There are few or no details to be discovered about Gay at this time, except such deductions as can be drawn from his correspondence.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

  London, March 3rd, 1730.

“I am going very soon into Wiltshire with the Duke of Queensberry.  Since I had that severe fit of sickness, I find my health requires it; for I cannot bear the town as I could formerly.  I hope another summer’s air and exercise will reinstate me.  I continue to drink nothing but water, so that you cannot require any poetry from me.  I have been very seldom abroad since I came to town, and not once at Court.  This is no restraint upon me, for I am grown old enough to wish for retirement....

“I have left off all great folks but our own family; perhaps you will think all great folks little enough to leave off us, in our present situation.  I do not hate the world, but I laugh at it; for none but fools can be in earnest about a trifle."[1]

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Earlier in the year Gay had revised his earliest play “The Wife of Bath,” which had been produced unsuccessfully at Drury Lane Theatre on May 12th, 1713, and the new version was staged on January 19 of this year at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.  “My old vamped play has got me no money, for it had no success,” the author wrote to Swift in the letter of March 3rd; to which Swift replied from Dublin sixteen days later:  “I had never much hopes of your vamped play, although Mr. Pope seemed to have, and although it were ever so good; but you should have done like the parsons, and changed your text—­I mean, the title, and the names of the persons.  After all, it was an effect of idleness, for you are in the prime of life, when invention and judgment go together.”

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

  March 31st, 1730.

“I expect, in about a fortnight, to set out for Wiltshire....  My ambition, at present, is levelled to the same point that you direct me to; for I am every day building villakins, and have given over that of castles.  If I were to undertake it in my present circumstances, I should, on the most thrifty scheme, soon be straightened; and I hate to be in debt; for I cannot bear to pawn five pounds’ worth of my liberty to a tailor or a butcher.  I grant you this is not having the true spirit of modern nobility, but it is hard to cure the prejudice of education.

“I have been extremely taken up of late in settling a steward’s account.  I am endeavouring to do all the justice and service I can for a friend, so I am sure you will think I am well employed."[2]

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