Born, at Barnstaple, 1685; baptized 16 Sept. 1685. Educated at Barnstaple Grammar School. For short time apprentice in a London shop; returned to Barnstaple; thence again to London, probably as secretary to Aaron Hill. Sec. to Duchess of Monmouth, 1712–14. Contrib. to “Guardian,” 1713. “The Wife of Bath” produced at Drury Lane, 12 May 1713. In Hanover as sec. to Lord Clarendon, 8 June to Sept. 1714. “What-d’ye-Call-it” produced at Drury Lane, 23 Feb. 1715. “Three Hours after Marriage” (written with Pope and Arbuthnot), Drury Lane, 16 Jan. 1717. To Aix with William Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath), 1717. At Cockthorpe with Lord Harcourt, 1718. Severe losses in South Sea Bubble. Under patronage of Duchess of Queensberry from 1720. “The Captives” produced at Drury Lane, 15 Jan. 1724; “The Beggar’s Opera,” Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 29 Jan. 1728; sequel, “Polly,” forbidden by Lord Chamberlain, 1729; “Acis and Galatea,” Haymarket, May 1732; “Achilles” (posthumous), Covent Garden, 10 Feb. 1733. Died, in London, 4 Dec. 1732. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: “Wine,” 1708; “The Present State of Wit” (anon.), 1711; “The Mohocks” (anon.), 1713; “Rural Sports,” 1713; “The Wife of Bath,” 1713; “The Fan,” 1714; “The Shepherd’s Week,” 1714; “A Letter to a Lady” (anon.), 1714; “What-d’ye-Call-it,” 1715; “A Journey to Exeter,” 1715; “Court Poems,” 1716; “God’s Revenge against Punning” (under pseud. of “Sir James Baker”), 1716; “Trivia,” 1716; “An Admonition … to the famous Mr. Frapp” (under pseud. of “Sir James Baker”), 1717; “Letter to W— L—, Esq.,” 1717; “Epistle to Pulteney,” 1717; “Three Hours after Marriage” (with Pope and Arbuthnot), 1717; “Two Epistles,” [1720?]; “Poems” (2 vols.), 1720; “A Panegyrical Epistle” (anon.; attrib. to Gay), 1721; “An Epistle to … Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough,” 1722; “The Captives,” 1724 (2nd edn. same year); “Fables,” first series, 1727; second ser., 1738; “The Beggar’s Opera,” 1728 (2nd and 3rd edns. same year); “Polly,” 1729 (another edn. same year); “Acis and Galatea” (anon.), 1732. Posthumous: “Achilles,” 1733; “The Distress’d Wife,” 1743; “The Rehearsal at Goatham,” 1754; “Gay’s Chair: poems never before printed,” 1820. Collected Works: “Plays,” 1760; “Works” (4 vols.), 1770; ed. by Dr. Johnson (2 vols.), 1779; ed. J. Underhill (2 vols.), 1893. Life: by Coxe, 1797; by W. H. K. Wright, in 1889 edn. of “Fables;” by J. Underhill in 1893 edn. of Poems.

Personal

	Mr. Gay.
	12 May, 1713.	£.	s.	d.
	Wife of Bath	26	0	0
	11 Nov., 1714.
	Letter to a Lady	5	7	6
	14 Feb., 1714.
	The What d’ye call it?	16	2	6
	22 Dec., 1715.
	Trivia	43	0	0
	Epistle to the Earl of Burlington	10	15	0
	4 May, 1717.
	Battle of the Frogs	16	2	6
	8 Jan., 1717.
	Three Hours after Marriage	43	2	6
	The Mohocks, a Farce, 2l. 10s.
	(Sold the Mohocks to him again.)
	Revival of the Wife of Bath	75	0	0
		—	—	—
		234	10	0

	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.

	Life is a jest, and all things show it;
	I thought so once, but now I know it.

	Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
	In wit, a man; simplicity, a child:
	With native humour temp’ring virtuous rage;
	Form’d to delight at once and lash the age:
	Above temptation, in a low estate,
	And uncorrupted, ev’n among the great:
	A safe companion, and an easy friend,
	Unblam’d thro’ life, lamented in thy end.
	These are thy honours! not that here thy bust
	Is mix’d with heroes, or with kings thy dust;
	But that the worthy and the good shall say,
	Striking their pensive bosoms—Here lies Gay.

