Pope seems to have
loved him better than any one, and was probably soothed by his
easy-going, unsuspicious temper. They were of the same age; and Gay, who
had been apprenticed to a linendraper, managed to gain notice by his
poetical talents, and was taken up by various great people. Pope said of
him that he wanted independence of spirit, which is indeed obvious
enough. He would have been a fitting inmate of Thomson's Castle of
Indolence. He was one of those people who consider that Providence is
bound to put food into their mouths without giving them any trouble;
and, as sometimes happens, his draft upon the general system of things
was honoured. He was made comfortable by various patrons; the Duchess of
Queensberry petted him in his later years, and the duke kept his money
for him. His friends chose to make a grievance of the neglect of
Government to add to his comfort by a good place; they encouraged him to
refuse the only place offered as not sufficiently dignified; and he even
became something of a martyr when his _Polly_, a sequel to the _Beggars'
Opera_, was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain, and a good subscription
made him ample amends. Pope has immortalized the complaint by lamenting
the fate of "neglected genius" in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, and
declaring that the "sole return" of all Gay's "blameless life" was
My verse and Queensberry weeping o'er thy urn.
Pope's alliance with Gay had various results. Gay continued the war with
Ambrose Philips by writing burlesque pastorals, of which Johnson truly
says that they show "the effect of reality and truth, even when the
intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.
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