Gay spoke his mind about the "Bubble" in "A Panegyrical Epistle to Mr. Thomas Snow, Goldsmith, near Temple Bar: Occasioned by his Buying and Selling of the Third Subscriptions, taken in by the Directors of the South Sea Company, at a thousand per cent," which was published by Lintott in 1721:—
O thou, whose penetrative wisdom found
The South-Sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown'd,
When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay,
Thou stood'st; nor sent one bill unpaid away.
When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's boards,
And Atwill's self was drain'd of all his hoards,
Thou stood'st (an Indian king in size and hue)
Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru.
Why did 'Change-Alley waste thy precious hours,