Countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the King and Queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations, verses, and flatteries were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did nothing.20

All the pain which he suffered from neglect, or, as he perhaps termed it, the ingratitude of the Court, may be supposed to have been driven away by the unexampled success of the 'Beggar's Opera.' This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian Drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury-lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich, and Rich gay."

Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish to know the original and progress, I have inserted the relation which Spence has given in Pope's words.

"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 overhearing 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 (besides his own good taste)

20 Not from unwillingness, but inability. Swift and Pope over-rated her influence with the King, which it now appears from the 'Suffolk Papers' and Lord Hrevey's 'Memoirs' was powerless from the predominant influence of the Queen and Sir Robert Walpole in all State matters, and even in minor appointments. Of the sincerity of Lady Suffolk in Gay's behalf there can be no doubt whatever.

21 It was acted at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and the first night was 29th January 1727-8.

has a more particular knack than 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."

....

Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the 'Dunciad: '2" "The vast success of it was unprecedented and almost incredible. . . . . It was acted in London sixty-three days uninterrupted," and renewed the next season with equal applauses. It spread into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days together. It was at last acted in Minorca. The fame of it was not confined to the author only; the ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved and sold in great numbers; her Life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years."

Of this performance, when it was printed,25 the reception was dif

22 Spence by Singer, p. 150.

"Mr. Cambridge was told by Quinn that during the first night of its appearance it was long in a very dubious state; that there was a disposition to damn it, and that it was saved by the song

the audience being much

two lines, which exhibit at

Oh! ponder well, be not severe :

affected by the innocent looks of Polly, when she came to those
once a painful and ridiculous image:

For on the rope that hangs my dear,
Depends poor Polly's life.

Quin himself had so bad an opinion of it, that he refused the part of Captain Macheath.”— Boswell by Croker, ed. 1848, p. 453.

23 Notes to Book III., 4to. and 8vo, 1729.

24 Only sixty-two, of which thirty-two days only were in succession. (See the curious statement of the receipts in 'Gent.'s Mag.' for March, 1822, p. 203, and Genest's 'Stage,' iii. 227.) Some of the songs in 'The Beggar's Opera' containing the severest satire are by Pope. (See Warton's Pope, ix. 99.) That Pope had drawn, or at least aggravated the lines in 'The Beg gar's Opera' against Courts and Ministers was the opinion expressed by Broome in a letter to Fenton of 8 May, 1729,

25 In 8vo., 1728, for John Watts, price 18. 6d. On the 6th Feb. 1727-8, Gay assigned to

ferent according to the different opinions of its readers. Swift commended " it for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that 'placed vices of all kinds in the strongest and most odious light;" but others, and among them Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured it as giving encouragement not only to vice but to crimes, by making a highwayman the hero, and dismissing him at last unpunished. It has been even said, that, after the exhibition of the 'Beggar's Opera,' the gangs of robbers were evidently multiplied.

Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house-breakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."

This objection, however, or some other rather political than moral, obtained such prevalence, that when Gay produced a second part under the name of 'Polly,' it was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain; and he was forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to have been so liberally bestowed, that what he called oppression ended in profit. The publication was so much favoured, that though the first part gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit of the second."

He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship, in the affectionate attention of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, into whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part of his life." The Duke, considering his want of

Tonson and Watts, for ninety guineas, "all that the sole right and title of and in and to the copy and copyright of two books, the one entitled 'Fifty Fables,' the other 'The Beggar's Opera,' &c."-Gent.'s Mag. for May, 1824, p. 410.

26 The Intelligencer,' No. 3.

27 Compare Johnson in 'Boswell,' ed. Croker, 1848, p. 453, and the Letters of the Magistrates of Bow Street, and Colman the manager, in Peake's 'Colman,' i. 317.

28 Spence by Singer, p. 214. He made much more by the first part than 4007. See Gay to Swift, 15 Feb. 1727-8 (Scott, xvii. 176, 2nd ed.), and 'Notes and Queries,' i. 179.

29 The Duchess of Queensberry (Catherine Hyde by birth, and the Kitty of Prior and Horace Walpole) took a more active interest in the refusal of the licence than Johnson would seem tc have been aware of. Both the Duke and Duchess were forbid the Court on account of Gay,

economy, undertook the management of his money, and gave it to

whereupon, Thursday, Feb. 27, 1728-9, the Duchess made a bold answer to Mr. Stanhope, the Vice-Chamberlain, and on his "scrupling to carry it by word of mouth," she wrote as fol

lows:

"The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King has given her so agreeable a command as forbidding her the Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a very great civility on the King and Queen. She hopes that by so unprecedented an order as this, the King will see as few as she wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to think and speak truth.

I dare not do otherwise, nor ought not; nor could I have imagined but that it would have been the highest compliment I could possibly pay the King and Queen, to endeavour to support truth and innocence in their house.

C. QUEENSBERRY.

P.S. Particularly when the King and Queen told me they had not read Mr. Gay's play, I have certainly done right then to justify my own behaviour, rather than act like his Grace of Grafton, who has neither made use of truth, honour, or judgment in this whole affair, either for himself or his friends."

(This I transcribe from the MS. copy sent to Dean Swift, and now before me.)

