must have evoked a hearty laugh with--

And the statesman, because he's so great,
Thinks his trade as honest as mine.

Certainly the songs had much to do in the matter of pleasing the
audience. As a literary work, "The Beggar's Opera" has no great claims,
but there is a spontaneous humour about it that has charm. But it was
the _milieu_ that, acting on the hint thrown out years before by Swift,
Gay chose that appealed to the public taste. Highwaymen and women of the
town are not romantic figures, but Gay made the highwaymen handsome and
lively, and the women of the town beautiful and attractive, and over
them all he cast a glamour of romance and sentimentalism. Even Newgate
seemed a pleasing place, for in this fantasy the author was careful to
omit anything of the horrors of a prison in the early eighteenth
century. Gay, in fact, did for the stage with "The Beggar's Opera" what,
a century later Bulwer Lytton and Harrison Ainsworth did for the reading
public with "Ernest Maltravers," "Jack Sheppard," and the rest.

The morality of the opera was much discussed. Swift took the field, and
wrote in its favour in the _Intelligencer_ (No. 3):--

"It is true, indeed, that Mr. Gay, the author of this piece, has been
somewhat singular in the course of his fortune, for it has happened that
after fourteen years attending the Court, with a large stock of real
merit, a modest and agreeable conversation, a hundred promises, and five
hundred friends, he has failed of preferment, and upon a very weighty
reason. He lay under the suspicion of having written a libel, or
lampoon, against a great minister. It is true, that great minister was
demonstratively convinced, and publicly owned his conviction, that Mr.
Gay was not the author; but having lain under the suspicion, it seemed
very just that he should suffer the punishment; because in this most
reformed age, the virtues of a prime minister are no more to be
suspected than the chastity of Caesar's wife.

"It must be allowed, that 'The Beggar's Opera' is not the first of Mr.
Gay's works, wherein he has been faulty with regard to courtiers and
statesmen. For, to omit his other pieces, even in his 'Fables,'
published within two years past, and dedicated to the Duke of
Cumberland, for which he was promised a reward, he has been thought
somewhat too bold upon the courtiers. And although it be highly probable
he meant only the courtiers of former times, yet he acted unwarily, by
not co