translated it in prose, and inserted it in one of his Letters.]

GAY.

Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of a thing a Newgate pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time; but afterwards 'thought it would be better to write a Comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the Beggar's Opera. He began on it, and when first he mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said, "It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly." We were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by our hearing the Duke

of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, "It will do-it must do—I see it in the eyes of them." This was a good while before the first act was over; and so gave us ease soon, for that Duke (beside his own good taste) has as particular a knack as any one now living, in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.The same.

Gay was remarkable for an unwillingness to offend the great by any of his writings. He had an uncommon timidity upon him in relation to any thing of that sort: and yet you see what ill luck he had that way, after all his care not to offend.-The same.

Mr. Addison and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's Three Hours after Marriage, for obscenities, that it provoked him to write a Letter from a Lady in the City to a Lady in the Country, on that subject. In it he quoted the passages which had been most exclaimed against;

and opposed other passages to them, from Addison's and Steele's plays. These were aggravated in the same manner that they had served his, and appeared worse. Had it been published, it would have made Mr. Addison appear ridiculous, which he could bear as little as any man. I therefore prevailed upon him not to print it, and have the manuscript now by me.-The same.

A fortnight before Addison's death, Lord Warwick came to Gay, and pressed him in a very particular manner to go and see Mr. Addison, which he had not done for a great while. Gay went, and found Addison in a very weak way. Addison received him in the kindest manner, and told him, that "he had desired this visit to beg his pardon; that he had injured him greatly; but that if he lived, he should find that he would make it up to him." Gay, on his going to Hanover, had great reasons to hope for some good preferment; but all those views came to nothing. It is not impossible but that Mr. Addison might prevent them, from his thinking Gay too well with some of the

former ministry. He did not at all explain himself in what he had injured him; and Gay could not guess at any thing else in which he could have injured him so considerably. The same.

Gay was quite a natural man, wholly without art or design; and spoke just what he thought, and as he thought it.-The

same.

He dangled for twenty years about a court, and at last was offered to be made usher to the young Princesses.-The same.

Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock in the South Sea year, and he was worth 20,000l.; but lost it all again.-The

same.

Gay got about 4007. by the first Beggars' Opera, and eleven or twelve hundred by the second.-The same.

He was a negligent and a bad manager. Latterly the Duke of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him have only what was necessary out of it; and as he lived with them, he could not have

$

occasion for much. He died worth upwards of 3000l.-The same.

6

Gay was a good-natured man and a little poet.-Lady M. W. Montagu.

Lydia, in Lady Mary's poems, is almost wholly Gay's, and is published as such in his works. There are only five or six lines new, set by that lady. It was that which gave the hint, and she wrote the other five eclogues to it.-Mr. Pope.

The little copy of verses on Ditton and Whiston, in the third volume of the Miscellanies, was writ by Gay.-The same.

GARTH.

Garth talked in a less libertine manner than he had been used to do about the three last years of his life. He was rather doubtful and fearful than religious. It was usual for him to say, that if there was any such thing as religion, it was among the Roman catholics. He died a papist (as I was assured by Mr. Blount, who carried the father to him in his last hours); probably