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JOHN

GAY

OHN GAY, descended from an old family that had been 1 long in possession of the manour of Goldworthy' in Devonshire, was born in 1688 at or near Barnstaple, where he was educated by Mr. Luck, who taught the school of that town with good reputation, and, a little before he retired from it, published a volume of Latin and English verses3. Under such a master he was likely to form a taste for poetry. Being born without prospect of hereditary riches he was sent to London in his youth and placed apprentice with a silk-mercer*.

How long he continued behind the counter, or with what 2 degree of softness and dexterity he received and accommodated 5 the Ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, is not known. The report is that he was soon weary of either the

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Goldworthy does not appear in the Villare. JOHNSON. For the Villare see ante, ROWE, I n. 3. 'Goldworthy was held by Gilbert le Gay, of Hampton Gay, Oxon., by match of a daughter and heir of Curtoyse. This lordship was the ancient dwellings of the name of Gay many descents. Now [1630] it belongs to the Coffins.' Risdon's Survey of Devon, 1811, p. 243.

2 In the Barnstaple register is the following entry:-John, the son of William Gay, was baptised the 16th day of September, 1685.' N. & Q. 6 S. xii. 227; [Barnstaple Parish Reg. 1538-1812, ed. Thos. Wainwright, 1903.]

[He was born in Barnstaple in the year 1688 (?) and was the youngest child of Mr. William Gay, the second son of John Gay, Esq., of Frithelstock near Great Torrington, of an ancient and worthy family.' Gay's Chair, 1820, p. 12; which has a Memoir of Gay said to be from a MS. life, left by his nephew the Rev. Joseph Baller.]

3 According to Biog. Brit. p. 2182, his master's name was William

Rayner. A Miscellany of New
Poems
to which are added
Poemata quaedam Latina by Robert
Luck, master of Barnstaple School, is
advertised in Gent. Mag. 1736, p. 176.

He thus described himself in

1713:-
'But I, who ne'er was blest by
Fortune's hand,

Nor brightened ploughshares in
paternal land,

Long in the noisy town have been immured,

Respired its smoke, and all its cares

endured.' Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 4.

Gibbon, after stating that 'our most respectable families have not disdained the counting-house, or even the shop,' adds that his greatgrandfather, the son of a country gentleman, 'did not aspire above the station of a linen-draper in Leadenhall Street.' Memoirs, pp. 9, II. See also ib. p. 273 for a note on 'gentility and trade.'

5 For Johnson's use of accommodate and accommodation see Boswell's Johnson, v. 310; John. Letters, ii. 367.

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restraint or servility of his occupation, and easily persuaded his master to discharge him '.

The dutchess of Monmouth, remarkable for inflexible perseverance in her demand to be treated as a princess, in 1712 took Gay into her service as secretary2: by quitting a shop for such service he might gain leisure, but he certainly advanced little in the boast of independence. Of his leisure he made so good use that he published next year a poem on Rural Sports3, and inscribed it to Mr. Pope, who was then rising fast into reputation. Pope was pleased with the honour; and when he became acquainted with Gay found such attractions in his manners and conversation that he seems to have received him into his inmost confidence, and a friendship was formed between them which lasted to their separation by death, without any known abatement on either parts. Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they regarded him as a play-fellow rather than a partner, and treated him with more fondness than respect.

'He grew so fond of reading and study that he frequently neglected to exert himself in putting off silks and velvets to the ladies.' Ayre's Life of Pope, ii. 97.

2 She was heiress of the Earl of Buccleugh, and wife of Charles II's natural son, the Duke of Monmouth. Dryden, in a Dedication, speaks of 'the rank which you hold in the Royal Family.' Works, ii. 286. He called her 'his first and best patroness.' Ib. viii. 136. 'She is one of the wisest and craftiest of her sex, and has much wit.' Evelyn, Diary, ii. 87. Lady Cowper (Diary, p. 125) wrote of her in 1716:-'She had all the life and fire of youth, and it was marvellous to see that the many afflictions she had suffered had not touched her wit and good nature.' For Scott's praise of her see Dryden's Works, ix. 228 n., and the Introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Aaron Hill (Works, i. 326) described Gay as 'a domestic of the Duchess. He was her secretary about the year 1713.' (By domestic he meant an inmate of the house.) On June 8, 1714, Gay wrote to Swift: -' I am quite off from the Duchess.' Swift's Works, xvi. 113. See also

post, GAY, 7 n.

