shall be in less pain about you.

"I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well,
without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings
you but half-a-crown a day."

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

December 1st, 1731

"You used to complain that Mr. Pope and I would not let you speak: you
may now be even with me, and take it out in writing. If you do not send
to me now and then, the post-office will think me of no consequence, for
I have no correspondent but you. You may keep as far from us as you
please; you cannot be forgotten by those who ever knew you, and
therefore please me by sometimes showing I am not forgot by you. I have
nothing to take me off from my friendship to you: I seek no new
acquaintance, and court no favour; I spend no shillings in coaches or
chairs to levees or great visits, and, as I do not want the assistance
of some that I formerly conversed with, I will not so much as seem to
seek to be a dependant.

"As to my studies, I have not been entirely idle, though I cannot say
that I have yet perfected anything. What I have done is something in the
way of those Fables I have already published.

"All the money I get is saving, so that by habit there may be some hopes
(if I grow richer) of my becoming a miser. All misers have their
excuses. The motive to my parsimony is independence."[7]

[Footnote 1: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 358]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 342.]

[Footnote 3: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 370.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., XVII, p. 382.]

[Footnote 5: Lady Suffolk's great-great-great-grandfather was Sir Henry
Hobart, Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas.]

[Footnote 6: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 385.]

[Footnote 7: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 436.]

CHAPTER XIII

1732

DEATH

As time passed Gay became less satisfied with his condition. It may have
been that his health became worse; or it may be that, like to many men
who are idle and make no effort to work, he became annoyed at the
_ennui_ which is so often the result of an unoccupied life. Anyhow, in
his letters there crept in a note of irritability, which has not
previously been sounded.

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

March 13th, 1732.

"I find myself dispirited for want of having some pursuit. Indolence and
idleness are the most tiresome things in the world. I begin to find a
dislike to society. I think I ought to try to break