t and a shoulder of mutton
every day." Gay was not to be moved from his resolve to become a great
capitalist. Arguments were of no avail. The wilful man finally had his
way. Almost from the moment he refused to yield to his friends'
entreaties the price of South Sea stock declined rapidly. The "Bubble"
burst, and in October South Sea stock was unsaleable at any price. Gay
lost not only his profit but his capital, and was again reduced to
penury.

Gay spoke his mind about the "Bubble" in "A Panegyrical Epistle to Mr.
Thomas Snow, Goldsmith, near Temple Bar: Occasioned by his Buying and
Selling of the Third Subscriptions, taken in by the Directors of the
South Sea Company, at a thousand per cent," which was published by
Lintott in 1721:--

O thou, whose penetrative wisdom found
The South-Sea rocks and shelves, where thousands drown'd,
When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay,
Thou stood'st; nor sent one bill unpaid away.
When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's boards,
And Atwill's self was drain'd of all his hoards,
Thou stood'st (an Indian king in size and hue)
Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru.

Why did 'Change-Alley waste thy precious hours,
Among the fools who gaped for golden showers?
No wonder if we found some poets there,
Who live on fancy, and can feed on air;
No wonder they were caught by South-Sea schemes
Who ne'er enjoy'd a guinea but in dreams;
No wonder they their third subscription sold,
For millions of imaginary gold:
No wonder that their fancies wild can frame }
Strange reasons, that a thing is still the same, }
Tho' changed throughout in substance and in name. }
But you (whose judgment scorns poetic flights)
With contracts furnish boys for paper kites.

One of the immediate results of the disaster was Gay's inability to
fulfil his obligations to one of the publishers of his "Poems on Several
Occasions":--

JOHN GAY TO JACOB TONSON.

Friday morning [_circa_ October, 1720].

"Sir,--I received your letter with the accounts of the books you had
delivered. I have not seen Mr. Lintott's account, but shall take the
first opportunity to call on him. I cannot think your letter consists of
the utmost civility, in five lines to press me twice to make up my
account just at a time when it is impracticable to sell out of the
stocks in which my fortune is engaged. Between Mr. Lintott and you the
greatest part of the money is received, and I imagine