  I often want poor Mr. Gay, and on this occasion extremely. Nothing evaporates sooner than joy untold, or even told, unless to one so entirely in your interest as he was, who bore at least an equal share in every satisfaction and dissatisfaction that attended us. I am not in the spleen, though I write thus; on the contrary it is a sort of pleasure to think over his good qualities: his loss was really great, but it is a satisfaction to have once known so good a man. As you were as much his friend as I, it is needless to ask your pardon for dwelling so long on this subject.

  Gay was quite a natural man, wholly without art or design, and spoke just what he thought, and as he thought it.—He dangled for twenty years about a court, and at last—was offered to be made Usher to the young Princesses.—Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock in the South Sea year: and he was once worth twenty thousand pounds, but lost it all again. He got about four hundred pounds by the first “Beggar’s Opera,” and eleven or twelve hundred by the second.—He was negligent and a bad manager:—latterly the Duke of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him have only what was necessary out of it: and as he lived with them he could not have occasion for much: he died worth upwards of three thousand pounds.

  The Duchess of Queensberry told me that Gay could play on the flute, and that this enabled him to adopt so happily some airs in the “Beggar’s Opera.”

  The most good-natured and simple of mankind.

  His haunts may be traced, but home of his own he seems never to have had. Gay was an easy, good-natured fellow, but he had no great feeling of independence; and without being able or desirous to say that he was a mean, far less a disgraceful, hanger-on of the great, he was still a hanger-on.

  In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favourite, and to have a good place. In his set all were fond of him. His success offended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of for court favour, and hoped to win it; but the court favour jilted him. Craggs gave him some South Sea Stock; and at one time Gay had very nearly made his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too: and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jealous of him, were kind and fond of honest Gay.

  His body was brought by the Company of Upholders from the Duke of Queensberry’s to Exeter Change, and thence to the Abbey, at eight o’clock in the winter evening [December 23]. Lord Chesterfield and Pope were present amongst the mourners. He had already, two months before his death, desired: “My dear Mr. Pope, whom I love as my own soul: if you survive me, as you certainly will, if a stone shall mark the place of my grave, see these words put upon it:—

	Life is a jest and all things show it:
	I thought it once, but now I know it

with what else you may think proper.” His wish was complied with.

  His character is hardly one for which much respect can be entertained. He had a great deal more of the woman about him than the man. He was absurdly helpless; narrowly scanning for its opinion each face he encountered as he pressed forward; gazing ruefully, almost tearfully about him when alone, like some nervous female in the mazes of London. He had no strength of mind; no dignity of sentiment; no power of helping himself…. His women friends made a whim of him, as they made a whim of Jocko the monkey, or the black footboy who followed them with their prayer-book to church. His mind was soft, fat, flabby; it was without muscle, or sinew, or sap. He agreed with everybody, always pleasantly smiling as he assented; but assenting perhaps not so much from sycophancy or respect for the society that endured him, as from incapacity to oppose—as from emptiness of original ideas.

  In character Gay was affectionate and amiable, but indolent, luxurious, and very easily depressed. His health was never good, and his inactive habits and tastes as a gourmand did not improve it. But his personal charm as a companion must have been exceptionable, for he seems to have been a universal favourite, and Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot (with none of whom he ever quarrelled) were genuinely attached to him.

  He was one of those fortunate, helpless persons whom everybody helps, and the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry took him into their household, managed his money for him (he had made a good deal by the “Beggar’s Opera”), and prevented him from having any need of it. He died at the end of 1732, too lazy even to make a will. The traditional character of him as of a kind of human lapdog, without any vice except extreme self-indulgence, has been little disturbed.

The Shepherd’s Week, 1714

  These are Mr. Gay’s principal performance. They were originally intended, I suppose, as a burlesque on those of Phillips; but perhaps without designing it, he has hit the true spirit of pastoral poetry. In fact he more resembles Theocritus than any other English pastoral writer whatsoever. There runs throughout the whole a strain of rustic pleasantry, which should ever distinguish this species of composition; but how far the antiquated expressions used here may contribute to the humour, I will not determine; for my own part, I could wish the simplicity were preserved, without recurring to such obsolete antiquity for the manner of expressing it.

