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.