September 23, 1714,
which begins thus,

Dear GAY,

'Welcome to your native soil! welcome to your friends, thrice welcome
to me! whether returned in glory, blessed 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
desponding Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and welcome to me!
If happy, I am to share in your elevation; if unhappy, you have still
a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at Binfield in the worst of
times at your service. If you are a Tory, or thought so by any man, I
know it can proceed from nothing but your gratitude to a few people,
who endeavoured to serve you, and whose politics were never your
concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your
principles and mine, as brother poets, had ever a bias to the side
of liberty, I know you will be an honest man, and an inoffensive one.
Upon the whole, I know you are incapable of being so much on either
side, as to be good for nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you
are, or in whatever state you are, all hail!'[B]

In 1724 his tragedy entitled the Captives, which he had the honour to
read in MS. to Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, was acted at
the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane.

In 1726 he published his Fables, dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland,
and the year following he was offered the place of gentleman usher to
one of the youngest Princesses, which, by reason of some slight shewn
him at court, he thought proper to refuse. He wrote several works of
humour with great success, particularly The Shepherd's Week, Trivia,
The What d'ye Call It, and The Beggars Opera, which was acted at the
Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields 1728. The author of the Notes on this
line of the Dunciad, b. iii. I. 326.

Gay dies unpensioned with a hundred friends;

observes that this opera was a piece of satire, which hits all tastes
and degrees of men, from those of the highest quality to the very
rabble. "That verse of Horace

Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim,

could never be so justly applied as in this case. The vast success of
it was unprecedented, and almost incredible. What is related of the
wonderful effects of the ancient music, or tragedy, hardly came up
to it. Sophocles and Euripides were less followed and famous; it was
acted in Lond