  But though the proem burlesqued Philips, and the purpose of censure and caricature was evident enough, yet simple speech is better than the false classicism that condemned it; and Gay, being much more of a poet than Ambrose Philips, and in himself, as Pope said, “a natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought,” “The Shepherd’s Week” made its own mark as pastoral poetry, and, in spite of its Cloddipole and Hobnelia, by its own merit went far to disprove its case.

  Like Fielding’s novel of “Joseph Andrews,” the execution of “The Shepherd’s Week” was far superior to its avowed object of mere ridicule. In spite of their barbarous “Bumkinets” and “Grubbinols,” Gay’s eclogues abound with interesting folk-lore and closely-studied rural pictures. We see the country-girl burning hazel-nuts to find her sweet-heart, or presenting the faithless Colin with a knife with a “posy” on it, or playing “Hot Cockles,” or listening to “Gillian of Croydon” and “Patient Grissel.” There are also sly strokes of kindly satire, as when the shepherds are represented fencing the grave of Blouzelinda against the prospective inroads of the parson’s horse and cow, which have the right of grazing in the churchyard; or when that dignitary, in consideration of the liberal sermon-fee,

“Spoke the Hour-glass in her praise—quite out.”

These little touches (and there are a hundred more) make us sure that we are reading no mere caricature; but that the country-life of that age of Queen Anne, which her poet loyally declares to be the only “Golden Age,” is truly and faithfully brought before us.

  They may still be glanced at with pleasure.

  The satirical design is evident enough in the affected use of obsolete words, in the absurd bumpkin nomenclature, Buxoma and Blouzelind, Clumsilis and Hobnelia. But Gay’s poetic instinct was too much for him. He had a true insight into the picturesque elements of rural life, a wide knowledge of country customs and country superstitions. And so, though only half intending it, he produced no mere parody, but a genuine work of pastoral art, the nearest approach to a realistic pastoral which our literature had yet seen. And here the history of pastoral really closes upon a note curiously significant. The versifiers who followed in the wake of Pope are of no account. But the temper of Gay, so fantastic in his own age, is prophetic enough to us of the tendencies, revolutionary and deep-rooted, which were destined, nearly a century later, to completely transform the English conception of country life as a subject for poetry.

Fables, 1727–38

  For a Fable he gives now and then a Tale, or an abstracted Allegory; and from some, by whatever name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They are, however, told with liveliness; the versification is smooth; and the diction, though now-and-then a little constrained by the measure or the rhyme, is generally happy.

  Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematically, but inadvertently—from not being so well aware of what he was about; nor was there the same necessity for caution, for his grossness is by no means so seductive or inviting. Gay’s “Fables” are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of the execution. They, are, however, spun out too long; the descriptions and narrative are too diffuse and desultory; and the moral is sometimes without point. They are more like Tales than fables. The best are, perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, and the Fox at the Point of Death.

  As a fabulist he has been sometimes hypercritically blamed for presenting us with allegorical impersonations. The mere naked apologue of Æsop is too simple to interest the human mind, when its fancy and understanding are past the state of childhood or barbarism. La Fontaine dresses the stories which he took from Æsop and others with such profusion of wit and naïveté, that his manner conceals the insipidity of the matter. “La sauce vaut mieux que le poisson.” Gay, though not equal to La Fontaine, is at least free from his occasional prolixity; and in one instance, (the Court of Death,) ventures into allegory with considerable power. Without being an absolute simpleton, like La Fontaine, he possessed a bonhomie of character which forms an agreeable trait of resemblance between the fabulists.

  The most finished productions of our poet, and those to which he will owe his reputation with posterity, are his “Fables,”—the finest in the language. They are written with great spirit and vivacity; the versification is generally smooth and flowing; the descriptions happy and appropriate, and the moral designed to be conveyed is, for the most part, impressive and instructive.

  Gay’s “Fables” carry to many people pleasant memories of the nursery and the schoolroom, where they lightened the weight of graver studies.

  Thackeray confessed that he had not been able to peruse them since his very early youth; but probably he would have found no difficulty in digesting them if he had made some slight effort. It is true that there is a certain want of variety both in the subject and tone of the fables; but they abound in touches of humour, and are written in an easy style. Many of them are tales and sometimes allegories, rather than fables, properly so called, and in the posthumous collection the fable forms a very small part of each poem. But what can be neater than the description of the election of the Fox as regent to the Lion?

