h; and it must be confessed that they did
not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young prince, whose manners
they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our
gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six
pastorals called the _Shepherd's Week_, and the burlesque poem of _Trivia_
any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day,
and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what
charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin,
fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty
little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings,
and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance
their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer,
or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die
of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or
repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or
piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in
a stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that
of Philips--his rival and Pope's--a serious and dreary idyllic Cockney; not
that Gay's "Bumkinets and Hobnelias" are a whit more natural than the
would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the quality
of this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a
secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and
capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music--as you may
have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning
over head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of wooden
shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a
smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have
that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and
Court ladies free and friendly with John Gay--which made Pope and Arbuthnot
love him--which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him--and
drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the
lonely tyrant's brain, as he heard Gay's voice with its simple melody and
artless ringing laughter.

What used to be said about Rubini, _qu'il avait des larmes dans la voix_,
may be said of Gay,(120) and of one other humourist of whom we sha