Lewis Melville

“ As to any favours from great men, I am in the same state you left me, but I am a great deal happier, as I have no expectations. The Duchess of Queensberry has signalised her friendship to me upon this occasion in such a conspicuous manner, that I hope (for her sake) you will take care to put your fork to all its proper uses, and suffer nobody for the future to put their knives in their mouths. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
London, February 3rd, 1723.
"As for the reigning amusements of the town, it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds. There's nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian woman. Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different styles of Handel, Bononcine, and Attilio. People have now forgot Homer and Virgil and Cæsar, or at least they have lost their ranks. ”

“ DUCHESS OF QUEENSBERRY AND JOHN GAY TO THE HON. MRS. HOWARD.
December 17th [1730] .
"You cannot imagine in what due time your letter came; for I had given you up, and with great pains had very near brought our friend Mr. Gay to own that nobody cared for us, and a few more thoughts which shall now be nameless. I am sincerely sorry that you have been ill, and very very glad that you are better and think of life; for I know none whom one could more wish to have life than yourself. ”

“ It having too much of the country to be fit for the court, too much of the court to be fit for the country; too much of the language of old times to be fit for the present, too much of the present to have been fit for the old, and too much of both to be fit for any time to come. Granted also it is, that in this my language, I seem unto myself, as a London mason, who calculateth his work for a term of years, when he buildeth with old material upon a ground-rent that is not his own, which soon turneth to rubbish and ruins. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO THE COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK.
July 8th, 1731.
"Your letter was not ill-bestowed, for I found in it such an air of satisfaction that I have a pleasure every time I think of it. I fancy (though by her silence she seems to approve of your Ladyship's conduct) the Duchess will meet you at Highclere; for those that have a real friendship cannot be satisfied with real relations; they want to inquire into the minutest circumstances of life, that they may be sure things are as happy as they appear to be, and that is a curiosity that is excusable. ”

“ I cannot allow you rich enough till you are worth £7,000, which will bring you £300 per annum, and this will maintain you, with the perquisite of spunging, while you are young, and when you are old will afford you a pint of port at night, two servants, and an old maid, a little garden, and pen and ink—provided you live in the country. And what are you doing towards increasing your fame and your fortune? Have you no scheme, either in verse or prose? The Duchess should keep you at hard meat, and by that means force you to write. ”

“ JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.
Amesbury, July 4th, 1730.
"I have left off wine and writing; for I really think, that man must be a bold writer, who trusts to wit without it.
"I took your advice; and some time ago took to love, and made some advances to the lady you sent me to in Soho, but met no return; so I have given up all thoughts of it, and have now no pursuit or amusement.
"A state of indolence is what I do not like; it is what I would not choose. I am not thinking of a Court or preferment, for I think the lady I live with is my friend, so that I am at the height of my ambition. ”

“ The warmth with which I attack wit will, I am afraid, be thought to proceed from the same motive which makes the old and ugly attack the young and handsome; but if you examine well all those of the character I have mentioned you will find they are generally but pretenders to either wit or beauty, and in justification of myself I can say, and that with great sincerity, I respect wit with judgment, and beauty with humility, whenever I meet it. ”

“ It is somewhat strange that there should be no biography of a man so well-known and so much beloved. It is true that no sooner was the breath out of his body than Curll published a "Life." "Curll (who is one of the new horrors of death) has been writing letters to everybody for memoirs of his (Gay's) life," Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, January 13th, 1733: "I was for sending him some, which I am sure might have been made entertaining, by which I should have attained two ends at once, published truth and got a rascal whipped for it. ”

“ You are to believe that he never did or can propose any wrong thing, for whoever has it in his power to dissent from a statesman, in any one particular, is not capable of his friendship. This last word, friendship, I have been forced to make use of several times, though I know that I speak improperly, for it has never been allowed a Court term. This is some part of a Court creed, though it is impossible to fix all the articles, for as men of dignity believe one thing one day and another the next, so you must daily change your faith and opinion ”

“ In short, she is the ortolan, or rather wheat-ear, of the place, for she is entirely a lump of fat; and the form of the universe itself is scarce more beautiful, for her figure is almost circular. After I have said all this, I believe it will be in vain for me to declare I am not in love, and I am afraid that I have showed some imprudence in talking upon this subject, since you have declared that you like a friend that has a heart in his disposal. I assure you I am not mercenary and that £30,000 have not half so much power with me as the woman I love. ”

“ You are happily rid of many cursed ceremonies, as well as of many ill and vicious habits, of which few or no men escape the infection, who are hackneyed and trammelled in the ways of a Court. Princes, indeed, and Peers (the lackies of Princes) and Ladies (the fools of Peers) will smile on you the less; but men of worth and real friends will look on you the better. There is a thing, the only thing which kings and queens cannot give you, for they have it not to give—liberty, which is worth all they have, and which as yet Englishmen need not ask from their hands. ”

“ Certainly the songs had much to do in the matter of pleasing the audience. As a literary work, "The Beggar's Opera" has no great claims, but there is a spontaneous humour about it that has charm. But it was the milieu that, acting on the hint thrown out years before by Swift, Gay chose that appealed to the public taste. Highwaymen and women of the town are not romantic figures, but Gay made the highwaymen handsome and lively, and the women of the town beautiful and attractive, and over them all he cast a glamour of romance and sentimentalism. ”

“ THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.
August, 1723.
"After you have told me that you hate writing letters, it would be very ungrateful not to thank you for so many as you have written for me. Acting contrary to one's inclinations, for the service of those one likes, is a strong proof of friendship; yet, as it is painful, it ought never to be exacted but in case of great necessity. As such I look upon that correspondence in which I have engaged you. ”

“ Nobody but yourself hath let us know anything about you. Judge, then, how welcome your ladyship's letter was to me. I find this change of life of yours is a subject that I cannot so well write upon; it is a thing that one cannot so well judge of in general. But as for your Ladyship's conduct in this juncture, my approbation goes for nothing, for all the world knows that I am partial. ”

“ Queensberry has acted a very noble and generous part," Swift wrote to Pope, March 31st, 1734. "But before he did it, I wish there had been so much cunning used as to have let the sisters know that he expected they would let him dispose of Mr. Gay's writings as himself and other friends should advise. And I heartily wish his Grace had entirely stifled that comedy, if it were possible, than do an injury to our friend's reputation, only to get a hundred or two pounds to a couple of, perhaps, insignificant women. ”

“ Dilatory as Gay always was, he contrived to finish his opera by about the end of the year. "John Gay's opera is just on the point of delivery," Pope wrote to Swift in January, 1728. "It may be called, considering its subject, a jail-delivery. Mr. Congreve, with whom I have commemorated you, is anxious as to its success, and so am I. Whether it succeeds or not, it will make a great noise, but whether of claps or hisses I know not. At worst, it is in its own nature a thing which he can lose no reputation by, as he lays none upon it." ”

“ Steele owes so much, and who refuses to have his pen set before those pieces which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this gentleman's reputation, whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the world that he was the greatest master in Europe of those two languages." Of Steele, Gay wrote at greater length: "To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings, I shall, in the first place, observe that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors. ”

“ Besides, I know very well, that persons of their function are bound to avoid the appearance of evil, or of giving cause of offence. But when the Lords Chancellors, who are Keepers of the King's Conscience; when the Judges of the land, whose title is reverend; when ladies, who are bound by the rules of their sex to the strictest decency, appear in the theatre without censure; I cannot understand why a young clergyman, who comes concealed out of curiosity to see an innocent and moral play, should be so highly condemned ”

“ I have been considering why poets have such ill success in making their court, since they are allowed to be the greatest and best of all flatterers. The defect is, that they flatter only in print or in writing, but not by word of mouth; they will give things under their hand which they make a conscience of speaking. ”

“ There is no cohesion in the story: there is no reason why the catastrophe should be brought about in one way rather than another; what interest there is turns on an improbable story rather than on the development of character. Evidently Gay reckoned largely on the opportunities he had afforded himself for satire on the Court, and for contrasting the noble and untutored savage with the man tainted by the vices of civilisation. ”

“ ALEXANDER POPE TO JOHN GAY.
October 2nd, 1732.
"Every man, and every boy, is writing verses on the royal hermitage: I hear the Queen is at a loss which to prefer; but for my own part I like none so well as Mr. Poyntz's [6] in Latin. You would oblige my Lady Suffolk if you tried your muse on this occasion. I am sure I would do as much for the Duchess of Queensberry, if she desired it. ”

“ You have often told me there is a time of life that every one wishes for some settlement of his own. I have frequently that feeling about me, but I fancy it will hardly ever be my lot: so that I will endeavour to pass away life as agreeably as I can, in the way I am. ”

“ You mortally hate writing, only because it is the thing you chiefly ought to do, as well to keep up the vogue you have in the world, as to make you easy in your fortune: you are merciful to everything but money your best friend, whom you treat with inhumanity. ”

“ DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.
Dublin, June 29th, 1731.
"You are the silliest lover in Christendom. If you like Mrs. [Drelincourt] , why do you not command her to take you? If she does not, she is not worth pursuing; you do her too much honour; she has neither sense nor taste, if she dares to refuse you, though she had ten thousand pounds. ”

“ Gay waxed eloquent in these verses, when writing of the other contributors to the Miscellany, and bestowed praise upon his brother-poets in no measured quantity:—
Where Buckingham will condescend to give
That honour'd piece to distant times must live;
When noble Sheffield strikes the trembling strings,
The little loves rejoice and clap their wings. ”

“ The copy which I gave into the hands of Mr. Rich had been seen before by several persons of the greatest distinction and veracity, who will do me the honour and justice to attest it; so that not only by them, but by Mr. Rich and Mr. Steele, I can (against all insinuation or positive affirmation) prove in the most clear and undeniable manner, if occasion required, what I have here upon my own honour and credit asserted. The Introduction, indeed, was not shown to the Lord Chamberlain, which, as I had not then settled, was never transcribed in the playhouse copy. ”

“ Several of your friends assure me it is expected from you. One should not bear in mind all one's life, any little indignity one receives from a Court, and therefore I am in hopes, neither her Grace of Queensberry will hinder you, nor you decline it. ”