  The “Fables” are light and lively, and might safely be recommended to Mr. Chamberlain, who is fond of an easy quotation. To lay them down is never difficult.

The Beggar’s Opera, 1728

  Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing, for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the “Beggar’s Opera.” He began on it, and when first he mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice: but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said, “It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.”—We were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, “It will do,—it must do!—I see it in the eyes of them.”—This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for the duke (besides his own good taste) has a more particular knack than any one now living, in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this, as usual; the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.

  “Cato,” it is true, succeeded, but reached not by full forty days the progress and applause of the “Beggar’s Opera.” Will it however admit of a question which of the two compositions a good writer would rather wish to have been the author of? Yet, on the other side, must we not allow, that to have taken a whole nation, high and low, into a general applause, has shown a power in poetry which, though often attempted in the same kind, none but this one author could ever yet arrive at.

  The effects of the “Beggar’s Opera” on the minds of the people have fulfilled the prognostications of many that it would prove injurious to society. Rapine and violence have been gradually increasing ever since its first representation: the rights of property, and the obligation of the laws that guard it, are disputed upon principle. Every man’s house is now become what the law calls it, his castle, or at least it may be said that, like a castle, it requires to be a place of defence; young men, apprentices, clerks in public offices, and others, disdaining the arts of honest industry, and captivated with the charms of idleness and criminal pleasure, now betake themselves to the road, affect politeness in the very act of robbery, and in the end become victims to the justice of their country: and men of discernment, who have been at the pains of tracing this evil to its source, have found that not a few of those, who, during these last fifty years have paid to the law the forfeit of their lives, have in the course of their pursuits been emulous to imitate the manners and general character of Macheath.

  Often and often had I read Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera,” and always delighted with its poignant wit and original satire, and if not without noticing its immorality, yet without any offence from it. Some years ago, I for the first time saw it represented in one of the London theatres; and such were the horror and disgust with which it impressed me, so grossly did it outrage all the best feelings of my nature, that even the angelic voice and perfect science of Mrs. Billington lost half their charms, or rather increased my aversion to the piece by an additional sense of incongruity. Then I learned the immense difference between reading and seeing a play.

  It is indeed a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to say of morality. In composing it, he chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and he has prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, the precision, and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar play. So far from it that I do not scruple to say that it appears to me one of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the materials: by “happy alchemy of mind,” the author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once violating probability, or “o’erstepping the modesty of nature.” In fact, Gay has turned the tables on the critics; and by the assumed license of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to do justice to nature, that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false taste and affected delicacy.

  This piece has kept possession of the stage for upwards of a century. “Macheath” and “Polly” have been favourite parts with most of our principal vocal performers; and, when well represented, it has rarely failed to draw crowded audiences in every part of the kingdom. Its effects on public morals have been the subject of much discussion and controversy. Soon after its appearance it was praised by Swift, as a piece which placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious light. Others, however, censured it, as giving encouragement not only to vice but to crime, by making a highwayman the hero, and dismissing him at last unpunished. It was even said that its performance had a visible effect in increasing the number of this description of freebooters. The celebrated police magistrate, Sir John Fielding, once told Hugh Kelly, the dramatist, on a successful run of the “Beggar’s Opera,” that he expected, in consequence of it, a fresh cargo of highwaymen at his office. Upon Kelly’s expressing his surprise at this, Sir John assured him, that, ever since the first representation of that piece, there had been, on every successful run, a proportionate number of highwaymen brought to the office, as would appear by the books any morning he chose to look over them. Kelly did so, and found the observation to be strictly correct…. Recently, however, the “Beggar’s Opera” has been rarely performed. Whether this has arisen from a growing sense of its impropriety, or from the want of fitting representatives of the hero and heroine, we shall not pretend to say. We believe that its licentiousness has contributed, no less than its wit and the beauty of its music, to the favour it has so long enjoyed: but it may be presumed that the time is come, or at least approaching, when its licentiousness will banish it from the stage, notwithstanding its wit and the beauty of its music.

  We have seen the “Beggar’s Opera” degraded from a pungent yet delicate satire upon the Walpoles and Pulteneys to an episode from the Newgate Calendar. Its humor had passed away; its songs had lost their savour; the actors mistook irony for earnest; we seemed to have fallen among thieves and longed to call for the police, and send them packing to Bow-street.

