as an indignity. Where the indignity was is not easily discovered; the kind of place fit for Gay was a small sinecure which might afford him

bread, and leave him leisure for his literary pursuits; and such was the office proposed to him: for one of higher and more important duties his temper and habits incapacitated him; nor does it seem such a violent indignity that he, whose greatest merit at that time was his " Fables," written for one royal child, should have been appointed to a nominal office about another royal child. But a most important fact has not hitherto been noticed by any of Gay's biographers; though traces of it are to be found in his correspondence. He was, in 1722, during the height of Walpole's power, appointed a commissioner of the lottery,—a place in the minister's immediate gift, of respectable emolument and little labour. It is true that his name was omitted from the commission in 1731, but surely that might have been fairly expected (even if his state of health did not account for the omission) after the publication of The Beggar's Opera, which he professedly wrote as a satire on the court, and on Walpole and Lord Townshend personally: and it is painful to find a man of Gay's talents expressing himself in the style of a mere party hireling.— "It is my hard fate,” he says to Pope,-in allusion to the fables written for the prince, and The Beggar's Opera written against the court;—" it is my hard fate that I must get nothing whether I write for them or against them."

On the whole, then, it seems, that the abuse which has been so long and so largely lavished on Queen Caroline, Sir Robert Walpole, and Mrs. Howard, for neglect or persecution of poor Gay, is undeserved, and particularly by the last. Gay was born in 1680, and died in December, 1732.]

Dijon, Sept. 8, 1719.

MADAM,

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

1

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 every where 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 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 at

1 Gay's biographers record a visit which he made in 1717 with Mr. Pulteney to Aix, but they do not mention this tour in 1719.

VOL. I.

D