Prior, in fact, lives by his merry, tender, light, and bright social verses, in tripping measures, for example, "Thus Kitty, beautiful and young" (for Gay's patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry), "To a Child of Quality," "The Merchant, to Secure His Treasure," "Dear Chloe, how blubber'd is that pretty face," and many other things; the best reminding us more of the charming trifles in the Greek Anthology than of Horace.
Gay.
The spoiled improvident child in the group of wits was John Gay, to whom Pope and Swift were attached by the most tender affection. Gay was an author who never aimed high, but who almost always hit his mark and pleased the Town. But his success was so much the consequence of choosing the happy moments, his poems are so completely poems of his age, that he is now praised at a venture rather than read. He was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire (1685); though of an old family he "was without prospect of hereditary riches," and was "placed apprentice with a silk-mercer" in London.
Perhaps some fair customer discovered that he had a soul above silk; the Duchess of Monmouth, the heiress of the Scotts of Buccleuch, made him her secretary (1712). Becoming acquainted with Pope, Gay dedicated to him (1713) his "Rural Sports" in the usual heroic rhymed couplets. Gay's descriptions of nature, and his praises, are more genuine than, in that age of the Town, such things usually were. He writes of angling "with his eye on the object," in Wordsworth's phrase. His remarks on fishing with the worm, a theme unworthy of the Muse, are judicious. As to fly fishing, Gay is among those who advocate a search for the insect in the waters and an exact imitation. He would have us fish "fine and far off," with "a single hair" next the hook, and perhaps he is the first to recommend the use of the "dry" or floating fly: "Upon the curling surface let it glide," not sunk. The catching of a salmon is not ill described, but as Gay retains his "single hair," he must always have been broken if he did happen to hook a fish. For his own part, he never uses either worm or the natural fly: never tries for coarse fish—pike, perch, and so forth,—and this justifies the affection of his friends.
In "The Shepherd's Week" (1714) his Idylls describe real peasants with their folklore superstitions, but Virgil, or Theocritus, is still imitated. The pastoral is an extinct species of literature, but Gay's were more natural and popular than Pope's. Dedicated to St. John, in verses celebrating the recovery of Queen Anne, who presently died, the poems were ungrateful to the Hanoverian Court, and Gay lost the secretaryship to an ambassador.
Gay's "Welcome from Greece, to Mr. Pope on his having finished his translation of the 'Iliad,'" has already been mentioned as one of the most charming relics of that golden age of letters, wit, and friendship.
Friendship did not aid wit, when Pope and Arbuthnot took hands in, and ruined, Gay's "Three Hours after Marriage," a comedy which was not comic (1717). In 1720 his collected poems brought Gay £1000: but a gift of stock in the South Sea Bubble was profitless, as Gay would not sell out in time. In 1727 he was offered by George II a Court place so small and ludicrous that it was declined.
Gay next made an immense but not a lucrative success with "The Beggar's Opera," which had an unexampled run of seven weeks. A sequel was not licensed by the censor; Gay was recouped by a subscription, and fell out of Court favour. The Duchess of Queensberry (Prior's Kitty), carried him to her place in the country, and here he was petted till his death, which seems to have been caused by indolence and the pleasures of the table.
His "Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," is a vivacious picture of the crowds, dirt, and bustle: his "Fables," though original and witty, are, like pastorals, an obsolete form of literary entertainment. He wrote his own epitaph,
Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.