* * * * *

These tidings were confirmed to Swift by Arbuthnot, who wrote from St. James’s on June 12th:  “You know that Gay goes to Hanover, and my Lord Treasurer has promised to equip him.  Monday is the day of departure, and he is now dancing attendance for money to buy him shoes, stockings, and linen.  The Duchess [of Monmouth] has turned him off, which I am afraid will make the poor man’s condition worse instead of better."[8] As Arbuthnot reported fourteen days later, Gay received a hundred pounds from the Treasury, and “went away a happy man."[9] Lord Clarendon, whose mission it was formally to offer to the Elector George Lewis the condolences of Queen Anne on the death of his aged mother, the Electress Sophia, the heiress-presumptive to the British throne, who had passed away on June 8th, 1714, arrived at Hanover on July 16th.

Despite Gay’s forebodings, the civilities of the Court of Hanover did happily “descend so low as to the Secretary.”  That he was presented to the royal circle and held converse with the highest in the land, is clear from a sentence in a letter from Arbuthnot to Swift, August 13th, 1714:  “I have a letter from Gay, just before the Queen’s death.  Is he not a true poet, who had not one of his own books to give to the Princess that asked for one?"[10] Here it was that Gay first made the acquaintance of Henrietta Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, with whom he was presently on a footing of intimate friendship.

JOHN GAY TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.

  Hanover, August 16th, 1714.

“You remember, I suppose, that I was to write you abundance of letters from Hanover; but as one of the most distinguished qualities of a publician is secrecy, you must not expect from me any arcanas of state.  There is another thing that is necessary to establish the character of a politician, which is to seem always to be full of affairs of State; to know the consultations of the Cabinet Council when at the same time his politics are collected from newspapers.  Which of these two causes my secrecy is owing to I leave you to determine.  There is yet one thing more that is extremely necessary for a foreign minister, which he can no more be without than an artisan without his tools; I mean the terms of his art.  I call it an art or a science because I think the King of France has established an academy to instruct the young Machiavelians of his country in the deep and profound science of politics.  To the end I might be qualified for an employment of this nature, and not only be qualified myself, but (to speak in the style of Sir John Falstaff) be the cause of qualification in others, I have made it my business to read memoirs, treatises, etc.  And as a dictionary of law-terms is thought necessary for young beginners, so I thought a dictionary of terms of State would be no less useful for young politicians.  The terms of politics