field, May 4th, 1714: "Pray give, with
the utmost fidelity and esteem, my hearty service to the Dean, Dr.
Arbuthnot, Mr. Ford, and to Mr. Fortescue. Let them also know at
Button's that I am mindful of them."[6] Erasmus Lewis Gay knew now, and
Caryll too, and the rest of the small literary set, who, with gusto,
made him welcome among them. Indeed, when the "Memoirs of Scriblerus"
were in contemplation, and, indeed, begun in 1713, Gay, then
comparatively unknown, was invited to take a hand in the composition
with the greatest men of the day. "The design of the Memoirs of
Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under
a character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art
and science, but injudiciously in each," we have been told. "It was
begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age. Lord Oxford,
the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Pope, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Swift, and
others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it well enough, and
was not disinclined to come in to it."[7] It does not transpire whether
Gay had at this time met Swift, but that soon after they were in
correspondence, appears from a letter from Pope to Swift, June 18th,
1714: "I shall translate Homer by the by. Mr. Gay has acquainted you
with what progress I have made in it. I cannot name Mr. Gay without all
the acknowledgments which I shall owe you, on his account."[8]

[Footnote 1: Hill: _Works_ (ed. 1754), I, p. 325.]

[Footnote 2: Pope: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 409.]

[Footnote 3: Pope: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 412.]

[Footnote 4: Johnson: _Lives of the Poets_ (ed. Hill), III, p. 268.]

[Footnote 5: Spence: _Anecdotes_ (ed. Singer), p. 145.]

[Footnote 6: Pope: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 415.]

[Footnote 7: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVI, p. 123.]

[Footnote 8: Spence: _Anecdotes_ (ed. Singer), p. 10.]

CHAPTER IV

1714

"THE SHEPHERD'S WEEK," "A LETTER TO A LADY."

The outstanding literary event in Gay's career in 1714 was the pastoral,
"The Shepherd's Week," which was published by R. Burleigh on April 15th,
which contained a "Proeme to the Courteous Reader," and a "Prologue to
the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke," which was, in fact,
a dedication:--

Lo, I who erst beneath a tree
Sung Bumkinet and Bowzybee,
And Blouzelind and Marian bright,
In apron blue or apron white,
Now write my sonnets in a