  The “Beggar’s Opera” was Gay’s ruin.

  The satire was purely the revenge of a disappointed courtier. Gay had accepted one office from the political Macheath, had long been a suppliant for another, and only talked of Bob Booty because he had not been allowed a larger share of the spoils.

  Of all ballad-operas the first is easily the foremost, excepting only “The Duenna.”

  The “Beggar’s Opera” is, in fact, rather the parody of a comedy interspersed with songs than a true opera, but there are passages in it which, abating some necessary absurdity, are wholly in the comedy vein. The play is unfortunately too gross for a more liberal extract than has been given. In reading the “Beggar’s Opera,” it is good to remember the wonderful success of the play in its own day. Phrases from it passed as catch-words in society, and its admirable songs were painted on ladies’ fans.

  It was Polly, however, as impersonated by the fascinating Lavinia Fenton (in 1728), that made the success of “The Beggar’s Opera.” She dressed the part in the most simple manner, and the pathetic naïveté with which she delivered the lines—

	For on the rope that hangs my dear
	Depends poor Polly’s life,

had such an effect that applause burst forth from every part of the house. The work had up to this moment gone but poorly. Its triumph was now assured, and the enthusiasm of the public went on increasing until the fall of the curtain. The opera soon made its way to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The principal songs were inscribed on fans and screens, and the enemies of foreign art boasted that “The Beggar’s Opera” (which is really a semi-burlesque comedy, interspersed with songs set to popular tunes) had driven out the opera of the Italians.

  The present age would perhaps rank Gay lowest in that kind of writing in which, in his own time, he achieved a phenomenal success. The “Beggar’s Opera” is very coarse homespun compared with the dainty fabrics which have come from the loom of Mr. W. S. Gilbert.

Polly, 1729

  The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King has given her so agreeable a command as forbidding her the Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a very great civility on the King and Queen. She hopes that by so unprecedented an order as this, the King will see as few as she wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to think and speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, nor ought not; nor could I have imagined but that it would have been the highest compliment I could possibly pay the King and Queen, to endeavour to support truth and innocence in their house.

  P. S. Particularly when the King and Queen told me that they had not read Mr. Gay’s play, I have certainly done right then to justify my own behaviour, rather than act like his Grace of Grafton, who has neither made use of truth, honour or judgment in this whole affair, either for himself or his friends.

  I suppose you will have some odd account of me, pray let me know what they say of me behind my back? The Duchess of Queensbury, to the great amazement of the admiring world, is forbid the Court, only for being solicitous in getting a subscription for Mr. Gay’s sequel of the “Beggar’s Opera,” which the Court forbid being acted, on account that it reflected on the Government. The Duchess is a great friend of Gay’s, and has thought him much injured; upon which, to make him some amends, for he is poor, she promised to get a subscription for his play if he would print it. She indiscreetly has urged the King and Queen in his behalf, and asked subscriptions in the drawing-room, upon which she is forbid the Court—a thing never heard of before to one of her rank: one might have imagined her beauty would have secured her from such treatment! The Vice-Chamberlain went with the message, and she returned the answer which I have enclosed.

  The inoffensive John Gay is now become one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of the ministers, the chief author of the “Craftsman,” and all the seditious pamphlets which have been published against the government. He has got several turned out of their places; the greatest ornament of the court (i. e. Duchess of Queensberry) banished from it for his sake; another great lady (Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk) in danger of being chasée likewise; about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward, like the ancient circumcelliones in the church, who shall suffer martyrdom on his account first. He is the darling of the city…. I can assure you, this is the very identical Jno. Gay whom you formerly knew and lodged with in Whitehall two years ago.