28.

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Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 1; post, GAY,

'The full extent of your country skill,' Swift wrote to him in 1732, 'is in fishing for roaches, or gudgeons at the highest.' Swift's Works, xvii. 476. Gay replied:-'I have this season shot nineteen brace of partridges.' Ib. xviii. 38. The Duchess of Queensberry added to his letter:'When he began to be a sportsman had like to have killed a dog; and now every day I expect he will kill himself.' Ib.

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Pope this year (1713) was 'in the full bloom of reputation.' Post, POPE, 74.

5 In 1725 Gay received £35 17s. 6d. 'for assisting Pope in correcting the press' in his Shakespeare. Nichols's Lit. Hist. ii. 714; Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 76.

6 He wrote to Mrs. Howard in 1723 :-'I have not, and fear never shall have, a will of my own.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 432.

He describes himself in The Hare and Many Friends :— 'A Hare, who in a civil way, Complied with everything like Gay,

Next year he published The Shepherd's Week', six English 4 Pastorals, in which the images are drawn from real life such as it appears among the rusticks in parts of England remote from London. Steele, in some papers of The Guardian, had praised Ambrose Philips as the Pastoral writer that yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope, who had also published Pastorals, not pleased to be overlooked, drew up a comparison of his own compositions with those of Philips, in which he covertly gave himself the preference, while he seemed to disown it. Not content with this he is supposed to have incited Gay to write The Shepherd's Week to shew, that if it be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural life must be exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it. So far the plan was reasonable; but the Pastorals are introduced by a Proeme, written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete language, and by consequence in a style that was never spoken nor written in any age or in any place.

But the effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even 5 when the intention was to shew them groveling and degraded 3. These Pastorals became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical dispute.

In 1713 he brought a comedy called The Wife of Bath upon 6 the stage, but it received no applause*; he printed it however; and seventeen years after, having altered it and, as he thought, adapted it more to the publick taste, he offered it again to the

Was known by all the bestial train,
Who haunt the wood, or graze the
plain;

Her care was never to offend;
And every creature was her friend.'
Eng. Poets, xxxvii. 118.

Parnell, according to Goldsmith, used to give Gay the money he made by his writings. Goldsmith's Works, iv. 132.

In 1714. Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 45. 2 Post, POPE, 68, 285; A. PHILIPS, 18.

3 Wordsworth, who rarely speaks of Johnson but with censure, praises this remark. Poetical Works, 1857, vi. 368.

'These Pastorals were originally intended, I suppose, as a burlesque on those of Philips's; but, perhaps without designing it, Gay has hit the true spirit of pastoral poetry.' GoldSMITH, Works, iii. 437.

'In attempting the burlesque Gay copied nature, and his unexpected success might have taught his contemporaries a better taste. Few poets seem to have possessed so quick and observing an eye.' SOUTHEY, Specimens, &c., i. 298.

Steele gave it a 'puff preliminary' in The Guardian, May 8, 1713, No. 50.

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town; but, though he was flushed with the success of The Beggar's Opera, had the mortification to see it again rejected'.

In the last year of queen Anne's life, Gay was made secretary to the earl of Clarendon, ambassador to the court of Hanover 2. This was a station that naturally gave him hopes of kindness from every party3; but the Queen's death put an end to her favours, and he had dedicated his Shepherd's Week to Bolingbroke, which Swift considered as the crime that obstructed all kindness from the house of Hanover 5.

