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 London sixty three days uninterrupted, and renewed the next season with equal applause.  It spread into all the great towns of England, was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty.  It made its progress into Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days together.  It was lastly acted in Minorca.  The fame of it was not confined to the author only; the ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans; and houses were furnished with it in screens.  The girl who acted Polly, ’till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town, her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written; books of letters and verses to her, published; and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests.  Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years; that idol of the nobility and the people, which Mr. Dennis by the labours and outcries of a whole life, could not overthrow, was demolished by a single stroke of this gentleman’s pen.”