  Among the remarkable occurrences of this winter, I cannot help relating that of the Duchess of Queensberry being forbid the Court, and the occasion of it. One Gay, a poet, had written a ballad opera, which was thought to reflect a little upon the Court, and a good deal upon the Minister. It was called “The Beggar’s Opera,” had a prodigious run, and was so extremely pretty in its kind, that even those who were most glanced at in the satire had prudence enough to disguise their resentment by chiming in with the universal applause with which it was performed. Gay, who had attached himself to Mrs. Howard and been disappointed of preferment at Court, finding this couched satire upon those to whom he imputed his disappointment succeeded so well, wrote a second part to this opera, less pretty but more abusive, and so little disguised that Sir Robert Walpole resolved, rather than suffer himself to be produced for thirty nights together upon the stage in the person of a highwayman, to make use of his friend the Duke of Gafton’s authority, as Lord Chamberlain, to put a stop to the representation of it. Accordingly, this theatrical Craftsman was prohibited at every playhouse. Gay, irritated at this bar thrown in the way both of his interest and his revenge, zested the work with some supplemental invectives, and resolved to print it by subscription. The Duchess of Queensberry set herself at the head of this undertaking, and solicited every mortal that came in her way, or in whose way she could put herself, to subscribe. To a woman of her quality, proverbially beautiful, and at the top of the polite and fashionable world, people were ashamed to refuse a guinea, though they were afraid to give it. Her solicitations were so universal and so pressing, that she came even into the Queen’s apartment, went round the Drawing-room, and made even the King’s servants contribute to the printing of a thing which the King had forbid being acted. The King, when he came into the Drawing-room, seeing her Grace very busy in a corner with three or four men, asked her what she had been doing. She answered, “What must be agreeable, she was sure, to anybody so humane as his Majesty, for it was an act of charity, and a charity to which she did not despair of bringing his Majesty to contribute.” Enough was said for each to understand the other…. Most people blamed the Court upon this occasion. What the Duchess of Queensberry did was certainly impertinent; but the manner of resenting it was thought impolitic.

  Which brought in more money to Gay from its not having been allowed to get on the stage than its brilliant predecessor had done after all its unexampled run. The measure of Walpole’s wrath was filled by the knowledge that a piece was in preparation in which he was to be held up to public ridicule in the rudest and most uncompromising way. Walpole acted with a certain boldness and cunning. The play was brought to him, was offered for sale to him. This was an audacious attempt at black-mailing; and at first it appeared to be successful. Walpole agreed to the terms, bought the play, paid the money, and then proceeded at once to make the fact that such a piece had been written, and but for his payment might have been played, an excuse for the introduction of a measure to put the whole English stage under restriction, and to brand it with terms of shame. He picked out carefully all the worst passages, and had them copied, and sent round in private to the leading members of all parties in the House of Commons, and appealed to them to support him in passing a measure which he justified in advance by the illustrations of dramatic licentiousness thus brought under their own eyes. By this mode of action he secured beforehand an amount of support which made the passing of his Bill a matter of almost absolute certainty. Under these favorable conditions he introduced his Playhouse Bill.

  It may be interesting to note that “Polly” was first seen upon the stage at the Haymarket Theatre on June 19, 1777. A few new songs were upon that occasion introduced, and portions of the dialogue were here and there omitted. But the alterations were not material. Polly Peachum was played by a “gentlewoman (her first appearance).” Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this remarkable première was the fact that the Duchess of Queensbury, though extremely old—she died in the following month—attended it. “Polly” was played at the Haymarket again in 1782, and at Drury Lane in 1813.

  It is an exceedingly nasty piece, not unworthy of one of the three authors who between them produced that filthiest and most stupid of farces, “Three Hours After Marriage.”

General

	When fame did o’er the spacious plains
	The lays, she once had learn’d, repeat;
	All listen’d to the tuneful strains,
	And wonder’d who could sing so sweet.
	’Twas thus:—The Graces held the lyre,
	Th’ harmonious frame the Muses strung,
	The Loves and Smiles composed the choir,
	And Gay transcribed what Phœbus sung.

	I grieve to be outdone by Gay
	In my own humorous biting way.

  Gay was a good-natured man, and a little poet.

  As to his genius it would be superfluous to say any thing here, his works are in the hands of every reader of taste, and speak for themselves; we know not whether we can be justified in our opinion, but we beg leave to observe, that all of Gay’s performances, his “Pastorals” seem to have the highest finishing; they are perfectly Doric; the characters and dialogue are natural and rurally simple; the language is admirably suited to the persons, who appear delightfully rustic.

  As a poet, he cannot be rated very high. He was, as I once heard a female critick remark, “of a lower order.” He had not in any great degree the mens divinior the dignity of genius. Much however must be allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the highest kind. We owe to Gay the Ballad Opera; a mode of comedy which at first was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now by the experience of half a century been found so well accommodated to the disposition of a popular audience, that it is likely to keep long possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the product of judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and there are many writers read with more reverence, to whom such merit or originality cannot be attributed.

