C.Q.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

  Middleton Stoney, November 9th, 1729.

“I have been in Oxfordshire with the Duke of Queensberry for these three months, and have had very little correspondence with any of our friends.

“I have employed my time in new writing a damned play, which I wrote several years ago, called ‘The Wife of Bath.’  As it is approved or disapproved of by my friends, when I come to town, I shall either have it acted, or let it alone, if weak brethren do not take offence at it.  The ridicule turns upon superstition, and I have avoided the very words bribery and corruption.  Folly, indeed, is a word that I have ventured to make use of; but that is a term that never gave fools offence.  It is a common saying, that he is wise that knows himself.  What has happened of late, I think, is a proof that it is not limited to the wise....

“Next week, I believe, I shall be in town; not at Whitehall, for those lodgings were judged not convenient for me, and were disposed of.  Direct to me at the Duke of Queensberry’s, in Burlington Gardens, near Piccadilly.

“You have often twitted me in the teeth with hankering after the Court.  In that you mistook me:  for I know by experience that there is no dependence that can be sure, but a dependance upon one’s-self.  I will take care of the little fortune I have got.[12]”

[Footnote 1:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 215.]

[Footnote 2:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 232.]

[Footnote 3:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XIX, p. 232.]

[Footnote 4:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 244.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid., XVII, p. 245.]

[Footnote 6:  The great-aunt (not aunt) was Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Burlington, who married Nicholas Tufton, third Earl of Thanet.  Elizabeth’s sister, Henrietta, who married Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, was a grandmother of the Duchess of Queensberry.]

[Footnote 7:  Henry Douglas (1723-1754), known by the style of Earl of Drumlanrig, the elder son of Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry.  He predeceased his father.]

[Footnote 8:  Lord Charles Douglas (1726-1756), the younger son of the Duke, who also survived him.]

[Footnote 9:  James Dormer (1678-1741), Colonel, 1720; Envoy-Extraordinary to Lisbon, 1725; Lieutenant-General, 1737; a friend of Pope.]

[Footnote 10:  Sir Richard Child, Bart., of Wanstead (d. 1749), created Viscount Castlemaine, 1718; and Earl Tylney, 1731.]

[Footnote 11:  Mr. Dormer, of Rowsham, elder brother of General Dormer.]

[Footnote 12:  Swift:  Works (ed Scott), XVII, p. 277.]

CHAPTER XI

1730

CORRESPONDENCE