ne. He died in London of a swift
fever, in December 1732, before his kind Kitty and her husband could
reach him, or his other great friend, the Countess of Suffolk.
Arbuthnot watched over him; Pope was with him to the last; Swift
indorsed on the letter that brought him the tidings, "On my dear
friend Mr. Gay's death; received on December 15th, but not read till
the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." So faithfully did
the "giants," as Thackeray calls them, cherish this gentle, friendly,
affectionate, humorous comrade. He seems indeed to have been almost
the only companion with whom Swift did not at some time fall out, and
of his steadfastness the gloomy great man in his 'Verses on my Own
Death' could write:--

"Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day."

The 'Trivia' and the 'Shepherd's Week,' the 'Acis and Galatea' and
even the 'Beggar's Opera,' gradually faded into the realm of "old,
forgotten, far-off things"; while the 'Fables' passed through many
editions, found their place in school reading-books, were committed to
memory by three generations of admiring pupils, and included in the
most orthodox libraries. Yet criticism now reverts to the earlier
standard; approves the songs, and the minute observation, the nice
phrasing, and the humorous swing of the pastorals and operas, and
finds the fables dull, commonplace, and monotonous. Pope said in his
affectionate epitaph that the poet had been laid in Westminster Abbey,
not for ambition, but--

"That the worthy and the good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms, '_Here_ lies Gay.'"

If to-day the worthy and the good do not know even where he lies, not
the less is he to be gratefully remembered whom the best and greatest
of his own time so much admired, and of whom Pope and Johnson and
Thackeray and Dobson have written with the warmth of friendship.

THE HARE AND MANY FRIENDS

From the 'Fables'

Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child whom many fathers share
Hath seldom known a father's care.
'Tis thus in friendships: who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.

A Hare, who in a civil way
Complied with everything, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial train
Who haunt the wood or graze the plain.
Her care was, never to offend,
And ev'ry creature was her friend.

As forth she went at early dawn
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,