l under its fret and confinement, went back to the
country, studied, possibly wrote poor verses, and presently drifted
back to London. The cleverest men of the time frequented the crowded
taverns and coffee-houses, and the talk that he heard at Will's and
Button's may have determined his profession. Thither came Pope and
Addison, Swift and Steele, Congreve, St. John, Prior, Arbuthnot,
Cibber, Hogarth, Walpole, and many a powerful patron who loved good
company.

Perhaps through some kind acquaintance made in this informal circle,
Gay obtained a private secretaryship, and began the flirtation with
the Muse which became serious only after some years of coldness on
that humorous lady's part. His first poem, 'Wine,' published when he
was twenty-three, is not included in his collected works: perhaps
because it is written in blank verse; perhaps because his maturer
taste condemned it. Three years later, in 1711, when the success of
the Spectator was yet new, and Pope had just completed his brilliant
'Art of Criticism,' and Swift was editing the Examiner and working on
that defense of a French peace, 'The Conduct of the Allies,' which was
to make him the talk of London,--Gay sent forth his second venture; a
curious, unimportant pamphlet, 'The Present State of Wit.' Late in
1713 he is contributing to Dicky Steele's Guardian, and sending
elegies to his 'Poetical Miscellanies'; and a little later, having
become a favorite with the powerful Mr. Pope, he is made to bring up
new reinforcements to the battle of that irascible gentleman with his
ancient enemy Ambrose Phillips. This he does in 'The Shepherd's Week,'
a sham pastoral, which is full of wit and easy versification, and
shows very considerable talents as a parodist. This skit the luckless
satirist dedicated to Bolingbroke, whose brilliant star was just
passing into eclipse. Swift thought this harmless courtesy the real
cause of the indifference of the Brunswick princes to the merits of
the poet; and in an age when every spark of literary genius was so
carefully nursed and utilized to sustain the weak dynasty, most likely
he was right.

For this reason or another, indifferent they were; and in a time when
court favor counted enormously, poor indolent luxury-loving Gay had to
earn his loaf by hard work, or go without it. He produced a
tragi-comi-pastoral farce called 'What D'ye Call It?' which was the
lineal ancestor of 'Pinafore' and the 'Pirates of Penzance' in its
method