association of wits; but they
regarded him as a playfellow rather than a partner, and treated him
with more fondness than respect.

Next year he published the Shepherd's Week, six English pastorals, in
which the images are drawn from real life, such as it appears among the
rusticks in parts of England remote from London. Steele, in some papers
of the Guardian had praised Ambrose Philips, as the pastoral writer that
yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope, who had also
published pastorals, not pleased to be overlooked, drew up a comparison
of his own compositions with those of Philips, in which he covertly gave
himself the preference, while he seemed to disown it. Not content with
this, he is supposed to have incited Gay to write the Shepherd's Week,
to show, that if it be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural
life must be exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it. So
far the plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by a
Proem, written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete
language, and, by consequence, in a style that was never spoken nor
written in any age, or in any place.

But the effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the
intention was to show them grovelling and degraded. These pastorals
became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of
rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the
rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical dispute.

In 1713 he brought a comedy, called the Wife of Bath, upon the stage,
but it received no applause: he printed it, however, and seventeen years
after, having altered it, and, as he thought, adapted it more to the
publick taste, he offered it again to the town; but, though he was
flushed with the success of the Beggars' Opera, had the mortification to
see it again rejected.

In the last year of queen Anne's life, Gay was made secretary to the
earl of Clarendon, ambassador to the court of Hanover. This was a
station that naturally gave him hopes of kindness from every party; but
the queen's death put an end to her favours, and he had dedicated his
Shepherd's Week to Bolingbroke, which Swift considered as the crime that
obstructed all kindness from the house of Hanover.

He did not, however, omit to improve the right which his office had
given him to the notice of the royal family. On the arrival of the
princess of Wales, he wrote a poem, and obtained