as once worth
20,000_l._, but lost it all again. He got about 500_l._ by the first
_Beggar's Opera_, and 1,100_l._ or 1,200_l._ by the second. He was
negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, the Duke of Queensberry took
his money into his keeping, and let him only have what was necessary
out of it, and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion
for much. He died worth upwards of 3,000_l._"--POPE (_Spence's
Anecdotes_).

115 "Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I
knew."--SWIFT, _to Lady Betty Germaine_, Jan. 1733.

116 Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit a man; simplicity, a child;
With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage,
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age;
Above temptation in a low estate,
And uncorrupted e'en among the great:
A safe companion, and an easy friend,
Unblamed through life, lamented in the end.
These are thy honours; not that here thy bust
Is mix'd with heroes, or with kings thy dust;
But that the worthy and the good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms, "_Here_ lies Gay."

POPE'S _Epitaph on Gay_.

A hare who, in a civil way,
Complied with everything, like Gay.

_Fables_, "The Hare and Many Friends."

117 "I can give you no account of Gay," says Pope, curiously, "since he
was raffled for, and won back by his Duchess."--_Works_, Roscoe's
ed., vol. ix, p. 392.

Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne
brought back Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the
secretaryship of that nobleman, of which he had had but a short
tenure.

Gay's Court prospects were never happy from this time.--His
dedication of the _Shepherd's Week_ to Bolingbroke, Swift used to
call the "original sin", which had hurt him with the house of
Hanover.

"Sept. 23, 1714.

"DEAR MR. GAY,

"Welcome to your native soil! welcome to your friends! thrice
welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blest with Court interest,
the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable
hopes; or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes of
fortune, and doubtful for the future; whether returned a triumphant
Whig or a depending Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and
welcom