service."

* * * * *

There is no mention of Gay during the first nine months of the year
1724, after which it has been possible to gather scant information.
Apparently, encouraged by the kindly interest displayed by the Princess
of Wales, Gay, still obsessed with his desire for a place, went
frequently to Court. "I hear nothing of our friend Gay, but I find the
Court keep him at hard meat. I advised him to come over here with a
Lord-Lieutenant,"[3] Swift wrote to Pope, September 29th, 1725. To this
Pope replied on October 15th: "Our friend Gay is used as the friends of
Tories are by Whigs, and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour
he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift; in like manner as when
anyone had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the
devil. He puts his whole trust at Court in that lady whom I described to
you."[4] "That lady," presumably was Mrs. Howard. But Gay, unable to
secure the interest of the politicians, and getting weary of waiting on
his friends, suddenly bethought himself of making a direct appeal to
royalty. "Gay is writing tales for Prince William,"[5] Pope wrote to
Swift on December 10th. "Mr. Philips[6] will take this very ill for two
reasons, one that he thinks all childish things belong to him, and the
other because he will take it ill to be taught that one may write things
to a child without being childish." Than which last few prettier
compliments have been paid to Gay.

Though they had long been in correspondence, Swift and Gay had not yet
met. Swift, of course, had often in his mind a visit to London--he
admitted the temptation, but resisted it. "I was three years reconciling
myself to the scene, and the business to which fortune had condemned me,
and stupidity was what I had recourse to,"[7] he had written to Gay from
Dublin, January 8th, 1723. "Besides, what a figure should I make in
London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or
imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron?" At last, however, in
March, 1726, he did come to London, and he was the guest of Gay, whom he
subsequently referred to as "my landlord at Whitehall." He saw much of
Gay. "I have lived these two months past for the most part in the
country, either at Twickenham with Mr. Pope, or rambling with him and
Mr. Gay for a fortnight together. Yesterday Lord Bolingbroke and Mr.
Congreve made up five at dinner at Twickenham,"[8] Swift wrote to
Ti