  Oh! what monster mentions Gay? We wish all fame to the memory of him and his panegyrist Sir William Jones. But his “Pastorals” are about as bad as his “Beggar’s Opera”—vulgar both—if vulgarity there ever were on earth—in town or country—and we have been miserably awakened from our dream of the Golden Age.

  Mr. Gay’s “Fables,” which were written to benefit that amiable Prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young Prince, whose manners they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the “Shepherd’s Week,” and the burlesque poem of “Trivia,” any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day, and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot.

  In Gay, as well as with them, unvarnished and sensual drollery has its sway. The people of the north, who are great eaters, always liked country fairs. The vagaries of toss-pots and gossips, the grotesque outburst of the popular and animal mind, put them into good humour. One must be genuinely a worldling or an artist, a Frenchman or an Italian, to be disgusted with them. They are the product of the country, as well as meat and beer: let us try, in order that we may enjoy them, to forget wine, delicate fruits, to give ourselves blunted senses, to become in imagination compatriots of such men. We have become used to the pictures of these drunken clods, which Louis XIV. called “baboons,” to these red cooks who scrape their horse-radish, and to the like scenes. Let us get used to Gay; to his poem “Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London;” to his advice as to dirty gutters, and shoes “with firm, well-hammer’d soles; his description of the amours of the goddess Cloacina and a scavenger, whence sprang the shoeblacks. He is a lover of the real, has a precise imagination, does not see objects on a large scale, but singly, with all their outlines and surroundings, whatever they may be, beautiful or ugly, dirty or clean.

  Mr. Dobson fails to emphasize fully many of the characteristics which gave Gay a unique position in his own age, and leaves others entirely unnoticed. Chief among these characteristics were—a form of versification, especially in the couplet, far less rigid and artificial than that employed by any of his contemporaries; a sense of real humour; and, lastly, a feeling for the country and country life not to be found again till the appearance of “The Seasons.”

  Gay is yet a figure in English letters. As a song-writer he has still a claim on us, and is still able to touch the heart and charm the ear. The lyrics in “Acis and Galatea” are not unworthy their association with Handel’s immortal melodies, the songs in “The Beggar’s Opera” have a part in the life and fame of the sweet old tunes from which they can never be divided.

  He had received no regular education, and had, on emerging from obscurity, been too indolent to remedy the defect. A smattering of Latin and a smattering of French and Italian constituted all his stock as a scholar; but, if he owed little to the schools, he owed much to nature—a rich vein of genial humour, wit less abundant, indeed, and less brilliant, than that of his friends Congreve and Pope, but scarcely less pleasing, native grace, and, what were rare with the poets of that age, spontaneity and simplicity. His first experiment had been made in serious poetry, and in serious poetry Gay never rises, even in his happiest moments, above mediocrity.

  Gay’s position as a poet is practically determined by his “Fables.” It is their popularity and their merit that have secured for him the place in English literature which he now holds. “Trivia” and “The Shepherd’s Week” are interesting mainly for the glimpses of town and country life in the eighteenth century which they afford us. Gay’s lyrical gifts, which were of a high order, find full expression in “Black Eyed Susan” and similar ballads, and in the songs which form part of his operas and plays. As to his other works, the reader of the following pages will be in a position to criticise them for himself. He will probably marvel at the reputation which Gay enjoyed in his lifetime, and still more in the high position in the hierarchy of English poets that is now accorded to him. And perhaps for the first time he will recognise the force of the statement with which this Memoir begins, and will agree with the writer that time has indeed laid a gentle hand upon the literary fame of John Gay.

  He had a true vein of happy song, and “Black-eyed Susan” remains with the “Beggar’s Opera” to please us still.

  “Black Ey’d Susan, or Sweet William’s Farewell” was written by Gay, the author of the “Beggar’s Opera,” and is included among his published poems. The music was composed by Richard Leveridge, a genial, jovial individual, who published a collection of his songs in 1727. “Black Ey’d Susan” was not issued till 1730. Douglas Jerrold wrote his famous play of the same name in 1824 (revived 1896), it being first produced on Whit Monday of that year at the Surrey Theatre, making all the principals connected with the production, except the author, passing rich. The song is introduced into the piece, and is usually sung by Blue Peter.