He did not, however, omit to improve the right which his office had given him to the notice of the royal family. On the arrival of the princess of Wales he wrote a poem, and obtained

I On Nov. 9, 1729, Gay wrote to Swift: 'I have employed my time in new writing a damned play, which I wrote several years ago, called The Wife of Bath.' Swift's Works, xvii. 263; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 165. Swift replied:'I have heard of The Wife of Bath, I think in Shakespeare. If you wrote one it is out of my head.' lb. p. 167. Swift apparently thought that one of Shakespeare's plays bore that name. On March 3 of the next year Gay wrote:-'My old vamped play got me no money, for it had no success.' Ib. p. 183; Swift's Works, xvii. 277. Both versions were printed.

Gay wrote to Swift on June 8, 1714: 'I am every day attending my Lord Treasurer for his bounty in order to set me out; which he has promised me upon the following petition, which I sent him by Dr. Arbuthnot:

"The Epigrammatical Petition of John Gay.

I'm no more to converse with the swains,

But go where fine people resort; One can live without money on plains,

But never without it at Court.

If, when with the swains I did gambol,

I array'd me in silver and blue; When abroad and in Courts I shall ramble,

Pray, my lord, how much money
will do?""

Swift's Works, xvi. 113.

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Queen.' Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 55. Walpole, in 1722, made him a Commissioner of the Lottery, worth £150 a year. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 106. He enjoyed this office from 1722 till 1731, even during the noise made by The Beggar's Opera! CROKER, ib. P. 426 n. See post, GAY, 16 n.

In 1729 he wrote to Swift :— 'You have often twitted me in the teeth for hankering after the Court.' Swift's Works, xvii. 263.

To a Lady, Occasioned by the Arrival of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales. He says (Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 164):

Places, I found, were daily given

away,

And yet no friendly Gazette mentioned Gay.

I asked a friend what method to pursue;

so much favour that both the Prince and Princess went to see his What dye call it, a kind of mock-tragedy, in which the images were comick and the action grave'; so that, as Pope relates, Mr. Cromwell, who could not hear what was said, was at a loss how to reconcile the laughter of the audience with the solemnity of the scene".

Of this performance the value certainly is but little; but it 9 was one of the lucky trifles that give pleasure by novelty, and was so much favoured by the audience that envy appeared against it in the form of criticism; and Griffin a player, in conjunction with Mr. Theobald3, a man afterwards more remarkable, produced a pamphlet called the Key to the What dye call it, which, says Gay, 'calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave+.'

But Fortune has always been inconstant. Not long after- 10 wards (1717) he endeavoured to entertain the town with Three Hours after Marriage, a comedy written, as there is sufficient reason for believing, by the joint assistance of Pope and Arbuthnots. One purpose of it was to bring into contempt Dr. Woodward, the Fossilist, a man not really or justly He cried, "I want a place as well as you." Johnson, in his Dictionary, accents Gazette as Gay does.

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Gay says in the Preface:-'I have not called it a tragedy, comedy, pastoral, or farce, but left the name entirely undetermined in the doubtful appellation of The What d'ye Call it, ... but I added to it A Tragi-ComiPastoral Farce, as it comprised all those several kinds of drama.' The ballad 'Twas when the seas were roaring is in Act ii. sc. 8.

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Pope tells this in a letter dated March 3, 1714-5. He adds :-'The ... pit and gallery people received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been loud in their claps.... Mr. Gay will have made about £100 of this farce.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 223. 3 Warburton's Pope, vii. 223. For Theobald see post, POPE, 126, 145.

Gay wrote in April 1715: 'There is a sixpenny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of What

d'ye Call it, wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave.' His grand charge is against The Pilgrim's Progress being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 227. See also ib. p. 225 n., and p. 414 for a duplicate of this in a forged letter to Congreve. For Cato see ante, ADDISON, 152.

5 Gay in the Preface mentions the assistance of two friends. An undated letter of his to Pope, if genuine, proves that they were Pope and Arbuthnot. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 419.

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