onception of some misfortune.

After his death was published a second volume of "Fables," more
political than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the
profits were given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left,
as his lawful heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered
three thousand pounds. There have appeared likewise under his name a
comedy called the Distressed Wife, and the Rehearsal at Gotham, a piece
of humour.

The character given him by Pope is this, that "he was a natural man,
without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it,"
and that "he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the
great;" which caution, however, says Pope, was of no avail.

As a poet he cannot be rated very high. He was, I once heard a female
critic remark, "of a lower order." He had not in any great degree the
MENS DIVINIOR, the dignity of genius. Much, however, must be allowed
to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the
highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad opera, a mode of comedy which at
first was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now, by the
experience of half a century, been found so well accommodated to
the disposition of a popular audience that it is likely to keep long
possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the product of
judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and
there are many writers read with more reverence to whom such merit or
originality cannot be attributed.

His first performance, the Rural Sports, is such as was easily planned
and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent. The Fan is
one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the
hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one's use,
are of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of
Venus, Diana, and Minerva.

His "Fables" seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published
one volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of Fables the
author does not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion.
Phaedrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales
and Allegorical Prosopopoeias. A Fable or Apologue, such as is now under
consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which
beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate, arbores loquuntur, non
tantum ferae, are, for the purpose of moral instruct