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Life is a Jeft, and all Things fhow it;
I thought fo once, but now I know it.

With what more you may think proper.

If any Body should afk, how I could communicate this after Death? Let it be known, it is not meant so, but my present Sentiment in Life. What the Bearer brings befides this Letter, fhould I die without a Will, (which I am the likelier to do, as the Law will fettle my small Eftate much as I fhould myself) let it remain with you, as it has long done with me,! a Remembrance of a dead Friend: But there is none like you, living or dead.

am, dear Mr. Pope,

Your's, &c. JOHN GAY.

When all his Expectations from the Court were thus reduced to nothing, Mr. Pope, before this laft Letter, wrote him one in a Boldnefs of Spirit, and with Freedom; fit to be feen and read by him, but never meant to be the Object of the publick Eye. It was dated Oct. 6, 1727.

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Dear Sir,
HAVE

Years
many

ago magnify'd in my own Mind, and repeated to you, a ninth Beatitude, added to the eighth in the Scripture; "Bleffed is he "who expects nothing, for he fhall never be difap"pointed." I could find in my Heart to congratulate you on this happy Difmiffion from all Court-Dependance: I dare fay, I fhall find you the better and the honefter Man for it many Years hence; very probably the healthfuller, and the chearfuller into the Bargain. You are happily rid of many curfed Ceremonies, as well as of many ill and vicious Habits, of which few or no Men escape the Infection, who are hack

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hackney'd and tramelled in the Ways of a Court. Princes indeed, and Peers, (the Lackies of Princes) and Ladies (the Fools of Peers) will fmile on you the lefs; but Men of Worth and real Friends will look on you the better. There is a Thing, the only Thing which Kings and Queens cannot give you, (for they have it not to give) Liberty, and which is worth all they have; which, as yet I thank God, Englishmen need not afk from their Hands. You will enjoy that, and your own Integrity, and the fatisfac-" tory Consciousness of having not merited fuch Gra ces from Courts as are bestow'd only on the mean, servile, flattering, interested, and undeferving. The only Steps to the Favour of the Great are fuch Complacencies, fuch Compliances, fuch diftant Decorums, as delude them in their Vanities, or engage them in their Paffions. He is their greatest Favourite, who is the falfeft; and when a Man, by fuch vile Gradations, arrives at the Height of Grandeur and Power, he is then at beft but in a Circumftance to be hated, and in a Condition to be hanged, for ferving their Ends: So many a Minifter has found it!

32

I believe you did not want Advice, in the Letter you fent by my Lord Grantham; I prefume you writ it not without; and you could not have better, if I guefs right at the Person who agreed to your doing it, in Respect to any Decency you ought to obferve; for I take that Perfon to be a perfect Judge of Decencies and Forms. I am not without Fears even on that Perfon's Account: I think it a bad Omen; but what have I to do with Court-Omens ?-Dear Gay, adieu. I can only add a plain, uncourtly Speech: While you are no Body's Servant, you may be any one's Friend ; and as fuch I embrace you, in all Conditions of Life. While I have a Shilling, vou I 4

fhall

fhall have Six-pence, nay Eight-pence, if I can contrive to live upon a Groat.

I am faithfully, Your's, &c.

And now Mr. Gay's Life was fpent chiefly in the Country with the Duke and Dutchefs of Queensberry. His Melancholy and Diftemper continuing to get the better of him, (though he had been always a Man of but few Words) he began to grow ftill more referved, and feem'd to lofe fomething of his Invention and Strength of Genius. Whether it were fo in Reality, or whether he began to think it vain and of no Effect, his Stomach grew weak, and his Head began to be troubled with Dizzinefs; he with cold damp Sweats all over him, and fuch a Dejection of Spirits, that the very Entrance into the Room of any Stranger would give him Disorder. Of this he wrote, as well as of his Intention of coming to London, to Mr. Pope; who in his Reply ftrives to keep him in Heart a little by Mirth, and laughs at Stephen Duck and the Laureat, (who was Mr. Eufden) whom he calls a drunken Sot of a Parfon: It is dated Oct. 23, 1730.

