ge the menials tell
That they should tend the old man well:

For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb."

Dr Johnson says of her, rather sarcastically, that she was "remarkable
for her inflexible perseverance in her demand to be treated as a
princess." One biographer of Gay asserts--but on what authority we know
not--that this secretaryship was rewarded with a handsome salary. With
her, however, our poet did not long agree. She was scarcely so kind to
him as to the "Last Minstrel" who sung to her at Newark. By June 8th,
1714, (see a letter of Arbuthnot's of that date,) she had "turned Gay
off," having probably been provoked by his indolence of disposition and
improvidence of conduct.

Ere this, however, he had been admitted to the intimacy of Pope, and was
hired or flattered by him to engage in the famous "Battle of the Wits,"
springing from the publication of the "Pastorals" of Ambrose Philips.
This agreeable but nearly forgotten writer published some pastorals,
which Steele, with his usual rashness and fatal favouritism, commended in
the "Guardian" as superior to all productions of the class, (including
Pope's,) except those of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope retorted
in a style of inimitable irony, by a letter to the "Guardian," where he
professedly gives the preference to Philips, but damages his claim by
producing four specimens of his composition, and contrasting them with
the better portions of his own. Not contented with this, he prevailed on
Gay to satirise Philips in the "Shepherd's Week"--a poem which forms the
_reductio ad absurdum_ of that writer's plan, and exhibits rural life in
more than the vulgarity and grossness which the author of the "Pastorals"
had ascribed to it.

Gay shortly after wrote his "Fan," and his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking
the Streets of London"--the former a mythological fiction, in three
books, now entirely and deservedly neglected; the second still worthy of
perusal on account of its fidelity to truth, in its pictures of the dirty
London of 1713--a fidelity reminding you of Crabbe and of Swift; indeed,
Gay is said to have been assisted in "Trivia" by the latter, who, we may
not uncharitably suppose, supplied the filth of allusion and image which
here and there taints the poem. In 1713, our author brought out on the
stage a comedy, entitled the "Wife of Bath," which