myself of it, but I
cannot resolve to set about it. I have left off almost all my great
acquaintance, which saves me something in chair hire, though in that
article the town is still very expensive. Those who were your old
acquaintance are almost the only people I visit; and, indeed, upon
trying all, I like them best....

"If you would advise the Duchess to confine me four hours a-day to my
own room, while I am in the country, I will write; for I cannot confine
myself as I ought."[1]

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

Dublin, May 4th, 1732.

"It is your pride or laziness, more than chair-hire, that makes the town
expensive. No honour is lost by walking in the dark; and in the day,
you may beckon a blackguard boy under a gate [to clean your shoes] near
your visiting place (_experto crede_), save eleven pence, and get half a
crown's-worth of health ...

"I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you are as giddy and
volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who has always loved a
domestic life from his youth. I was going to wish you had some little
place that you could call your own, but, I profess I do not know you
well enough to contrive any one system of life that would please you.
You pretend to preach up riding and walking to the Duchess, yet from my
knowledge of you after twenty years, you always joined a violent desire
of perpetually shifting places and company, with a rooted laziness, and
an utter impatience of fatigue. A coach and six horses is the utmost
exercise you can bear; and this only when you can fill it with such
company as is best suited to your taste, and how glad would you be if it
could waft you in the air to avoid jolting; while I, who am so much
later in life, can, or at least could, ride five hundred miles on a
trotting horse. You mortally hate writing, only because it is the thing
you chiefly ought to do, as well to keep up the vogue you have in the
world, as to make you easy in your fortune: you are merciful to
everything but money your best friend, whom you treat with
inhumanity."[2]

* * * * *

In May was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre "Acis and Galatea,"
of which he wrote the "book" and Handel the music; but this was not work
upon which he had been lately engaged--in fact, both words and music had
been ready for ten years. Gay, however, did occasionally put in some
time on literary work, and at his death left the "book" of an opera
"Achi