Among the remarkable occurrences of this winter, I cannot help relating that of the Duchess of Queensberry being forbid the Court, and the occasion of it. One Gay, a poet, had written a ballad opera, which was thought to reflect a little upon the Court, and a good deal upon the Minister. It was called 'The Beggar's Opera,' had a prodigious run, and was so extremely pretty in its kind, that even those who were most glanced at in the satie had prudence enough to disguise their resentment by chiming in with the universal applause with which it was performed. Gay, who had attached himself to Mrs. Howard and been disappointed of preferment at Court, finding this couched satire upon those to whom he imputed his disappointment succeed so well, wrote a second part to this opera, less pretty but more abusive, and so little disguised that Sir Robert Walpole resolved, rather than suffer himself to be produced for thirty nights together upon the stage in the person of a highwayman, to make use of his friend the Duke of Grafton's authority, as Lord Chamberlain, to put a stop to the representation of it. Accordingly, this theatrical craftsman was prohibited at every playhouse. Gay, irritated at this bar thrown in the way both of his interest and his revenge, zested the work with some supplemental invectives, and resolved to print it by subscription. The Duchess of Queensberry set herself at the head of this undertaking, and solicited every mortal that came in her way, or in whose way she could put herself, to subscribe. To a woman of her quality, proverbially beautiful, and at the top of the polite and fashionable world, people were ashamed to refuse a guinea, though they were afraid to give it. Her solicitations were so universal and so pressing, that she came even into the Queen's apartment, went round the Drawing-room, and made even the King's servants contribute to the printing of a thing which the King had forbid being acted. The King, when he came into the Drawing-room, seeing her Grace very busy in a corner with three or four men, asked her what she had been doing. She answered, 'What must be agreeable, she was sure, to anybody so humane as his Majesty, for it was an act of charity, and a charity to which she did not despair of bringing his Majesty to contribute.' Enough was said for each to understand the other. Most people blamed the Court upon this occasion. What the Duchess of Queensberry did was certainly impertinent; but the manner of resenting it was thought impolitic."-Lord Harvey's Memoirs, i. 120.

The interest which the Duchess continued to take in Gay was of an earlier date than Johnson supposes, for Mrs. Bradshaw, writing from Bath to Mrs. Howard, in 1721, says, "I met Mr. Gay by chance, and told him your message; he is always with the Duchess of Queensberry, for we are too many for him."-Suffolk Papers.

him as he wanted it.00 But it is supposed that the discountenance of the Court sunk deep into his heart, and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of his friends could overpower. He soon fell into his old distemper, an habitual colic, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and cheerfulness, till a violent fit at last seized him, and carried him to the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had ever known." He died on the 4th of December, 1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey."2 The letter which brought an account of his death to Swift was laid by for some days unopened, because when he received it he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune."

After his death was published a second volume of Fables, more political than the former. His opera of Achilles' was acted," and the profits were given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand pounds. There have appeared likewise

35

Nor was she unmindful of him when no more. "I often want poor Mr. Gay," she writes to Mrs. Howard, Sept. 28, 1734, "and on this occasion extremely. Nothing evaporates sooner than joy untold, or even told, unless to one so entirely in your interest as he was, who bore at least an equal share in every satisfaction or dissatisfaction that attended us. I am not in the spleen, though I write thus; on the contrary, it is a sort of pleasure to think over his good qualities; his loss was really great, but it is a satisfaction to have once known so good a man. As you were as much his friend as I, it is needless to ask your pardon for dwelling so long on this subject."-Suffolk Papers, ii. 109.

30 Spence by Singer, p. 214.

31 Pope and Arbuthnot to Swift, Dec. 5, 1732. He died of an inflammation, and as Arbuthnot believed, at last a mortification of the bowels. He had thoughts of marriage shortly before his death, and was looking after a Mrs. Drelincourt. (See Scott's Swift, xvii 308, 370, and 382, 2nd edit.)

32 Where a monument, with a medallion by Rysbrack, and an epitaph in verse by Pope, was erected to his memory by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. "He was interred in Westminster Abbey," Arbuthnot writes to Swift, "as if he had been a peer of the realm." (Scott's Swift, xviii. 70; 2nd ed.)

There is a good large mezzotinto of him in a cap after a picture by Aikman. The print has the following dedication: "To Alexander Pope, Esq., this plate is most humbly inscribed by his servant B. Dickenson." He appears also to have sat to Zincke.

My portrait mezzotinto is published from Mrs. Howard's painting.-GAY to Swift, July 6, 1728. (Scott, xvii. 199, 2nd ed.)

There is a print of Hogarth representing Pope putting his hand into the pocket of a large fat personage, with a hornbook at his girdle. The fat fellow is Gay, and the hornbook refers to his Fables, written for the young Duke of Cumberland.-WARTON's Pope, ix. 211.

33 On the letter itself, Swift wrote "On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death; received December 15th, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." Note from 'Dublin Edit.' in Pope's Works, vol. iv., part iii. p. 167, ed. 1742.

34 At Covent Garden 10th Feb. 1732-8, and ran about twenty nights.

85 Spence by Singer, p. 215. The amount was 60007., which was equally divided between VOL. II. 4