While he was gone Lavinia advanced to the open door, drawn thither by curiosity. A garden grateful to the eye was before her. It had not the grotesque formality of the Dutch style which came over with William of Orange—the prim beds with here and there patches and narrow walks of red, flat bricks, the box trees cut and trimmed in the form of peacocks with outstretched tails, animals, anything absurd that the designer fancied. Close to the river bank drooped a willow, and a wide spreading cedar overspread a portion of the lawn.
Underneath the cedar four men were sitting round a table strewn with papers. Lavinia easily recognised the portly form of her patron, Gay. Next to him was a diminutive man, his face overspread by the pallor of ill-health. He was sitting stiff and bolt upright and upon his head in place of a fashionable flowing wig was a sort of loose cap.
"That must be Mr. Pope, the queer little gentleman the countryman told me of," thought Lavinia.
She saw the servant in a deferential attitude standing for some time between Mr. Pope and Mr. Gay waiting for an opportunity to announce his errand. For the moment the discussion was too absorbing for anyone of the four to pay attention to the man.
"Mr. Rich no high opinion has of either music or musicians," said one of the disputants, a lean, dried-up looking man who spoke with a strong guttural accent. This was Dr. Pepusch, musical director at John Rich's theatre, the "Duke's," Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
"Dr. Pepusch is right," rejoined Gay. "That is why I favoured Cibber. But from his reception of me I doubt if he'll take the risk of staging the play."
"Cibber likes not you, Mr. Gay, and he hates me," said Pope with his acid smile. "He's a poet—or thinks he's one—and poets love not one another. Nothing is so blinding to the merits of others as one's own vanity."
"Nay, Mr. Pope, is not that assumption too sweeping?" put in the fourth man, of cheerful, rubicund countenance and, like Gay, inclined to corpulency. "What about yourself and Mr. Gay? Is there anyone more conscious of his talents and has done more to foster and encourage them than you? Who spoke and wrote in higher praise of Will Congreve than John Dryden?"
"Your argument's just, Arbuthnot," rejoined Pope. "And that's why I rejoice that the King, his Consort and the Statesman who panders to her spite and lives only for his own ambition have insulted our friend. Their taste and their appreciation of letters found their level when they considered the author of the 'Trivia' and the 'Fables' was fittingly rewarded by the appointment of 'gentleman usher' to a princess—a footman's place, forsooth!"
It was too true. George the First was dead, George the Second had succeeded and with the change of government Gay hoped to obtain the "sinecure" which would have kept him in comfort to the end of his days. He was bitterly disappointed. The post bestowed upon him was a degradation.