ays Penton, "will make you sure of
a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." This counsel was
rejected; the profit and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the
calamity so low that his life became in danger. By the care of his
friends, among whom Pope appears to have shown particular tenderness,
his health was restored; and, returning to his studies, he wrote a
tragedy called The Captives, which he was invited to read before the
Princess of Wales. When the hour came, he saw the Princess and her
ladies all in expectation, and, advancing with reverence too great for
any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and, falling forwards, threw
down a weighty Japan screen. The Princess started, the ladies screamed,
and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still to read his play.

The fate of The Captives, which was acted at Drury Lane in 1723-4, I
know not; but he now thought himself in favour, and undertook (1726)
to write a volume of "Fables" for the improvement of the young Duke of
Cumberland. For this he is said to have been promised a reward, which he
had doubtless magnified with all the wild expectations of indigence and
vanity.

Next year the Prince and Princess became King and Queen, and Gay was
to be great and happy; but on the settlement of the household, he found
himself appointed gentleman usher to the Princess Louisa. By this offer
he thought himself insulted, and sent a message to the Queen that he
was too old for the place. There seem to have been many machinations
employed afterwards in his favour, and diligent court was paid to Mrs.
Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the King
and Queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitation,
verses, and flatteries were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did
nothing. All the pain which he suffered from neglect, or, as he perhaps
termed it, the ingratitude of the Court, may be supposed to have been
driven away by the unexampled success of the Beggar's Opera. This play,
written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered
to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane and rejected: it being then
carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay
RICH and Rich GAY. Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish
to know the original and progress, I have inserted the relation which
Spence has given in Pope's words:--

"Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay what an odd pretty s