Ministers 'hiss, etc.'--and ten to one they
will be ready to grease you when you are fat.

"I hope your new Duchess will treat you at the Bath, and that you will
be too wise to lose your money at play.

"Get me likewise Polly's mezzotinto.

"Lord, how the schoolboys at Westminster and university lads adore you
at this juncture! Have you made as many men laugh as ministers can make
weep."

* * * * *

Colley Cibber, in his "Apology" said that "Gay had more skilfully
gratified the public taste than all the brightest authors that ever
wrote before him," and although this was undoubtedly a piece of friendly
exaggeration, it is a fact that John Gay was now a personage. "Mr. Gay's
fame continues; but his riches are in a fair way of diminishing; he is
gone to the Bath," Martha Blount wrote to Swift, May 7th;[23] and two
months later, with great pride, Gay told Swift, "My portrait mezzotinto
is published from Mrs. Howard's painting."[24] Indirectly, he secured
further notoriety when, in the summer, Lavinia Fenton, who had played
the heroine in the Opera, ran away with a Duke. "The Duke of Bolton, I
hear," he wrote to Swift from Bath, "has run away with Polly Peachum,
having settled L400 a year on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement
L200 a year."[25] She had played in the whole sixty-three performances
of the Opera, the forty-seventh performance being set aside for her
benefit. The sixty-third performance took place on June 19th, and that
was her last appearance on the boards of a theatre. In 1751, shortly
after the death of his wife, the Duke married her, she being then about
forty-three, and he sixty-six.[26]

[Footnote 1: Swift: _Work_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 157.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 162.]

[Footnote 3: _See_ p. 41 of this work.]

[Footnote 4: Spence: _Anecdotes_ (ed. Singer), p. 159.]

[Footnote 5: Pope: _Works_ (ed. Elwin and Courthope), VII, p. 111.]

[Footnote 6: Boswell: _Life of Johnson_ (ed. Hill), II, p. 368.]

[Footnote 7: Spence: _Anecdotes_, p. 159.]

[Footnote 8: Dr. Herring: _Sermons_ (1763), p. 5.]

[Footnote 9: _Annual Register_ (1773), I, p. 132.]

[Footnote 10: Genest: _History of the Stage_, III, p. 223.]

[Footnote 11: _History of Music_, V, p. 317.]

[Footnote 12: _Lives of the Poets_ (ed. Hill), III, p. 278.]

[Footnote 13: Boswell: _Life of Johnson_ (ed. Hill), II, p. 367.]

[Footnote 14: _Plays Written by Mr. John Gay: With an Acco