South Sea "Bubble" Breaks, and Gay Loses all His
Money--Appointed a Commissioner of the State Lottery--Lord Lincoln
Gives Him an Apartment in Whitehall--At Tunbridge
Wells--Correspondence with Mrs. Howard.

Gay in 1720 was in his thirty-fifth year, and he had commenced author
some twelve years before this date. During this period his output had
been very small, and his success not conspicuous. As a dramatist he had
been a complete failure--his first play, "The Wife of Bath," was
still-born, and the others, "The What D'ye Call It" and "Three Hours
After Marriage," had practically been hooted off the stage, and had
brought him in their train a considerable degree of unpopularity. Of his
poems, the only ones of any marked merit were "The Shepherd's Week," and
"Trivia," and even these were unambitious, though not without merit. Gay
now bethought him of collecting his poems, published and unpublished,
and they were issued in two quarto volumes early in 1720, with the joint
imprint of Jacob Tonson and his old publisher, Bernard Lintott, and with
a frontispiece by William Kent.

The "Poems on Several Occasions," as the collection was styled, were
issued by subscription. His friends supported him admirably. Lord
Burlington and Lord Chandos each put down his name for fifty copies,
Lord Bathurst for ten copies; in all Gay made more than L1,000 by the
publication. To this success he alluded in his "Epistle to the Right
Honourable Paul Methuen, Esq."[1]

Yet there are ways for authors to be great;
Write ranc'rous libels to reform the State;
Or if you choose more sun and readier ways,
Spatter a minister with fulsome praise:
Launch out with freedom, flatter him enough;
Fear not, all men are dedication-proof.
Be bolder yet, you must go farther still,
Dip deep in gall thy mercenary quill.
He who his pen in party quarrels draws,
Lists an hired bravo to support the cause;
He must indulge his patron's hate and spleen,
And stab the fame of those he ne'er has seen.
Why then should authors mourn their desp'rate case?
Be brave, do this, and then demand a place.
Why art thou poor? exert the gifts to rise,
And vanish tim'rous virtue from thy eyes.

All this seems modern preface, where we're told
That wit is praised, but hungry lives and cold:
Against th' ungrateful age these authors roar,
And fancy learning starves because they're poor.
Yet why should learning hope success at Co