You

OUR Letter is a very kind one, but I can't fay fo pleafing to me as many of your's have been, thro' the Account you give of the Dejection of your Spirits: I wish the too constant Use of Wàter does not contribute to it; I find Dr. Arbuthnot and another very knowing Physician of that Opinion. I alfo wifh you were not fo totally immers'd in the Country: I hope your Return to Town will be a prevalent Remedy against the Evil of too much Recollection: I wish it partly for my own Sake. Wę have lived little together of late, and we want to be Physicians for one another. It is a Remedy that ageeed

greed very well with us both for many Years, and I fancy our Conftitutions would mend upon the old Medicine of Studiorum fimilitudo, &c. I believe we both of us want whetting; there are feveral here who will do you that good Office, merely for the Love of Wit, which feems to be bidding the Town a long and laft Adieu. I can tell you of no one Thing worth reading, or feeing; the whole Age feems refolv'd to justify the Dunciad, and it may ftand for a publick Epitaph or monumental Inscription like that at Thermopyla,, on a whole People perish'd! There may indeed be a wooden Image or two of Poetry, fet up, to preferve the Memory that there once were Bards in Britain; and (like the Giants at Guildhall) fhow the Bulk and bad Tafte of our Ancestors: At prefent the poor Laureat and Stephen Duck ferve for this Purpose; a drunken Sot of a Parfon holds forth the Emblem of Infpiration, and an honeft industrious Thresher not unaptly represents Pains and Labour. I hope this Phænomenon.of Wiltbire has appear'd at Amesbury, or the Dutchefs will be thought infenfible of all bright Qualities and exalted Genius's, in Court and Country alike. But he is a harmless Man, and therefore I am glad.

This is all the News talk'd of at Court, but it will please you better to hear that Mrs. Howard talks of · you, tho' not in the fame Breath with the Thresher, as they do of me. By the Way, have you feen or convers'd with Mr. Chubb, who is a wonderful Phænomenon of Wiltshire? I have read thro' his whole Volume with Admiration of the Writer; tho' not always with Approbation of the Doctrine. I have past just three Days in London in four Months, two at Windfor, half an one at Richmond, and have not taken one Excurfion into any other Country. Judge now whether I can live in my Library? Adieu. Live

mindful

mindful of one of your firft Friends, who will be fo to the laft. Mrs. Blount deferves your Remembrance, for fhe never forgets you, and wants nothing of being a Friend.

I beg the Duke's and her Grace's Acceptance of my Services: The Contentment you express in their Company pleases me, tho' it be the Bar to my own, in dividing you from us. I am ever very truly

Dear Sir, Your, &c.
A. POPE.

Mr. Gay came fhortly to Town, but his Fever growing inflammatory, he died the 4th of December, 1732, at his Grace the Duke of Queensberry's Houfe in Burlington Gardens, near Piccadilly.

He, as he had five Years before, hinted to Mr. Pope, died inteftate, and out of Place: Gay dies unpenfion'd, with a thousand Friends.

POPE.

His Fortune was but small, and fell to his two Sifters; it was wholly owing to his own Labour and Prudence, during his Stewardship under the late Dutchefs of Monmouth.

His Body was brought, by the Company of Upholders, from the Duke of Queenfberry's to Exeter Exchange in the Strand, and on the 23d of December, after lying in folemn State, was at eight o'Clock in the Evening, drawn in a Hearfe adorn'd with black and white Feathers, attended by three Mourning Coaches and fix Horfes, to Westminster Abbey.

His Pall was fupported by the Right Hon. the Earl of Chesterfield, the Lord Viscount Cornbury, the Hon. Mr. Berkeley, General Dormer, Mr. Gore, and Mr. Pope.

The

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