* * * * *

Gay’s friends, who had persistently been on the look-out to help him, at last met with some small measure of success.  “I am obliged to you for your advice, as I have been formerly for your assistance in introducing me into business,” Gay wrote to Swift from London, February 3rd, 1723.  “I shall this year be Commissioner of the State Lottery, which will be worth to me a hundred and fifty pounds.  And I am not without hopes that I have friends that will think of some better and more certain provision for me."[8] In addition to this post, the Earl of Lincoln was persuaded to give him an apartment in Whitehall.  The Commissionship and the residence to some small extent soothed Gay’s ruffled vanity, and were beyond question convenient.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

  London, February 3rd, 1723.

“As for the reigning amusements of the town, it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds.  There’s nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian woman.  Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different styles of Handel, Bononcine, and Attilio.  People have now forgot Homer and Virgil and Caesar, or at least they have lost their ranks.  For in London and Westminster, in all polite conversations, Senesino is daily voted to be the greatest man that ever lived.

“Mr. Congreve I see often; he always mentions you with the strongest expressions of esteem and friendship.  He labours still under the same affliction as to his sight and gout; but in his intervals of health he has not lost anything of his cheerful temper.  I passed all the last season with him at Bath, and I have great reason to value myself upon his friendship, for I am sure he sincerely wishes me well.  Pope has just now embarked himself in another great undertaking as an author, for of late he has talked only as a gardener.  He has engaged to translate the Odyssey in three years, I believe rather out of a prospect of gain than inclination, for I am persuaded he bore his part in the loss of the South Sea.  I supped about a fortnight ago with Lord Bathurst and Lewis at Dr. Arbuthnot’s."[9]

* * * * *

During the summer of 1723 Gay, still troubled with the colic, went to Tunbridge Wells, where he carried on a vigorous correspondence with Mrs. Howard.

THE HON.  MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY.

  Richmond Lodge, July 5th, 1723.

“I was very sorry to hear, when I returned from Greenwich, that you had been at Richmond the same day; but I really thought you would have ordered your affairs in such a manner that I should have seen you before you went to Tunbridge.  I dare say you are now with your friends, but not with one who more sincerely wishes to see you easy and happy than I do; if my power was equal to theirs the matter should soon be determined.